A couple of good things: during this time I downloaded a couple of hand history files that were corrupted, and their customer service was very prompt and helpful in resolving that
45k hands at 50NLz, 50NL and 100NL and paid $2, in rake. 58. Customer service was downright unhelpful, bordering on obstructive. I’d have to assume I’m not the only person this has happened to. Either they are deliberately underpaying rewards, or their software sucks and they don’t care. Either way, I can’t play on the site, despite how much as I would like to for the Zone tables. I’d love to know if anyone else tracked the rake they paid during the bonus period and whether it was consistent with the ignition miles earned and the amount of the bonus you received.
Well I was hoping I was going to have a better resolution to report when I wrote this post (which I was going to write whether they paid me or not), but it is what it is. If anyone from Ignition reads this, give me my money please.
You can see Rake Attributed (the amount paid out of pots that I won), Rake Contributed (the amount of rake taken out of my bets, whether or not I won the pot), and Rake Share (the amount of rake taken divided evenly by the number of players at the table)
The relevant bonus terms are: 1. The bonus is for 125% of your first deposit, up to a maximum of $1,250. 2. For every 150 Ignition Miles earned in poker, you will unlock $5 of the bonus funds. 3. The Ignition Miles earn rate is 15 Ignition Miles per dollar of rake in poker cash games.
So, this bonus is equivalent to 50% rakeback: you earn 15 Ignition Miles per dollar of rake you pay, so after paying 10 dollars of rake, you earn 150 Ignition Miles, which unlocks $5 of the bonus money. So, to unlock the full $1,250 bonus, you need to earn 37,500 Ignition Miles (($1250 / $5) * 150 Ignition Miles) which is equivalent to paying $2,500 of rake. One caveat, they don’t specify precisely what they mean by “per dollar of rake”, but it seems like the most reasonable interpretation is that it means per dollar of rake paid from pots that you win.
On 10/3, I deposited about $1,008 with the Bitcoin Poker Welcome Bonus, so I got the maximum bonus amount of $1,250. Between 10/3 and 11/1, I played 45,418 hands. I downloaded all the hand history files from Ignition and loaded them into PokerTracker. Here are the stats (bad reg, I know, I know ):
If they’re going by Rake Attributed, I should have received over 37,500 Ignition Miles, but if they’re going by Rake Contributed, I should have received only 36, Ignition Miles. Obviously nobody cares about how many Ignition Miles they have earned because they are so pathetically worthless it’s insulting, but since the bonus unlocking 20 minimum deposit casino is tied to how many Ignition Miles you earn, I was monitoring it. On November 1, I had earned only 23,560 Ignition Miles:
Going by their incorrect balance of 23,560 Ignition Miles, I should have unlocked $5 * 23560 / 150 = $. Their math here only shorted me 50 bucks – not bad compared to their usual standards. The bigger issue is that I was shorted 14,000 Ignition Miles, which should have unlocked $ of the bonus.
I first contacted their customer service about the bonus funds not unlocking as they should be on October 6. In the following 4 weeks, I exchanged dozens of emails and spoke to their customer service on the phone 3 times, and every experience was positively enraging. By far the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. And at the end of my attempts to get them to fix this, I forfeited the remaining $ of the bonus that I am entitled to, and withdrew my account balance from the site. That withdrawal went through in about 12 hours, which absolutely shocked me since I was expecting to be put through the ringer after all the grief their customer service gave me about the bonus issues. So I have to give them some respect for not giving me a hard time withdrawing my money.