The Empire Strikes Back

So I was watching the disc I made the other day that has the Star Wars Trilogy all shrunk down and burned onto one disc. When I got to the Empire Strikes Back chapter, I had to laugh. That is EXACTLY what Empire did today.

Apparently word travelled quickly throughout the online poker community that Empire Poker had a $500 promotion going. If you deposited $500 and played 2500 raked hands, (trivial on the Party raked hands system,) you got $500 released into your account. Free money? Sounds too good to be true.

And of course it was. Empire revoked the bonus from everyone that took advantage, giving 10% free up to $100 (no raked hand requirement) as a consolation prize. The community is in absolute OUTRAGE.

I guess I'm accustomed to online stores making mistakes and not fulfilling them from being on Fatwallet.com for so long. It used to be every week when Dell or someone would publish an unbelievably low price online, thousands of people would order and then the orders were cancelled. The reaction was always the same. "I'll never buy anything from Dell again," or "We should all get together and sue!" All smoke, no fire. Nobody has ever sued, and believe it or not Dell didn't go out of business from the boycott.

The same will occur for Empire Poker. They made a mistake, nobody was hurt, and even those who got "ripped off" got something completely free out of it. Most online stores don't even do that, usually it's "tough luck, read the terms of the deal. Price mistakes don't count."

The "outrage" will die down in a couple of days, if not a couple of hours. The 2+2 posts were probably annoying after the third one, and that was the point where most people stopped paying attention. The big mouths who think the world owes them something will continue for a little bit, then the whole thing will go away.

Bonuses are great, and I admit to being a full-fledged bonus whore. But that's not why I play poker, and I would play poker without any bonuses at all. I did for a long time. People are starting to take bonuses for granted, and that's never good.