IMPORTANT - The blonde-Mansion Promotion

[Colchester Kev]

I will be doing the draw at 9 am tomorrow morning, im trying to get sky to cover it live, but they havent come up with the asking price... Radio 5 live have also been on to negotiate exclusive rights, but i said NO, Alan Green is a pompous twonk, sack him and we have a deal.  they declined.

So you will just have to watch the forum tomorrow for details

[KingPoker]

 

Dont know why im asking really, i'm crap at poker and i never get lucky in draws!!!!!!!

[TightEnd]

But......just before the promotion was due to come into effect, Mansion wrote to us, informing us that the deal would be changed, to 10 seats per week, 4 days per week - Wednesday to Saturday. Yoiks.

Just noticed from Tikay's original post that he says Mansion changed the terms "before the promotion was due to come into effect".

I guess the important question begged by this is whether that means they changed the terms before new players signed up, or that they changed them after the deal was posted on the forum and players signed up, but before Monday when the first of the five tournaments started.

If the latter - people signed up and then they backtracked - then they've behaved appallingly.

If the former - then they've still behaved appallingly as they shouldn't have allowed a deal that they had no intention of keeping for more than a week to be advertised.

From where I'm looking, the only situation where Mansion's behaviour is acceptable is where they changed the terms of the deal before it was advertised on Blonde and therefore before anyone signed up for it. That situation would depend on Blonde knowing that the deal was highly unlikely to last but deciding to advertise it anyway. Tell me it ain't so...

It ain't so

The terms were changed after they were posted on the blonde forum and blonde players had signed up but before the first week's names from our promotion had been given to Mansion

That said, mansion does a similar deal/promotion with two other sites/organisations and we know for sure that the deal as changed for everyone. These other deals have been running for longer than ours, in part because of the negotiating complexities caused by our insistence that blondes who were existing Mansion players were included.

I therefore suggest that the timing of the change only a few days after our announcement is an unhappy coincidence not deliberate "appalling" behaviour to use your word.

[CrestOfaWave]

I would like to Thank Blonde for the opportunity to play in these highly overlayed tournaments. I hear what some people are saying that Mansion have changed the original terms. I am slightly surprised as they are still on average 400-500 entrants short of making the full target per tournament.

Tony some feedback you can give to Mansion would be to offer some other smaller tournaments during the day. You have to wait ages for the sit and go's to fill up which forces someone like me ( a tourny player) to play cash games to get the necessary action points to qualify for the freerolls. It must be tough for these new sites to get off the ground particularly since they have stopped their American clients.

I have watched PartyPoker go through similar problems in recent months but they seem resurgent again and are building numbers by getting people from countries like Germany.

Its been fun playing against some of the guys from Blonde and railing Flushy and ElBlondie adds a dimension rather than just watching unknown names.

[Graham C]

Will the lucky qualifiers be told at 9am ish too Kev?  I'm keen to know if I've made it again or not

[snoopy1239]

There is a little history here with regards to Mansion changing T s and Cs after the fact - and I haven't told this story before, so please bear with me.

Some of you might already know that I won a seat to the Mansion Poker Dome last May; it was during Mansion.com's first month of operation, and I actually appeared in the second ever episode. (I was chip leader for a while, but finished 4th... my QQ vs oppos KQ... don't ask!) Also on that week's show was {WSOP Omaha Hi Lo Bracelet Winner and Full Tilt 'red name'} Perry Friedman, who eventually lost heads up to the same player who busted me.

Qualifying for the Dome cost me just $0.01; that's how much the tournaments on Mansion were running for at that time - Freerolls, with a 1c "fee". I beat 90-something players to the win. Mansion flew me out to Vegas, put me up at Caesar's and flew me back after the show; and for the record, everyone I met there were nice, friendly, helpful, and I had a great time.

---

Now, we were told point-blank by the people running the Dome show that we could requalify online if we were unsuccessful that evening; they were adamant on this point, there was no hesitation about it, they were sure of their facts and were were told of this several times throughout the trip: If you don't win, you can try again.

Perry Friedman was the one who brought the subject up, having been unable to get a straight answer on the subject up to that point, because there was no mention of it in the terms and conditions he'd gotten hold of (I had been unable to get hold of any T s and Cs for this promotion, because they had not been posted on the Mansion website yet, this was very early days, and the Mansion website was in any case very unstable and had a habit of crashing the browser that was trying to read it - not the best scenario in the world).

So, after I returned, I set about trying to requalify for the Dome. I really wanted to be the first person to win a second seat and try again... except that Perry beat me to it! He won his second seat just a few weeks after our heat.

By now, Mansion had published T s and Cs for the Dome on their website, which included a section in which it mentions that a player cannot win two online qualifiers... which directly contradicted what we'd been told - face to face - in Vegas.

According to Perry, the clause about not being able to win two seats in the Dome was not in the copy of the T s and Cs that he'd obtained prior to our heat, back at the start of June 2006. He feels that they added it at some later date, and (understandably, considering the amount of money at stake) wanted them to adhere to what he saw as the original agreement. Mansion stuck to their guns and gave his seat to the next-highest runner up in his online game.

(Perry's full version of events can be found at his MySpace blog: Friday June 23rd 2006 entry.

---

I remember being very angry when I heard about all this, basically because it taints what was for me, a great experience. Now, I don't wish to sound ungrateful to Mansion by retelling this story. The last time I told it, a friend of mine branded me as greedy for wanting to win again, so I have kept schtum under the banner of "benefits of the doubt". As with Flushy, they spent a lot of money on me and my own contribution to Mansion's total revenue has been less than negligible; although with the money that they have been giving away since they joined the online poker market, it does not seem like this concerns them overly.

My point is just that it forced me to look at them in a new light. I don't know why they have made the decisions that they have made, but as a result of this mix-up I treat them less as a 'generous' site than I would otherwise be disposed to.

Here is the similarity I wanted to highlight: Just as my trip was soured by my wasting hours of my life trying to requalify for a prize that I would never have been awarded, I think this deal has been slightly soured by after-the-fact changes that have been brought in. As Newmanseye said,  that does not mean it's not still a good deal.

I just wish that they'd told us back in Vegas that we couldn't requalify; no-one's feelings would have got hurt, I wouldn't have wasted my time, and I would have been singing Mansion's praises through the entire second half of 2006. Similarly, the deal that's on the table now would look fantastic - if we Blondeites didn't know what we were supposed to be getting.

Great post, but the 50p rule still applies. 

[Colchester Kev]

It will all be done after i have dictated it to my PA, and she doesnt function until at least 3 coffees .... I have to get info to Mansion by 12 at the lates and then need to get them to confirm, seeing as the comp entries dont include monday nights now ... we arent in such a rush.

But i will let everyone know ASAP tomorrow.

[Rookie (Rodney)]

When am i going to get my go??

[Ginger]

When am i going to get my go??

for trying to induce enquiries to enable shameless chirp.

[KingPoker]

When am i going to get my go??

for trying to induce enquiries to enable shameless chirp.

lmfao- he's nothing without my railing anyway!

[KeithyB]

My situation is pretty similar to Graham's in that I saw the deal and thought the potential value on offer too good to resist. This was especially true when I factored in that many Blondes must already have Mansion accounts plus the original thread didn't seem to generate loads of replies from potential new signups either.

To be honest my rake too would have been minimal and I was just hoping to "get lucky" by the offer being underscribed.

But as luck would have it I gained free entries into $500 worth of tournaments and for that I heartily thank both Blonde and Mansion.

I was tempted to withdraw and run for the hills at that point but felt the opportunity to play at a far higher level and buy-in than I usually play at was too good an opportunity to miss.  Plus it wouldn't have really been in the spirit of the promotion either!

So I played my five tourny's with the result that I cashed in a couple and was only a 50/50 shot away from repeating that in another couple too.  A thoroughly enjoyable week and useful in testing the water that these higher value tourny's aren't necessarily that much tougher than the little ones.

Unlikely that I'll have raked enough to qualify again this week but I certainly will be paying to enter a few more of these whenever I have a free night.  So, for what it's worth, Mansion have gained a new customer from this promotion and it does seem a wins all round scenario.

Huge thanks to Blonde especially Tighty and Kev for negotiating this deal, much appreciated guys! 

[KeithyB]

Good post Moskvich.  I didn't think I'd get much chance of making the top 15 each week but having given it a go for the first week and somehow made it, I've carried on for the 2nd week.   I would think I'd stuggle to make it now but will see and if I make it this week, I'll  have another go.

I can see why Mansion want to go back a bit on this deal as they're probably spending quite a bit on it.  I don't know how much I raked last week but I'd be gobsmacked if it were anywhere near the $500 value I got from them, but it's pretty bad just changing the deal one week into it. 

It costs them nothing m8, the 100k gtd is there everyday with 500 runners, if they put 200 players in they are still adding 50k, that's why its so stupid of them as it costs them nothing to keep to the original deal!

Well technically it could cost them if everyone they gave free entries to then subsequently withdrew from each tourny and pocketed the cash!

[Rookie (Rodney)]

When am i going to get my go??

for trying to induce enquiries to enable shameless chirp.

What am i chirping about???

Oh, you must mean when i won it last monday for $24k. Gotcha, will try not to chirp deliberately 

[Ginger]

When am i going to get my go??

for trying to induce enquiries to enable shameless chirp.

What am i chirping about???

Oh, you must mean when i won it last monday for $24k. Gotcha, will try not to chirp deliberately 

Good, glad we got that sorted, we don't want any deliberate chirping, do we... 

[Moskvich]

It ain't so

The terms were changed after they were posted on the blonde forum and blonde players had signed up but before the first week's names from our promotion had been given to Mansion

Thanks for clarifying.

I'd like to echo other people's comments that this was (and still is) a very good deal for those involved on the playing side, and to thank Blonde for arranging it. And I accept that the delay in alerting players to the changed terms was only the result of Blonde's efforts to keep the original deal in place.

I still think Mansion's behaviour is unacceptable - if they were going to change the terms during the first week of the Blonde promotion then they shouldn't have let it be advertised in the way that it was at the end of the previous week. Companies don't just make snap decisions about these things - and if they do then they should give their customers adequate notice of changes. I'm also still quite surprised that so few people appear to be bothered by the principle involved.

But I'll stop complaining now. Thanks again for the opportunity in the first place. Cheers.