What happened with cafrino.com the free, online poker site?

This is suspicious. I've been emailing customer support at the online poker site www.cafrino.com and there have been no replies.

The emails were about why my "cash outs" for various tournament wins have not been processed. This is not big money... only about $20 plus change.

Also, they are not scheduling their nightly $50 free play tournaments.

The site has had its problems including a lack of interest and difficulty getting enough players to fill the free games.

The site does not charge any money to play and is advertiser supported and runs commercials and shows ads during play, and the ads are supposed to finance various pays to players. To be honest, the number of ads has been few.

I would think that especially during a holiday period when many people are at home that they would step up their tournament action -- and not cut it. I would also think there would have been more advertising during the holiday shopping period but there wasn't.

Is Cafrino.com in trouble?

Yeah so, does anyone know anything about this? I've been playing there once or twice a week for a month or so and then, all of a sudden, no nightly tourneys. I'm not really worried about getting paid (only had like $8 built up), but I enjoyed playing and trying to hone my paltry skills. This was the only place I saw anyone else wondering about it. I feel like if there was a lawsuit or injunction or something, it would've been news. Hope they're not closing down.

Hi and thanks for joining us! I never saw anything involving any legal action. I just wonder if their business model didn't take off? Perhaps a lack of advertising? The site did indicate that it was a "beta test" and there were some flaws and problems. For example, I wrote about previously how my "hole cards" actually changed after being dealt, and there were incidents when a player at my table was invisible on the computer screen.

There were other flaws with their system, like there was no way to see which games or tourneys had players already seated. And the biggest problem was the lack of players.

Cafrino was started by some investors/entrepreneurs in Ventura, California (near LA) and they did have some backing from investors in New York but they had a lot of competition from the brick and mortar casinos and Zen Entertainment which operates the online poker sites for South Point in Vegas and Hustler Casino in LA. And of course the big kids on the block -- MGM and Caesars -- have been pouring resources into online poker that they hope to start first as an intra-state system in Nevada, and then a nationwide system if federal laws are changed.

I still haven't received a response from Cafrino and when they first started up I tried to contact their management but never heard back from them.

Of course there might be "nothing wrong" and they are just on vacation this week. But each day that they don't run their "$50 free play tournaments" and each day they don't process the cash outs (as small as they are) makes me wonder if the site has had its test and failed?

I appreciate the quick response. Yeah, the site definitely had it's problems, but I never had any major issues like my cards changing. For those of us not living near any casinos, it's a nice way to play some semi-real poker on a regular basis. I guess I'll cross my fingers and hope that they're just on vacation. Thanks again.

There are many other free to play online sites that are OK for US players. Try hustlercasino.com and at the bottom of the home page click "Play Online" or just go to http://play.hustlercasino.com/

South Point casino's online poker seems to have vanished from its website and perhaps it is because they will be running their own intra-State Nevada online poker site. See this article from the Las Vegas Review Journal: http://www.lvrj.com/business/nevada-...167228085.html

The article indicated the intra-state site might have started this past October. Did it?

But what I liked about Cafrino was the original model that called for escalating payoffs as you won higher and higher level tournaments -- they even advertised payouts in the tens of thousands of dollars for totally free play.

I got an email from Cafrino.com support and they said the next batch of payments will be going out within the week. I replied saying that I have made six separate withdrawals from tournament winnings and only one (for the huge amount of 35-cents) has been approved. The other five worth a bit more than $20 (good for one trip at Starbucks, LOL) have not yet been.

Still no sign of the nightly cash tournaments.

Well, it's been a week since I got the email from "support" that said more payments were going out and nothing has happened with my account. The "winnings" have not been processed. Frankly, when an online company can't come through and pay out twenty-bucks you know the company is on the verge of failure. Stay away from Cafrino.

Update on January 19th. Still nothing. My "winnings" of about $20 are still sitting there and have not been processed for payment. Looks to me like this site is a bust.

Update on Jan. 21st: I received a reply from Support at Cafrino. The support ticket exchange is below:

Subject: Will I ever get my money??

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JAN 22, 2013 | 05:16PM PST
Cafrino Support replied:

Hi Alan,

We will send out the next batch of payments this Friday. Apologies for the delay!

Regards,
Sean
Cafrino Customer Support
support@cafrino.com
Cafrino, LLC

On Monday, Cafrino support sent me an email that said today, Friday, they will send out the next batch of payments. Well, I just check my account, any my winnings of a bit more than $20 from at least a month ago have still not been processed. So I doubt they will be sent out today.

Frankly, I don't think I will ever see the money -- not that it will ever make a difference to me. The evidence is mounting that Cafrino has failed. It no longer runs the nightly free play tournaments with a $50 prize pool -- I won the last of those on December 25th for $11.50. I've checked the site almost daily for the last couple of weeks and I find no games in action and no more than two players waiting for a game to start. And there are also few ads running on the site (it is supposed to be advertiser supported) but that's probably all well and good for the advertiser community because there probably aren't any "players" to see the ads anyway.

It's now early Saturday morning, and I was really hoping that Cafrino Support would come through and my winnings would be processed. They weren't. My account still shows that my winnings (probably not enough to bust Cafrino.com) still have not been processed and no payments have been made.

So, a few minutes ago I sent another email to Cafrino Support. Here is what I wrote:

Over the past several weeks, you have told me over and over again, that you are about to authorize and send out payments. I have been waiting since mid-December for at least one pay out.

I am owed almost $21, including $11.50 which was won on the December 25th tournament (Christmas Day) and still nothing has been paid.

Now, it's time to be honest. Are you going to pay or is your company broke and unable to pay? If you are going to pay, and you happen to have a spare twenty bucks around, when do you think I will get the $20.91 that you owe me?

Bulletin news (so to speak): Sunday evening I received the following from PayPal: "Cafrino sent you $20.91 USD" Cafrino.com uses paypal to make payments to players. Did anyone else get notification of a payment? Now we have to see if the nightly $50 tournaments will resume?

RIP Cafrino.com I've been checking the site for activity and there isn't any. No active games. No tournaments. I even waited in the heads-up gaming section and there were no heads-up players. RIP Cafrino, and thanks for the paypal payment. It cleared my bank account.

Is Cafrino.com still in business? They haven't had a Tweet on Twitter since July, it seems. I can't log onto the site, even though the site still comes up.

The website is certainly there, but it would not let me register. Every time I tried to, using the password they sent me, I received a message which said, "Login Failed". So be it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by carolinajacket

The website is certainly there, but it would not let me register. Every time I tried to, using the password they sent me, I received a message which said, "Login Failed". So be it.

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This is exactly what happened with me last night. I got several different new passwords and each time it said "login failed." Also I look at the "news" tab on their website and they haven't run a tournament since July.

Well, open or not, I guess they don't want our business too much.

I think their business model failed. This was a site that did not charge players, but carried advertisements to pay for its operations and for prizes. The site had a lot of trouble generating interest in its games.

I am still owed some money for placing in one of their weekly tournaments.