As you know, I've been following and playing online poker on Cafrino.com which is a free, play for money, online poker website. Cafrino is advertiser supported and revenue from the ads that you see constantly while playing is what provides the money for the winners of tournaments. The money is not big. First prize on many of the tournaments that run every couple of hours is 30-cents. A couple of times a day there are bigger payoff tournaments where the first prize winner gets $10. No one is going to get rich playing the free tournaments on Cafrino.com but they are fun until...
They are fun until the website fails or you get frozen out of the game you are playing.
Yesterday, I was playing a tournament and no less than 8 times in that tournament I was frozen out of the game. I had to close my browser and log back onto the site to rejoin the tournament. And sometimes, it took three or four attemps to log back on.
But wait... there's more.
In some of the one table "sit 'n go's" I was knocked out and could not even log back on to return to the game. This happened no less than 3 times and each time I reported the problem and asked for a "credit" to be restored to the "tournament level" that I was playing at.
I should explain that there are ten levels of "sit 'n go's" and when you reach level 10 you can play in a $2,000 prize pool tournament. I have three or four of those Level 10 "tickets" but the $2,000 tournament is played only once a month. Last night I was knocked out of two Level 6 games and one Level 8 game.
When I send an email to "support" I am told that they are working on the problem. But this is not a new problem. Lots of players get knocked off the website. And yesterday, in a Level 6 game a player who was "at the table" said he couldn't see the cards. This has happened to me as well. Another player who was dealt pocket kings had his kings folded after the flop which contained a king for a set for him. When the hand was over he was able to "show" his pocket kings.
I am sure that Cafrino wants more players because more players will help it get more advertisers and more ad revenue. But until it's ready for prime time online poker with a site that doesn't have so many problems, it will not be attracting many players.
And without players it won't have advertisers and it won't have revenue and it will continue to offer prizes of 30-cents for tournament winners -- and that is a recipe for online poker failure.
Cafrino fix your problems. For example, in the photo below you will see that I am at a table (screen name is "Rockland") with no chips and the site has me marked as "all in." Except I never went "all in" and I never had any chips to play. And in another photo I joined a tournament only to discover that I was directed to an empty table and even my "Rockland" icon doesn't show up.
Other players -- you have been warned.
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