I've decided to start doing videos of the problems I am having with the free online poker site Cafrino and I am putting them on Youtube so you can see what is going on. Cafrino is a free site -- you don't pay to play there -- and it has small tournaments that are funded by a continuous stream of video ads. So far my "winnings" on Cafrino are about $115 but mostly I play on it while I am watching TV or talking on the phone.
The site has always had technical problems but in the last couple of weeks they got worse. I've reported the problems to their "support" and they've apologized and conceded they have problems but I think it's important that others know about these problems before they play and before they get involved in lengthy tournaments.
Cafrino also is advertiser supported and their advertisers should know about this too and as you will see in the second video sometimes the ads that are supposed to be playing are not.
In the first video below, in a $1 tournament late Saturday night, I had the nut straight but the site froze on the river and I was not able to bet or call. There was another player in the hand and I had more than half of my stack already in the pot. I was folded because the site was frozen and I lost. If you see at the beginning of the short video clip my pocket cards are JQ and the board had a 9, 10, King giving me the nuts. Yes-- the site was frozen long enough for me to start up my video camera on my cell phone and record this:
[youtube]pjtxWKnz-aE[/youtube]
In this next video I am playing in the Saturday night $50 tournament. I lost this tournament because I was folded too many times because the site froze and I was not dealt cards to play, and I was marked sitting out too many times. This video runs more than five minutes but twice in the video you will see where the site freezes and when it unfreezes I was folded and instead of seeing the flop, the turn and then the river -- all five cards appear on the screen, meaning that I missed seeing the flop and the turn. The first time the problem appears is at about 2:00 after the start of the video. It stalled again at about 5:05.
[youtube]BANw3SbmcBA[/youtube]
I spoke with the CEO of Cafrino who told me that at some point they want to offer bigger money tournaments -- but they can't until the problems are fixed. And one day online poker might be legal in California and I am sure then Cafrino would like to have a for-money site. But until they can fix their problems this is not a site for any serious play.
Reply With Quote
