I played a session the other day on Merge and as I was looking around at the tables, I realized that I basically knew everyone at the tables.  Not personally - but everyone looked like they were regs I had played thousands of hands with (other than a scattering of players on a few tables I had never seen before).  And then it dawned on me that Merge is a closed system, since the almost 2 month long freeze on accepting new players.

What is a closed system?  It's a system where no one can get in.  What happens when you take a table of regulars and have them play for a long period of time?  Player B wins the first pot and pays the rake.  Player U wins the second pot and pays the rake.  Player S wins the third pot and pays the rake.  Player T wins the fourth pot and pays the rake.  Player O wins the fifth pot and pays the rake.  Lemme get this straight...  the money keeps changing hands between the players and the house takes money out of every (flopped) pot.  And then throw in an extra 50 cents for the Bad Beat Jackpot.  Can you figure out the happy ending to this story?

Now I'm not saying that a cash game among regs can't be a fun and challenging game.  But you have to realize if the game continues long enough, there will only be two winners.  The winning player and the especially the poker room.  I'm not sure if a freezeout among regs is what cash game players are interested in.  If your local casino shut its doors to new entrants, would you still go?  After a few days, all the bad players will have left (except for maybe the few die-hard fish), and then only the better players would be around.  Purists would say the game's the same.  But not really.  The challenge might be there, but the other major reason people play poker is to make money.

Which brings me to this... a closed poker system is a game of attrition.  I am reposting Merge's graph from last week.  See the attrition the last two months?  This is not sustainable.

I suppose on the one hand, I appreciate the fact that Merge is being so careful about making sure customer service is adequate and that cashouts can be processed quickly before taking new players.  But you can't have this closed poker system continue.  It's like starting a dating service and not accepting new people - after a while, you're just going to be left with a bunch of people no one is going to want to be with.

So my message to Merge is two-fold:

1)  Just re-open now! - before your player pool ends up like the the dating service full of undesirables.  This situation is going to be very unhealthy for business if it continues.  Allegedly, cashouts are only taking 3 weeks, and I think it's only reasonable to expect cashouts will take longer once they start accepting new players.  Cashouts taking 2 months like Cake is going to kill business too, but you are already killing your business NOW.  So rather than delaying the re-open, just bite the bullet and do it now.

2)  Think about how you can alleviate pressures on your cashout system.  How?  Tune in later...

Don't be like the closed-to-new-entrants dating service.