I started playing Noble last month to try out the jackpot tables. Nice site, a lot of nice things about it, horrible players, etc. One catch: I tried to withdraw my money from it last week, and first of all, it takes a while to process (one part of their site says 4 days, another says 24-48 hours). Today I finally was like "why hasn't this money shown up in my neteller?" so I phoned them and it turns out that the $10 bonus they gave me when I signed up is messing it up. I got 10 bucks from their online support dude and it was added to my account balance with no provisos, but apparently I now have to play a bunch of raked hands because of that 10 bucks (I have only played SNGs so far), or else I can't take out ANY of my money. Better yet, they never emailed me to let me know about this, they just quietly denied my withdrawal, stuck my money back in my account and uhh.. I guess hoped I would never notice? And now they're put another 3 dollars (completely unasked for) in my account today as a bonus*, which presumably will also screw me over until I play even more raked hands.

What a fucking scam. Anyone who thinks this site is really going to run their $1 million promotion honestly is in for a surprise.

* this $3 bonus is because I put some money in last week via Neteller. Why? Well because originally I deposited using a credit card and they don't let you withdraw via Neteller until you have made a deposit using Neteller, which is dumb, and obviously just a scam so either they get some kickback from Neteller for having people deposit with it, or just to add another layer of complexity to the process of trying to withdraw.

Same thing here!

Friend of mine just withdrew $6000 to buy a car with.

Be careful for what you ask for if you try to get a bonus reversed - I joined, deposited $100, played some of the jackpot $5 sit-n-go's, and decided I could better spend my time elsewhere. Went through the tried-to-withdraw - denied - email-back-and-forth thing, and finally got them to remove the bonus so I could withdraw. However, when they removed the bonus, they also took my profits! (I was only up 10 bucks, but it's the principle). Don't think I'll be going back.

Sheesh what an explanation. Yes we acknowledge holding your deposited money, likely many many times higher than the bonus, but we can do so because we buried it in fine print.

I was going to try to your $1 million challenge. I would sooner throw money out the window.

Credibility is very hard to come by for a new site. This destroys yours.

I went to their site's prmotions page:

http://www.noblepoker.com/promotions.html

I do not find this requirement listed in their rules. It does say you have to play a considerable period of time to earn the bonus but nothing about the inability to withdraw.

What is happening with the oneupmanship of bonus from online card rooms is that they run intentionally misleading promotions. That they bury some "gotcha" in an email or fine print elsewhere does not justify this scam.

And what a scam it is. Play for a long period of time to first get the bonus AND THEN the "gotcha":

Now you want your own money back? We won't release it unless you play another X number of games.

Who the hell needs that?

There are enough legit sites out there that disclose their rules and to the extent they have some fine print gotcha at least its only over "their" bonus, not holding up your own money.

Total and flagrant scam.

Many sites don't allow you to cash out your profits until you clear the bonuses? Name one other.

You are telling me that on Bodog, if I deposit $50 and get a $10 bonus which I don't clear, I have to give back my profits from the $50?

Ellis, thank you for replying to this thread. I greatly appreciate it when online poker sites are willing to address issues brought up in online poker forums.

There is, however, a serious problem with putting a hold on a player's deposited money based on that player receiving a bonus. It is certainly reasonable to disallow a player from withdrawing bonus money until that bonus has been cleared according to the terms of the site. However, the vast majority of online poker players (myself included) do not consider it reasonable to place a hold on our deposited money +- any winnings/losses accumulated at the site simply because we haven't cleared the requirements of a bonus.

I deposited $500 at Noble poker last week due to information I read at pocketfives.com. I too received a $10 bonus that was offered to me via a "chat window" and no terms were mentioned. I certainly consider it a scam if you will not allow me to withdraw my $500 because of a little $10 bonus Noble added to my account.

An online poker site cannot be successful if it fails to establish trust with its clients. This issue, as it appears on the surface, is enough for me to deem Noble Poker untrustworthy.

Will you please clarify the situation? Thank you.

yes. I don't agree with that at all, I was just stating that it is in the agreement. I believe they should take back the bonus amount and that is all. It is ridiculous for them to say that all the money you won was from using the bonus dollars but if it is the agreement, you must abide by it. Good luck with your money.

This is scary stuff. I got an email message from Noble Poker saying they deposited $50 into my account as a way of thanking me for making my first deposit via neteller. Oh, and by the way, they say:

"Please note that you must have earned at least 6 marketing raked hands for each one $/�/� of bonus money that you receive to make your next withdrawal"

I did not request or approve of any such bonus and now they are freezing my money until I've played 600 marketing raked hands!!!

BTW, the SnG promotion is a rip-off as the players are funding the $1M prize because they have to pay a $2 fee for the $10 SnG's that qualify for this prize. The regular $10 SnG's have a $1 fee.

It's impressive that a rep posted here to try to clear up the situation, but I agree that it's a little shady to lock up a persons entire account until they clear their bonus money.

If I put in $100 and get $10 in bonus money, if I don't play a single hand I should be able to withdraw my $100. However, if they do make this evident then we don't have much to complain about.

If you have winnings, I'd think it'd be fair for them to lock up a percent of your winnings where the percent is :

bonus money granted / real money deposited.

So if I put in $100 and got $10 in bonus money, then went on to win $1000 on their site; they should be able to lock up $110, which is the amount I won "using" their bonus money, plus the bonus money itself.

Anyway, good luck all on getting your withdrawals; I don't think noble is really trying to scam here; I think they just have an awkward policy.

GL!
Bill

No, they should not be able to lock up a percentage of your winnings because you have bonus in your account. This is not a staking deal. They certainly are not going to pay for a percentage of your losses!

In my case, they deposited $50 bonus into my account without asking about it. I only noticed their email a couple of days later.

I will be withdrawing my money as quickly as I can and will not play there again until they have established themselves as reputable.

Why don't they just give you the bonus AFTER you play the raked hands necessary to earn the bonus? Am I missing something here? Isn't that what stars does? I would be sooo fing pissed if the locked up my money because the put $10 I didn't earn or ask for into the account.

I can't believe Noblepoker, they go from hilarious to sublime. When Brian posted in this thread that you had to fax in your license and credit card, I sort of ignored it, I read it quickly and thought it was a joke. I was wrong.

When I signed up, I paid via credit card. Then I tried to withdraw via Neteller, but it wouldn't let me without depositing via Neteller first, so okay, I put some cash in via Neteller. Then when I tried to withdraw (after the other hurdles they set up including 2-3 day waits between any of their arbitrary processes... "ok you have made a withdrawal request! wait 2-3 days. Okay, we're processing it! Wait 2-3 days for this. Okay we just need you to complete these erquirements", etc.).

They said "okay but you need to fax or send us a copy of your driver's license and credit card". This is of course exactly what you want to send to a business that is shady even by the standards of an online gambling website. In fact if you ask your credit card issuer or anyone who knows anything about identity theft they will say "YES!! Fax this info to them!! Also stab your own eyes with forks!!".

So, I wrote to the Noble employee who posted here earlier (best self-sabotage post by a business ever btw, nice communications rep), and he said "If you want to complain on PocketFives that Noble Poker is too security conscious, so be it". Once again not addressing the situation, but worrying about what people on pocketfives think. So I will complain, good idea Ellis! My complaint is this: Even if faxing them your ID was a remotely reasonable security check or good idea in some cases (it isn't), making someone do it to withdraw via Neteller after they have deposited that way is FUCKING RETARDED. Are there any cases on record of people breaking into someone's online poker account, depositing money through a completely traceable method, and then withdrawing money later? Does this make any sense??

I contend that if you were running a money-losing shady online gambling site and you desperately didn't want people to withdraw money from it, you could not follow a better example than the 100 hurdles that Noble puts up to stop people from getting their money out. The only way you could make it harder for people to withdraw would be to flat out say "we just aren't giving your money back", but even that would be less effective long term.