[vinylweatherman]

Originally Posted by GrandVirtualCS

Hi all,

Sorry for not posting our answer to this thread earlier.

In any case, I will try to give you as much background information on this case as possible. My post may be a bit lengthy but if you get bored, you can simply scroll down to the end where you will find the solution we are offering to the players affected by this PTR change :-)

In December, we ran a promotion called 12 Days of Christmas, which offered a series of large, exciting bonus awards and prize drawings. This promotion generated huge response from players. However, there was a subset of players who took advantage of the Play-Through-Requirements to win substantial sums off these promotional bonuses.

For the benefit of our players, we decided to allow the promotion to complete, as advertised. Although 99% of our players completed their bonuses within 5 days of their deposit, we allowed a grace period of three weeks for the Christmas bonuses to play through, and then proceeded to change our playthrough policy to exclude the microstakes blackjack games.

Changing our PTR policy to exclude these games allows us to continue to offer exciting bonus offers to all of our players. Otherwise, we would have to restrict bonus offers for everyone due to the exploitive behavior of only a few people.

We believe that a small number of players were still playing through a bonus at the time of the change. Some of these players may have wished to play through using the microstakes blackjack games. Although this change was permitted under our terms and conditions, we fully understand that these players are not happy with it and we want to treat them fairly.

Unfortunately, our bonus system is extremely complex and we weren’t able to find a way to allow players with open bonuses to play through under the old rules or to remove the remaining PTR for them. Instead, we will offer a no-deposit bonus with a 10x wager requirement based on their bonus balance on the day when the rules were changed. This compensatory bonus will be played through under our current terms. Since no deposit is required and the wager requirement is 33% lower, this will greatly increase the players’ chance of winning and compensate them adequately for the change.

The bonus amount will be based on the player’s bonus balance as of January 16th when the microstakes blackjack games became excluded. To be eligible, players must have:
- An account in good standing with us. Banned accounts will not be eligible; restricted and held accounts must verify identity and payment methods to become eligible.
- Redeemed at least one bonus between November 29, 2007 and January 16, 2008
- Had an open bonus balance at end of day on January 16, 2008

If you believe that our policy change adversely impacted your play, please contact our customer support for assistance or contact me directly by PM. I will do my best to answer all of you as quickly as possible.

And of course, good luck to all at the Grand Virtual properties!

Thought as much

Was this a cashable bonus then, or was this just a case of one $2000 bet, followed by a grind at microstakes blackjack.
I am surprised this made it into general release, I didn't think there were any casino operators unaware of these strategies, and most places now ban any game with a roughly 50/50 bet, either entirely, or with rules that prohibit huge starting bets to gain leverage with bonus monies.
If there was a whole series of such large bonuses, this no doubt came to the attention of the bonus whoring forums, and resulted in the arrival of this "subset of players".
Even with this rule change, it would be worth having a casino mathematician go through the new rules in case there is another weakness ready to be exploited next Christmas.

To avoid accusations of "retrospective changes", was there a provision that specified the bonus WR had to be completed in a specific timeframe, such as the end of December? If so, the allegation of "retrospective change" fails, if the rules changed during a period of grace in excess of the end date of the requirement to finish WR.