I concur...It would probably be 10x worse if real money were on the line
<p>Missing the whole point here. It is real money being gambled with in the ready-gos and some tournaments.. Yet WGT does not treat it like real money, for the players, but they do for themselves. It's called Rake.
If they would do right, they would have an account for the credits in a bank in real dollars to pay out to the players, or offer merchandise at a fair market value. I for one don't think they should mark up the merchandise other than the processing and handling cost because they already get 20% on the rake.
But I do see the wisdom of using the "rake" model as used by poker sites everywhere. It's a great business model. But it's not gonna blossom like it should until they adapt the entire model. That would be payouts, and fair market value. If they ever do the right thing, they would drown in money. We Americans especially like to gamble:)
To address the cheating/sandbagging problem, well you gotta be good enough to beat them anyways. I want the program avatarlee uses :)