Winning Poker Players Penalized At Victor Chandler

Rakeback offers have been illegal on the iPoker network for some time, although it didn’t deter various ‘skins’ offering deals in order to undercut their competition and take away their custom. This illegal practice may have resulted in an influx of players to those sites, but often their new clients were’sharks’ looking to maximize their winning profit margins.
The net result has been that many casual and probably losing players, have left the site as the play becomes tighter and less fun, while the profitability of the poker sites in general continue to dwindle.
In order to counter the rake wars which have been raging on the iPoker network network for some time, iPoker suspended or penalized offending sites, but to little or no overall effect.  In a new policy, iPoker has started fining skins where the sum of all withdrawals by players is larger than the sum of all deposits on the site. In other words, by forcing the skins to concentrate on attracting casual, typically losing players to their sites, the network believes that they have now found a way to effectively enforce their no rake back policy.
As the new year begins, already several players on Victor Chandler have received an e-mail from the site, restricting their access to cash games and effectively penalizing them for winning to much money. The e-mails read: 
“If you are not already aware, iPoker will be implementing a new policy in the New Year which will categorize players depending upon certain criteria. The new policy will impose penalties on card rooms that in essence have a high proportion of winning players in relation to losing players.”
“Regrettably, we are being forced to restrict a number of accounts in order to comply with the new policy and to avoid penalization by iPoker and it grieves me to inform you that we have no option for the time being other than to restrict the cash game stakes at which you play on Victor Chandler Poker.”
“In the meantime, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience that this action will cause but know that you can still play in tournaments and on any other of the Victor Chandler suite or products.”
It is unlikely this outcome was anticipated by iPoker when they introduced their policy as it does have the effect of marginalising winning, regular customers at a particular site, as well as penalizing those players who have worked hard and succeeded at  improving their poker game. However, whether the end result will be a more attractive and fun site to play at remains to be seen as the first batch of e-mails are sent out in 2010.