The good thing about a lot of the speculation is that it doesn’t have much basis in actual facts. Cashouts have been very fast lately with some people reporting checks in just a few days of requesting them and almost no reports of checks taking longer than two weeks, which is a very fast turnaround for any U.S.-facing sites. Further, according to ProfessionalRakeback.com, there have not been many overlays in Poker Maximus tournaments. The no overlays is huge, because it suggests that they don’t have the money problems that sites like Lock Poker have seen over the past year. Had cashouts been significantly slower and getting worse, a move like this might be seen with more fear, but considering the opposite was actually true, it doesn’t have the shroud of uncertainty around it that was seen when Lock Poker discontinued it’s sub-forum.

Another fear is that since Carbon Poker is trying to save money by not having a sub-forum, it means that they don’t have much money, period. This also has no basis in fact as companies can decide to discontinue certain functions to save money even if they have plenty. The decision is most likely rooted in a return on investment question, which is generally more important to companies than pure dollar amounts. Merge Network has been moving toward more of a recreational model in recent weeks, and as such, Carbon Poker has followed suit. This suggests that a sub-forum on a  forum that attracts a lot of grinders and high volume players might not have much, if any, value anymore. Of course, there could be a money problem at Carbon Poker, but pointing to the removing of the sub-forum alone doesn’t actually provide much evidence to support that kind of claim.

An interesting theory that actually might have some legs, though, is that Carbon Poker is getting ready to move to a different network. The Carbon reps have appeared frustrated recently with some of the decisions that have been passed down from Merge’s top management and showed some problems in defending some of these decisions. Of course, this theory has some problems as well, considering there aren’t that many places to really move to and closing the forum wouldn’t really seem to make a lot of sense considering it was a Carbon/Aced support oriented sub-forum and not an actual Merge Network support sub-forum.  They could have moved and continued to leave it open to help ease the transition if moving was something they were considering strongly.

No matter the actual reason for the move, the theories, speculation and suggestions are going to continue to circulate and the nature in which it was pulled only leads to these rumors. Had Carbon Poker said something before making the decision, it might have done something to pacify some of the detractors, but in some ways even that was somewhat unlikely, considering the nature of the forum in recent weeks, which has seen a rise in complaints. The closing of the sub-forum is not expected to have any impact on the fields for the upcoming Main Events of the Poker Maximus series that concludes this Saturday. If more information becomes available, we will pass it along.