I went to play that and had the same reaction. $1,000 FR down to $50 and now gone. $400/day = about $150K/yr and I have no idea how much of their profit that represents.
It is a form of advertising and magnet when many sites lack any free real money games. The "playthrough" requirement is high enough to keep a lot on site which increases real money traffic, which should increase rake and reduce some of the $150K payout.
I would not be surprised to see Carbon disappear over the next 24 months.
Reducing freeroll's or at least changing them seems to be something happening accross the board these days, FTP made drastic changes to theirs now from what I read here carbon has removed theirs and I know BCP changed their 50$ i think it was to the new 10$ on demand so more freerolls but less payout for just as much time as would have to put into the 50$ one's. The
ipoker sites are geared towards new within last 90 day signup players.
So are all of these places going to go tits up as well, I mean carbon is probably the largest of the us facing sites remaining along with bovada (which doesn't really even have freerolls) so the fact that a site doesn't have freerolls doesn't mean they are going to vanish. Sure it sucks for those of us who are trying to grind freerolls for bankrolls builders/starters but overall it will generally get people to deposit or just move on to the sites that do still offer freerolls which is ultimately driving away traffic, but not the traffic that is essentially making the site money.
Just my thoughts, and being I am a freeroller these days (again
) this does suck but hard to say the site is going to go away in two years. Also I think the
poker sites also probably see that forums etc offer up freerolls and so maybe they think why should they when someone else will just pick up the pace and still drive traffic to their sites in one way or another.