Tag: cashouts

Black Friday 2 Weeks Later

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It’s been 2 weeks since the online poker world was shocked by the indictments handed down by the US DoJ on four of the largest online poker sites in the world. Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker immediately stopped allowing US players to play for real money on their websites. Absolute Poker and UB seem to have decided to ignore the DoJ and continue on almost as if nothing happened. Players on Absolute Poker and UB cannot, however, deposit or cashout at the moment.

Much has happened in the last two weeks. Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker have regained the use of their .com domains to facilitate cash outs for US based players. Pokerstars surprised many this week as they began cash outs for US players. Some have already received their bank direct transfers. Given the circumstances this is quite fast. Pokerstars still does not know how it will pay out FPP’s. Tournament Dollars and tickets are being converted into cash at 100%.

Full Tilt Poker on the other hand is having major banking issues not only for it’s US based poker players but also for Non US players. Many European Full Tilt Poker players have been waiting well over a week for Moneybookers and Neteller withdrawals and some have even questioned if Full Tilt Poker is now bankrupt. Full Tilt Poker has issued a statement claiming that they are “Not Bankrupt”.

Meanwhile smaller poker sites have seen tremendous growth over the last couple of weeks. The Merge Poker Network with includes such poker sites as Lock Poker and Carbon Poker have led the way and even climbed into a top 10 position overall for global poker traffic. Bodog Poker is not far behind as they too have experienced growth. All in all, any poker site still accepting US players has had a spike in traffic.

Click Here for Poker Sites still Accepting US Players

 

What about our Pokerstars FPP’s

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Much to the delight of US players Pokerstars started processing withdrawals for their US customers again. Players are allowed to withdraw their balance by cheque and Pokerstars even gave 100% cash refund for all tournament tickets or tournament dollars a player had in his account. With the cash outs functional again this leaves only one issue unresolved for the US Pokerstars players. What happens with all the frequent player points (FPP’s)?

Pokerstars has one of the most rewarding VIP scheme’s in online poker awarding FPP’s for real money play. FPP’s can be used for playing tournaments, cash bonuses or buying items in the Pokerstars VIP Rewards store. The VIP store is unique because more expensive items in the VIP store have a better FPP/dollar ratio then the inexpensive options. This means a lot of players were saving their FPP’s for big purchases rather than spending them whenever they could. For some the value of saved FPP’s runs into the thousands of dollars. When the VIP store closed to US players on Black Friday many players wondered if their FPP’s should be considered lost.

A manager of Pokerstars VIP team made clear today that Pokerstars is currently working with the US government on an agreement on what can be done with FPP’s. Pokerstars aims at opening the VIP store again for all their players so FPP’s can be spend on goodies and bonuses. Nothing is certain yet so it is very well possible a different agreement will be made with the DoJ. Making the cash outs possible for US players was top priority for Pokerstars for the last two weeks. Now that cash outs are functional again resolving the FPP issue will be Pokerstars next high priority.

A lot of players are wondering if they should withdraw now or if they should wait for the FPP issue to be resolved. According to Pokerstars VIP manager it makes no difference and the choice is up to the player. The cash out option on Pokerstars will remain open and players will be able to cash out twice or as often as necessary. When making a withdrawal you do have to cash out all your funds which means you are not allowed to have a remaining balance. However, if after that you get new funds in his account from the FPP store, you are allowed to cash out that as well. But for this cash out the same rule applies, you need to withdraw your entire balance.

Holdempokerchat is impressed with the way Pokerstars has handled the events of Black Friday till so far. Of all three sites that were affected, Pokerstars has been the first to give their players access to their frozen funds and keeping their customers as first priority.