Win Cake (formerly Cake Poker) folds

[Dan Druff]

http://www.safestpokersites.com/blog/win-cake-closed/

Cake Poker was created in 2006, and gained momentum in 2007. Though it was buggy with terrible software, it was still rapidly growing. I played on there a lot in 2007, and an (unfortunately) memorable experience there.

It started off great. A major fish won a $75k "gold card" contest, and then proceeded to sit in 50-100 limit holdem. I was the huge winner in that game -- pulling off a staggering 62k win against this guy and a few other pros in 3-5 handed games over a 2-day period. I both ran well and played this fish perfectly (who was beyond awful). The 62k win (1240 big blinds) was my biggest 2-day cash win in big blinds (by a wide margin) and was almost my biggest 2-day cash win at any game.

The situation turned ugly when the fish was sure I was part of a Jewish conspiracy to cheat him (seriously), and he was even more convinced when I typed things like "HEBREW POWER" after he was ranting about Jews following losing pots. He didn't know who I was or that I was actually Jewish, but was ranting against Jews nonetheless.

The fish accused me of colluding with another pro in the game -- charges which were completely false.

The idiot security guy "Tony" believed the fish, and informed me that my account was closed and my $46k balance would be confiscated. He refused to provide any evidence that I was actually cheating. Amazingly he reversed course, but only after I threatened that I would expose this situation via neverwinpoker (a forum I was heavily involved with at the time).

So back to the present...

Cake went downhill and eventually had problems paying people. In 2013, they split into 2 parts -- Win Cake for non-US players, and Juicy Stakes for US players.

Both have failed.

Win Cake has now folded into a different skin on the Revolution Network. Euro Club Poker has made this offer, according to the article:

Win Cake players outside the UK were offered a starting bankroll of 10-20% of their balance at Juicy Stakes. Players that accept the offer will receive a 55% rakeback deal and must rake 150% of their Win Cake balance to receive it as a cash withdrawal. Players that accept a bailout from Juicy Stakes will lose Gold Cards and Gold Chips.

That's pretty lousy.

I really hate these poker networks where the skins hold their own funds. That's just asking for trouble. Revolution is one of those networks, apparently.

[HowQuaint]

I remember playing you on Cake back then. Hell, I'm fairly certain that is how I met you! We used to chat on ICQ haha! I crushed those games for a few hundred grand myself. Good times those were


With regard to the network, it has been renamed "Horizon Network" by the new owners. That link you posted still calls it Revolution, which is no longer the case. I'm sure it was re-branded in order to distance itself from the previous owners.


On the insider scoop, the owners of Cake never wanted to screw people, they just made some crappy business decisions and got hosed for multiple millions of dollars on multiple occasions. Doyle's Room and Lock come to mind. I think this is evidenced by them still trying to bring in new business, not in terms of players, but in terms of renting out their network infrastructure and software client to other networks in an attempt to recoup money and pay their outstanding bills. Unfortunately, it failed.


If anyone out there is a Cake player and offered a buyout from EuroPoker, I highly suggest you take that offer up. I'm 99.99% certain it's your only chance to recover your funds from Cake Poker.

[FRANKRIZZO]

People should definitely be careful in joining sites that have accepted bankrupted poker networks along with those balances and allow players to rake substantial amounts in order to be able to cash out funds from sites they took over. I was thinking about juicy but had bad history of payments from the outset. Lot of information out there these days but caveat emptor is key.

[Sidewinder]

What is the name of the network Sportsbook.com is on?

For some reason I thought they owned cake?

[chinamaniac]

What is the name of the network Sportsbook.com is on?

For some reason I thought they owned cake?

They used to be on the cake network way back I believe. Now they are on the merge network

[Dan Druff]

HowQuaint, yes, it was on Cake where we got to know each other. I remember you even made a name on there which was a parody of the one I was using at the time. On Cake, you could change your screen name once per week (though notes on you would stay constant, so it was important to note everyone!)

I was "Herbal Tea" for some time, and you became "Herbal Pee", which I'm sure you remember.

For some time, I was "Jim Rockford" there, and I typed, "This is Jim Rockford, please leave a message at the tone, I'll get back to you" whenever I won a pot. Some people got really tilted by that (which is why I was doing it).

At one point I had that idiot PokerBob following me around there, and repeatedly trolling me, even when he wasn't playing. He would mostly just sit out, not play,and talk shit whenever I was running bad. He also wouldn't tell me who he was, until I figured it out myself. (He usually played as ElliottSmith, but shouldn't be confused as the 2+2 poster by the same name.)

Fun times.

Anyway, back to the current situation.

I believe that Cake did try in earnest to succeed. They weren't quite the scam that Lock Poker was, which was shady from jump street. But Cake was very dishonest about their financial viability, basically accepting deposits from people who had no idea that cashouts were taking 4-5 months at the time. Any site which does that is still highly unethical in my book.

[Crowe Diddly]

between cake and juicy stakes, i must have ended up with at least 8 accts on those sites, as every time a smaller skin would fail, they'd move the account to cake or JS.