I stopped reading afteri saw that they dont keep players deposits segregated at lock poker
I stopped reading afteri saw that they dont keep players deposits segregated at lock poker
I like the stylesheet for this forum.
Anyway, I don't pretend to have any info that anyone else doesn't have, but I recently decided to pull my money off Carbon. This was in part because I've long felt that it's irresponsible as a consumer to give business to a site "regulated" by the KGC. I overlooked this when I first put money on there, because... well, I didn't see any other option and I wanted to play OLP. In retrospect, I think it was a bad decision. My plan now is to maybe give the casinos a try and hope that we see some kind of regulated ipoker in the US before too long.
It's not really shadiness but I'm calling shenanigans because in my small 30 game 6 max sng sample size so far, I have not started with the button yet.
There are so many skins there that it seems probable that some mtt pro's would set up new nicknames either as a superstitious 'change your luck' sort of thing or to fly under the radar of other regs. Who know's, that name could be bigdogpkt5s in a thinly veiled disguise.
Is there any proof of this?
I don't believe any of them are segregated until I see that an independent third party has verified this and continues to monitor the situation.
This might just be the thing to say nowadays after the Full Tilt debacle.
LOL @ Lock being on their own. Yet one more reason not to play there.
If their licensing body (the LGA) doesn't require this, why would a site ever do this? It's just bad policy from a business standpoint. I don't mind some leveraging by the sites, and could come up with some very good reasons for them doing so. To think that these sites are segragating 100% of player funds is wishful thinking... I still doubt PokerStars did this, Like Druff said on radio, and I have maintained since Black Friday, it was likely a case of Isai Scheiberg personally being able to cover every deposit on file.
Regardless, if the DOJ shuts them down it will be in conjunction with a massive funds seizure, which theoretically would be the supposed segragated funds on their way back to the players, causing a shortfall.
I write things about poker at my Poker Blog and elsewhere on the Internets
Steve i agree with your assumption that PS was able to cover the deposits without maintaing 100 percent segregation and knew that it just made good business sense to pay all of the US players if it had ANY hopes of continuing to be a player in the rest of the world.
My concern with a site like LOCK in particular is that i believe they make no bones about it that their funds arent segregated (could swear i read that in this thread or the scotty tilt thread)
That's the point I'm always trying to make; we have no idea about any of these sites. Not a one. I don't know if Lock segragates or doesn't (my assumption would be they don't, but I also assume no poker site does) but this is a bogeyman arguement of sorts since Black Friday; completely based on the notion that PokerStars DOES/DID segragate player funds, repaid players, and this is therefore the "correct" way to do things. #1 we don't really know they do segragate funds (it could just be semantics and Isai Scheinberg's bank account can cover all deposits) and who's to say the DOJ will allow repayment the next time or not go after these accounts????
The truth is we have no idea what they are doing with our funds, and no idea if segragation was the reason Stars repaid or not. An inquiry to ANY online poker room pre-Black Friday about your funds recevied the same message: "your funds are safe and secure at xxxx yada, yada, yada". We take all of these sites on their word.
We have track-records to compare, and PokerStars seems to getting a AAA rating based on repaying US players and this supposed account segragation, but NOBODY knows how or why PokerStars repaid and FT didn't, it's all specualtion about what might have happened. Why would PokerStars segragate 100% when they are not required to by the LGA? Can someone authenticate that this segragated account exists and that is solely used for keeping player balances?
Every business levarages funds, and to think online poker sites are doing something bad by levaraging funds is silly in my opinion. Now, if a site is levaraged the way FT was --$6 million in hand with $300 million on deposit-- than there is a serious problem, but this falls on the regualtors; and I'm sorry to report this but the regualtors SUCK. It's a case of the inmates running the asylum. These supposed regulators cannot control the online poker rooms they license and we've seen it time and time again. I wouldn't be surprised if the regulatory bodies were simply subsidaries of the online poker rooms, but even if they are "separate" they rely on the online poker rooms far more than the online poker rooms rely on them.
Everyone seems to be drawing conclusions by what happened and not looking at the causes of what happened or whether or not the policies will work in the future. PokerStars may have simply had a few hundred million laying around and figured "we still have 75% of our player base and will now have a 75% market-share instead of the 50% we had before this --not to mention we don't have to deal with the US clusterfuck anymore-- so cut the check."
If you want to play online poker you are taking risk, just like you are taking a risk selling something on Craig's List or driving into a seedy neighborhood for whatever reason. Some sites seem to have more inherent risk than others, but its really anyone's guess as to which site will be the next to fuck players.
I write things about poker at my Poker Blog and elsewhere on the Internets
I agree with most of this, except the part about poker sites leveraging funds.
There's a difference between leveraging profits and leveraging player deposits.
Player deposits absolutely, positively should NEVER be anywhere that isn't immediately liquid cash. Spending player deposits is equivalent to stealing.
As far as everything else, I agree that there's no proof that Pokerstars actually had segregated accounts, or if Isai Scheinberg just kept enough money liquid to cover a situation like Black Friday. It doesn't really matter, because the bottom line is that they were able to cover it, while the thieves at Full Tilt and UB couldn't.
As far as existing US-facing sites claiming to have segregated accounts, I find that highly doubtful unless it has been verified by a neutral third party (and is continuously verified as time passes).
I'd also be very nervous about Lock now managing their own funds (can someone post a link where this information is given?), because this company has shown the tendency to cheat people without remorse. If Lock has really separated its funds from Merge, count on them to tuck tail and run (with your money) as soon as anything unfortunate goes down.
PokerStars was and remains located and regulated in the Isle of Man. While the IoM is an offshore location, and has been the scene of a degree of shadiness historically, it is also now a major international financial centre. It is also keen to develop other businesses besides finance - one of which is gambling. Consequently, they genuinely have a reputation to protect.
In this they could not be more unlike Alderney, which is a tiny scrap of land (3 square miles, population ca. 2,000 compared with IoM's 85,000) in the English Channel which (last time I looked) does not even benefit from any direct flights or sailings to the British mainland. And long before Black Friday I heard well-qualified people suggest that Alderney is effectively used by Jersey and Guernsey as the jurisdiction of the Channel Islands gaming regulator precisely so that shady business / "light-touch regulation" is possible but there is no impact on the reputation of Jersey or Guernsey (the two biggest offshore financial centres in the world, IIRC) when things go wrong.
Anyway, this is why the IoM has a strict requirement in its gaming regulations that deposits be kept in separate accounts, and Alderney doesn't.
Just announced that merge network has pulled approval from Lock Poker to run the LockOps series coming up
Sorry i cant post link from my phone but im sure that most follow on twitter the relevant folks
Can we still get rakeback on BlackChipPoker? or are we stuck with the vip thing?
Thanks for this.
While I haven't seen verification of this (where was it "announced"?), I will assume for the moment that this is true.
Here are my thoughts:
LockOps is a tournament series specific to Lock Poker. Unlike everything else on Lock, which is linked to the Merge network and can be played through any skin, LockOps was only available to Lock players.
It also apparently had some nice overlays (at least as of right now) and some people were excited about the LockOps series for that reason.
One reason being thrown around for the cancellation is its conflict with the SCOOP on Pokerstars. I am not sure I believe this, because most of Lock's clientele is American, while all of Stars is comprised of non-US players.
I think there could be a few possible reasons for this cancellation:
1) Merge decided it was uncomfortable with a tournament series specific to one skin.
2) Merge was afraid that Lock would pull some shenanigans regarding the overlays, and was especially afraid of this because of the SCOOP conflict. That is, they were afraid that Lock might cancel the whole thing if the overlays were too big, and it would make Merge as a whole look bad, so they decided to preemptively kill the whole thing. This is very possibly the reason, since Lock has acted shady many times in the past, and Merge probably doesn't trust them.
3) Merge had nothing to do with this. Lock cancelled it because of the likely overlays, and blamed it on Merge. Keep in mind that Lock blamed Merge for their cheating of players regarding the Casino Bonus promotion, when in reality it was all Lock's fault.
Here is a short (as of now) 2+2 thread about it:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...ckops-1197045/
Please post more information here on the situation as it comes.
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