Microgaming poker scandal: licensee in liquidation, and poker players abandoned and owed $5.3M

[BetCheckBet]

Unfortunately I was and still am involved in this. Awaiting 5 figures and will be lucky to see 10% of it nearly 4 years later.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...d-5-3m-452491/

[Dan Druff]

Unfortunately I was and still am involved in this. Awaiting 5 figures and will be lucky to see 10% of it nearly 4 years later.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...d-5-3m-452491/

Interesting story.

Cliffs of 2+2 thread:

-Microgaming Poker encourages new skins to use its white label company, TUSK Investment Corp, to handle player funds.

-February 2008, Microgaming revokes TUSK’s license and TUSK announces insolvency. A liquidation firm is appointed to handle the dismantling of TUSK.

-28 poker rooms handled by TUSK including Battlefield Poker and Red Nines poker are immediately frozen and no one has been able to move money since.

-All player money and skin sites’ money is immediately frozen and remains unattainable.

-Microgaming says nothing to anyone, not the players, skin owners, or liquidators.

-Their ONE response was to a player (bigt2k4) in response to proposed legal action in which they denied any responsibility.

-Finally after a year, the liquidators report that TUSK has enough money left to reimburse players only 15% of their Microgaming account balances.

-These players were Microgaming customers, and through their silence, Microgaming has made it clear they have no intention of reimbursing their players the approximate $5 million that they will lose

================================================== =====================================


I feel bad that you're in this situation.

The whole "skin" thing has always been tricky, and many people have lost money as a result.

Sadly, many networks are happy to collect their percentage of rake from the skins which do all of the marketing work, but they hang their players out to dry when the skin ultimately fails.

These networks figure they can get away with it because most players don't understand the whole network/skin concept, and simply think they're dealing directly with the site they're playing on. In reality, a lot of these skins are/were 1-man operations.

The OnGame network used to have very low standards for which skins they would allow to join, and tons of people got screwed for huge balances (5 and 6 figures). This happened time and time again, but OnGame emerged unscathed. They always just referred you back to the skin and told you it wasn't their problem. I even had a friend offer to dump chips to me from an OnGame skin that wasn't paying, over to my skin that was, in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds. We never ended up doing it because this person miraculously got their money eventually. But most others on bad skins weren't so lucky. Many, many Ongame skins went down, and everyone on those skins lost their money completely.

Personally I feel that any network that doesn't both hold the money centrally and take some degree of responsibility for its skins should be boycotted.

After all, skins are simply glorified affiliate programs, and the real poker play is taking place on the network. For Microgaming to deny the affected players their money, especially given how they're still doing semi-brisk business, is unbelievable.

[Rollo Tomasi]

# Site/Network US Last Update Players Online Cash Players 24 Hr Peak 7 Day Avg
1
PokerStars • reviews Mar 4 10:13 PM 171563 12189 43846 25800
2
PartyPoker • reviews Mar 410:11 PM 5737 1555 8518 4800
3
iPoker* • reviews • $2000 bonus Mar 4 10:12 PM 3596 1344 6557 4100
4
888Poker • reviews Mar 4 10:13 PM 1027 3963 2600
5
Ongame • reviews Mar 1 11:28 PM 893 4844 2150
6
PokerStars.it** • reviews Mar 4 10:12 PM 28994 163 3529 2150
7
Winamax.fr** • reviews Mar 4 10:05 PM 1220 391 4155 2050
8
Merge • reviews Mar 4 10:14 PM 2157 2828 1780
9
PokerStars.fr** • reviews Mar 4 10:10 PM 29389 322 2789 1520
10
Microgaming** • reviews Mar 4 10:11 PM 8164 336 2596 1460


amazing Microgaming still in business let a lone 10th busiest online site


http://www.pokerscout.com/

[BetCheckBet]

Well my estimate was right. Liquidators have announed they will pay 13-16%.... Five years later....

[BeerAndPoker]

http://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-room...st-fold-06-06/

No more traditional heads up games on the microgaming network as they are replacing them with a fast fold format with a maximum of 8 players in the pool.