Joined: Jan '10
Location: Romania
Age: 48 (M)
Posts: 54
PokerStars to Purchase Full Tilt Poker, Players to be Repaid August 01, 2012
Huge news if you have money stuck on Full Tilt Poker! On Tuesday, PokerStars and the U.S. Department of Justice announced that they had come to terms on a settlement of civil charges related to the Black Friday indictments.
As part of the agreement, PokerStars will forfeit a large sum of money to the U.S. government, which will be responsible for repaying U.S. players. Non-US players will be paid in full by PokerStars some time over the next four months.
Key Points of the Deal
The following is a summary of notable points of Tuesday's agreement. PokerStars will pay $731 million to settle the U.S. government civil charges Of the amount paid, $547 million will be forfeited to the U.S. government and $184 million will go to paying non-US players 100% of their balances within 100 days U.S. players will be able to apply for reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Justice at a time TBA PokerStars will reopen Full Tilt Poker as a separate brand within 90 days Full Tilt Poker will not reopen in regulated markets in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Italy, Spain Isai Scheinberg, founder of PokerStars, will step down from his executive position at PokerStars PokerStars does not admit any wrongdoing and is able to apply for licenses in the United States on a federal and state level. This does mean that they will receive a license, but they are not forbidden by the DOJ to seek a license. The criminal charges related to Poker Stars and Full Tilt are not impacted by this deal
We will be sure to update players with any relevant news related to this developing story.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
731 million. WOW The thing that made me wonder though is how much of that 547 million is owed to the players in US. 184 for the rest of the world, so for sure DOJ got a nice piece of the pie.
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
the most important thing in this story is that i will get my $0.23 back, the rest is utterly useless i believe i am gonna withdraw this amount and invest them in stocks or bonds- on my way to becoming a millionaire for sure...thanks pokerstars i think i will forget all those bad beats for now at least
Joined: Feb '08
Location: United Kingdom
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 1886
This is great news for the players at full tilt who have lost funds but I don't really understand what pokerstars gains from this. After all this time surely any benefit from fulltilt's brand image, reputation and customer base will be lost and that's an awful lot of money to pay for a name and interface. Sure they will get a lot of customers who will be intrigued but I'd have thought many will just get their money and take it to whatever site they moved on to. Even those whose favourite poker site was once full tilt will surely be sceptic with a new team in charge and the site will practically start from scratch, which the pokerstars owners could just do anyway. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what motivation pokerstars has to repay full tilt debts?
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
Posted by awood88: This is great news for the players at full tilt who have lost funds but I don't really understand what pokerstars gains from this. After all this time surely any benefit from fulltilt's brand image, reputation and customer base will be lost and that's an awful lot of money to pay for a name and interface. Sure they will get a lot of customers who will be intrigued but I'd have thought many will just get their money and take it to whatever site they moved on to. Even those whose favourite poker site was once full tilt will surely be sceptic with a new team in charge and the site will practically start from scratch, which the pokerstars owners could just do anyway. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what motivation pokerstars has to repay full tilt debts?
i also had a few thought about this, and to be fair i am not very sure this is a good deal at all. first of all even if full tilt regains it's second spot based on amount of players- still most of the players are gonna have accounts on stars and on tilt anyway. the only reason i can see why stars are buying tilt is for taking away customers from other platforms, attracting new players- but doing this differently than at stars- pokerstars have a reputation to keep, and i a way they are prisoners of their own image, reputation- so with full tilt they could try different methods of gaining more players, maybe trying some skeptical ideas etc. this way if the idea turns out a loser, the main business (stars) is protected...maybe someone can add any more ideas?
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
This is definately a great news for so many poker players out there and especially for those that liked FTP more than any other poker platform out there...
Now lets hope that pokerstars will keep up all the promotions that were available on full tilt poker
Joined: Feb '12
Location: New Zealand
Age: 53 (M)
Posts: 145
Posted by awood88: This is great news for the players at full tilt who have lost funds but I don't really understand what pokerstars gains from this. After all this time surely any benefit from fulltilt's brand image, reputation and customer base will be lost and that's an awful lot of money to pay for a name and interface. Sure they will get a lot of customers who will be intrigued but I'd have thought many will just get their money and take it to whatever site they moved on to. Even those whose favourite poker site was once full tilt will surely be sceptic with a new team in charge and the site will practically start from scratch, which the pokerstars owners could just do anyway. Does anyone have any thoughts as to what motivation pokerstars has to repay full tilt debts?
One thing i can see is the USA market Before BF there was 100000+ Bronze VIP's (paying customer's) playing in Freerolls,real money (on PS) player's, as i said in post http://www.bankrollmob.com/forum.asp?mode=thread&id... post#19 , not forgetting FT. Too get in USA market, this is good move by PS as the can show DOJ(USA) that they trust worthy and are playing by rulz,and its good in way for whole poker community!?, As its global game now?(should be Olympic game
Edited by 0HighTimes0 (03 August 2012 @ 10:23 GMT)
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
90 days to open the room, but four months to get the Money, it’s strange. And there’s something that is still not very well explained: how will players get the Money? Will the room open again and the Money will be available on the poker acount to be withdrawn, or will the payment be done by another way? In some cases, i bet they have the bank acount reference from the players, but there must be a large number that never withdraw Money from there. How will it be in those cases? In about 90 days i must have answers to all this.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
I had made the deposit to Full Tilt through Moneybookers, which stopped working at the end So they will have to resolve many issues before coming back online, cause at that point, unless you can change a cash out method withouth depositing any further,will be ok. If they ask for the usual deposit, many players will go nuts lol