Joined: Mar '11
Location: Canada
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 1490
Came across a thread just now on 2+2 that was posted by "FtDoug". Anyone who's active in any poker forum will recognize FTDoug as the official representative of FT in the forums. Anyways, since I can't post the link to 2+2, I'll just repost what he posted there. Apologize if this breaches any copyright, but links aren't allowed so this will have to suffice:
Hi all,
My name is Shyam Markus, and I'm the Poker Room Manager at Full Tilt Poker. I'm here in this thread to answer poker room related questions and give updates on our progress as we prepare for relaunch. Before I get to those questions, I first need to address the fact that I was also FTPDoug.
I've been with the company since late 2005. In mid-2006, shortly after we all moved to Dublin, my co-worker and I (both having similar, Poker Room related jobs) thought it would be a good idea to answer questions on 2+2 and give some more details about what was in each update. He created the "FTPDoug" account and I tagged along. He wrote I think 3-5 of the very early "FTP Answers" posts, but quickly left those posts to me and since late 2006 nobody wrote an "FTP Answers" post except for me.
The co-worker did continue to write a few of the shorter non-"Answers" posts, and responded to some PMs and emails as Doug. After he left the company in the summer of 2008 (and certainly his leaving is where people like Nat Arem and Bill Rini got the idea that the "original" Doug left the company), nobody wrote anything as Doug other than me.
After Black Friday, I was asked to post all of the "official" statements about the situation. I want to make it clear that even though I didn't write most of what was posted in those statements, I never posted anything I believed at the time to be untrue. It was devastating when I eventually found out that the company didn't have the funds to cover player balances and I'm truly sorry for anything I posted that turned out to not be true.
Let me also say how terrible I feel and how sorry I am about how difficult the past 15+ months have been to so many players. I'm very thankful to PokerStars for giving players what was likely the most positive resolution possible to this ordeal. On a personal note, I'm also very thankful to them for the opportunity to continue on as the Poker Room Manager of Full Tilt Poker. Hopefully their confidence in me gives all of you a little more confidence that I'm still here for the right reasons.
I am committed to being as open and transparent as possible, and nobody will be posting from this 2+2 account or tweeting from @FTPMarkus other than me.
With that said, let's see what questions there are than I can try to answer:
1. When will we be able to log into the Full Tilt Software?
- We're all working hard on getting everything up and running, but we've lost a lot of great employees over the last year and there's a ton of work left to do. Now that the transaction is complete (the official closing date is today), we will definitely relaunch within the next 90 days, but we're probably looking at late October or early November.
2. Anything going to change with existing rakeback accounts?
- The decision has been left to the Marketing and Poker Room departments at Full Tilt Poker, and all of the issues will be considered before a final direction is chosen.
3. Will we be allowed screenname changes?
- At the moment there are no plans to adjust this policy, so Player IDs will not be changing.
4. What happens to all the screen names for US players? Are they recycled? Will players be forced to use them again once you re-enter the US market?
- US players will still be able to log in and play for play money, so their account details won't be changing at all. That means all the Player IDs will be kept.
5. What are your plans on handling FTP points/Ironman medals/loyalty rewards for former US players?
- Generally speaking, US players should only have cash and points in their accounts at this point (Iron Man medals were already converted to FTPs). As we now know, they will have to go through the remission process to claim the cash. I don't have an answer for what will happen to the FTPs.
6. If I'm an American player and fail to apply with the DOJ for remission, will my Full Tilt account balance remain intact if the day comes when Full Tilt is able to operate in America?
- No, you have to go through the remission process.
7. Will FTP have € accounts as well?
- We had planned on bringing out this feature (the option to keep your account balance in other currencies) last year, and we are still planning on it. I don't have any kind of timeline (it's a little difficult to see past the current 90 day deadline at the moment), but I'm confident it will happen.
8. Any plans on bringing back the Full Tilt Poker forums?
- I believe so. It's likely it won't be back up before the site itself is up and running, though.
9. What about the FTP store... I know that most of us had enough FTPs to buy stuff from there and they had some cool stuff, so was just wondering about the store as well.
- The details of exactly what will be available in the FTP store immediately on relaunch are still being worked out, but there will be a store at relaunch.
10. Will FTP open up as .eu thus making it tax-free in a country like Sweden/Finland like PS did?
- We are working on getting a .eu site up and running as soon as possible. We don't know yet if it will be ready in time for the relaunch, but it's definitely coming.
11. What about my FTOPS jacket I have been waiting on for 15 months. Any chance I will receive this in the near future?
- I hope we can clear up these kinds of issues shortly after relaunch. So maybe towards the end of the year if no other issues pop up.
12. What about FTP promotions? There were daily happy hours, 0-deposit midyear and endyear bonus on FTP, frequent rush weeks, etc. Does Stars taking over spell the likely end of promotions on FTP?
13. Immediately before AGCC pulled the plug, a lot of us were in the middle of clearing the mid-year bonus for which we played consistently 6 months before that.
- The mid-year bonus hadn't been awarded yet (it's based on your Iron Man participation for the first 6 months of the year, and June wasn't over when the site went down). But yes, there will be a satisfactory resolution to the mid-year bonus issue.
14. What will happen to active bonuses? I had just bought the 1.1million FTP's 5000$ bonus with about 3500$ remaining to be cleared.
- If you purchased a bonus and hadn't finished clearing it, you will be refunded your FTPs (on a pro-rated basis depending on how much was left to clear) before we relaunch.
15. What will happen regarding Full Tilt Pros?
- The Full Tilt Marketing department is working on this, and no final decisions have been made yet.
16. Will there be cool promotions like 're-deposit bonuses' to account for the long closure?
- Yes, it's safe to say you can expect some promotions right out of the gate. Of course, I hope there will be cool promotions all the time on Full Tilt Poker.
I've seen a number of posts assuming that since PokerStars does something some way that now FTP will necessarily do it the same way. This isn't the case. The Full Tilt Poker site will be managed separately from PokerStars and the offerings and experience will continue to be unique to the online poker world.
That's it for now. I'll come back and give updates as often as I can. I may not have a ton of great answers for the next few weeks as we try to get everything figured out and moving again, but we're all very excited to be coming back to life and look forward to what's to come.
While it's good to get some concrete answers, a few questions were left half answered and concern me. Mainly what will happen with RB deals, and accumulated points. Since the deal was announced, neither of these questions have been answered directly, and to me these are probably the 2 most important questions excluding how/when we'll get our money.
Personally, if they don't honour existing RB deals and ALL points, I won't be returning to FT. It'll be nice to see my money again, but shafting us regarding points and RB would be completely inexcusable.
Edited by retribution (10 August 2012 @ 07:01 GMT)
Joined: May '08
Location: Lithuania
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 10090
well this pretty much confirms what i expected- full tilt will be run in a separate way to pokerstars, there is no reason to have two poker room who operate in same way, so we can expect titl to remain unique and retain most of the promotions/bonuses which differentiate them from pokerstars
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Portugal
Age: 44 (M)
Posts: 4827
Some answers are starting to be given, and for what i’ve read, we can all be sure this are like oficial answers. The idea seems to be keeping everything as it was before it went down, although each thing will take place step by step. I guess there shouldn’t be many players who can remember of the number of FTP they had, but, in those cases, they will just have to trust the new FT owner will keep everything as it was. If it’s this way, it seems the best.
