From the “any news is better than no news” files, there has been some recent activity on the Full Tilt Poker cashout front. While customers from the United States still have not received their funds from the world’s second largest online poker room, Full Tilt has overcome its inertia and has taken what look to be baby steps in making their American players whole.
To reiterate, Full Tilt has not sent any money to U.S. players, but it does appear that the company is consolidating player funds and rewards in preparation for eventual cashouts. On Friday morning, players in the States began reporting that long-awaited rakeback payments were appearing in their accounts. Arguably the rakeback program most coveted by U.S. poker players because of the high availability of games prior to April 15th (“Black Friday“), it gave customers a refund of 27 percent of their cash game rake and tournament entry fees as a weekly lump sum, deposited directly into their Full Tilt Poker accounts. After Black Friday, rakeback transactions stopped, and there was real fear in the online poker community that neither the players nor the rakeback affiliates through which they signed up for the deals would receive the money they earned. Fortunately, it looks like those fears have been partially laid to rest with the recent payment of rakeback earnings, even if they haven’t quite found their way into U.S. bank accounts yet.
Also on Friday, Full Tilt began converting various player rewards and tickets into cash and moving said cash into players’ poker accounts. In an update on its website, Full Tilt Poker detailed how everything would work, explaining that all tournament tickets, tournament dollars, and cash game tickets purchased on or before April 15th would be converted into real money on a dollar-for-dollar basis. This includes any ring game tickets that expired after April 15th. Tickets of any kind purchased after April 15th would simply be refunded for their entire amount. At this point, all U.S. customers should have seen all of the converted funds moved into their accounts, as Full Tilt said this will have been completed by Sunday, May 22nd.
Iron Man medals are being converted into Full Tilt Points at the rate of 50 points per medal, while Academy credits are being converted into points on a one-for-one basis. Full Tilt does plan to re-open its points store to U.S. customers at some point in the future so that points can be spent.
Additionally, all Iron Man and Black Card statuses will be frozen in time in case U.S. players are able to return to Full Tilt some day.
As for when players will actually receive real money via check or bank transfer, that is still up in the air. Despite the latest activity, Full Tilt’s statement on cashouts remains the same:
“Since April 15th and the days immediately following, Full Tilt Poker faced numerous challenges and hurdles to ensuring the smooth operation of its international business and the orderly return of US player funds. FTP has worked tirelessly to address these issues and has made significant progress on both fronts. FTP’s international business operations are returning to normal while we focus on ensuring the safe and orderly return of US player funds. We are absolutely committed to making sure that US players are refunded as soon as possible. We apologize for the delay and the fact that we underestimated the time it would take to work through these issues. We will update our US players when we have more specific information to provide.”
Needless to say, players are extremely frustrated, especially those who have substantial sums of money (read: thousands or tens of thousands of dollars) in limbo. Compounding the frustration is the relative speed with which Full Tilt’s primary competitor, PokerStars, allowed United States players to withdraw their funds. PokerStars began allowing players to cashout on April 26th, less than two weeks after Black Friday, and most people who requested an electronic transfer received their funds in their bank accounts within 72 hours. Absolute Poker and UB have yet to distribute player funds.
Have $3000 stuck in acount with no answers
im a pretty avid gambler and i won about $7,000 on full tilt. i also spent about $4,500 to win $7,000. they sent me wire transfers about 4-5 times for roughly $3,000 but they never took any of the $4,500 out of my bank account. i was just wondering if anybody knows if they’re gonna give me the $3,300 they owe me or not cause they never charged me ever for the $4,500. it sounds stupid cause i actually owe them about 1,200 in the diffence but every website i have looked at says they cant charge U.S. citizings for money they haven’t already taken. i was just wondering if they are gonna send me the $3,300 it says is in my account because they can’t charge me for the $4,500 they never took out.
for those of you waiting for your rakeback payments….in the meantime, play on the rake free sites. Thats what I’m doing…all you got to do is type in rake free in google and you’ll get the top sites lol
Travis, how did they let you play without taking your money? To the tune of $4500. How does a shop extend that much credit?
Jeff, I thought all the no rakes have little action? Not enough fish to feed on?
bordy22, no dude you’d be surprised! betraiser is one of my ultimate favs…never heard of it until couple of weeks ago.
they just never took money im not sure. i know of 3 other people that they never took there’s either.
TravisW, they did that to me once. Took them months to withdraw money from my account. Called it a banking error. Who know if they will ever take it now. I suggest you close that account and open a new one.
hi
surely if you deposited $4,500 that was never taken from your account
which you ran up to $7,000
and they have paid you out $3,000
then they dont owe you a single penny
you actually owe them $500
I would be grateful that you have got out with not only your money (because it never left your bank account) + the profit you legimately earnt playing + $500 in over payments to you in the event of not taking your deposit
Not really sure how you can think they owe you money
or do you mean – will they be daft enough to rip themselves off for the money that “seems” to be my account balance but actually isnt ?
hopefully not and I think this is partly (only partly) why sorting out actual really owed balances is taking so long … factor in the possibility that this is more widespread “crediting and bankrolling” of accounts over a longer period of time and that even some of the big name pro’s and red tags may have been playing on money that wasnt actually taken from their accounts and alledgedly that discrepency runs to around $60m …
so I’m pretty sure they dont want to payout money to the tune of $60m that they actually dont owe anyone