PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker room, announced Monday its plans to reimburse all non-U.S. players’ Full Tilt Poker funds. Along with this announcement came confirmation that PokerStars will re-launch Full Tilt in the first week of November.
There will be different processes in place to reunite players with their money depending on the country. According to PokerStars, customers in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, and Spain will required to “…’pair’ a PokerStars account with their Full Tilt account, allowing them to withdraw or use their balances on the licensed PokerStars site.”
Italy, a country with tight online gambling restrictions, is in a different boat. PokerStars is still working with Italian regulators to come up with the best method of reimbursement that also meets regulations.
All other Full Tilt customers, except those in the United States, will simply be able to login into their Full Tilt Poker accounts when the poker room rises from the ashes in November and either withdraw their funds or start playing.
The repayment plans have been anticipated since the August 9th deal with the U.S. Department of Justice in which PokerStars acquired the assets of Full Tilt Poker for $731 million. $184 million of that is being used to pay back non-U.S. players. Former Full Tilt customers in the United States will eventually be reimbursed from part of the remaining $547 million that went to the U.S. government. Unfortunately, no plans for repayment have been detailed yet. The government will be administering the process.
In August, the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) of the Southern District of New York posted a job notice on its website for a Claims Administrator. The company that takes on this role (and with an estimated 1.3 million players waiting for $159 million, it will most likely be a company and not an individual) “will obtain and evaluate information, such as financial transaction records, from claimants, and analyze information contained in user account records provided in database and other formats by Full Tilt Poker.”
Over the last couple months, Full Tilt Poker Room Manager Shyam Markus has been answering players’ questions about the Full Tilt reboot on the Two Plus Two poker forums. On the whole, it sounds like there will be no significant outward differences between the new Full Tilt and the one of old. Same software, same servers, same games, etc. Of course, ownership and management are totally different (with some holdovers, such as Markus). And, unlike with the old Full Tilt, all player balances will be kept in a segregated account. Security tokens will also be available.
Those players who cannot remember the e-mail address associated with their Full Tilt account “should” be able to manually change the address after logging in. A more serious problem is if a player remembers nothing about their login info and can’t access the associated e-mail address. Markus said that customer support will be prepared for these situations and there is a process in place to take care of the problem.
