After continuing operations for more than two years despite the fact that they were not paying out players, a former employee for the besieged online poker room Lock Poker says that the website is “on the verge of collapse.”
In an interview with Pokerfuse.com’s Michael Gentile, former Lock Poker spokesperson Shane Bridges emerged from the shadows to detail out the last two years of operation by the online poker site. Gentile notes that Bridges might have an axe to grind with the company as Bridges states that he is owed back pay from the company. Despite this potential conflict of interest, Gentile says that Bridges is being truthful now in an attempt to bring information about Lock Poker to light for the poker community.
Gentile doesn’t pull any punches with Bridges, asking off the top of the interview whether the players’ money on the site is gone. “I never had access to any real financials but, with no significant movement on cash outs and promises of the ‘big turnaround’ now 12 months old, it would be my assumption that player balances won’t be honored now,” Bridges replies. Some estimates in the online poker community believe that the minimum amount of money owed to players is in the $15 million range.
When asked how an online poker site could fail to live up to their obligations to players, Bridges tells Gentile that it was overspending by management that is the main culprit. “Chief Executive Officer Jen Larson often talked about putting every penny back into the company, (but there were) obvious lifestyle spends that were getting funded somehow,” Bridges states. Bridges cites instances where $500 bottles of wine and Dom Perignon were had with business meals, first class flights and stays at high end hotels for the management of Lock Poker as major drains on the company’s resources.
Bridges held his views for quite some time, according to Gentile. “In early 2013, I thought the company had one last shot to climb back out of the hole it had put itself in,” Bridges says to Gentile in the interview. “As each month passed, I saw less and less possibility of this happening to the point that, by June or July of 2013, my belief in the company had pretty much been completely erased.”
Bridges does let the former professional players who were sponsored by Lock Poker, including World Poker Tour champions Chris Moorman and Michael Mizrachi (among others), off the hook regarding their knowledge of the financial issues at Lock Poker. “I’m not aware of anyone knowing pushing Lock Poker after they became uneasy with the situation,” Bridges states to Gentile. “Everyone had a personal level of trust and, as that eroded, they pulled out and stopped promoting it.” In 2014, Lock Poker ended any sponsorships with professional poker players and, as of today, does not have a roster of sponsored pros playing on the site.
Lock Poker hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with details as to the issues that have plagued the site. Back in 2013, Lock Poker officials withdrew a commentary thread from the Two Plus Two forums citing that “a public forum was an ineffective way for us to communicate with our players.” Instead, Lock created a private forum on the site itself, one which wasn’t accessible to the general public unless they had a Lock Poker account. Since that time, communiques from Lock Poker as to their situation have completely been silent. Add in the years-old situations regarding cash outs and many would think that Lock Poker wouldn’t have any traffic, but that hasn’t been the case.
According to PokerScout.com, players still seem to be partaking of the games on Lock Poker but definitely not at levels previously seen. PokerScout’s statistics reveal that their seven-day cash game player average is 18 players with an estimated peak of 36 players over the last 24 hours. This performance is by far the lowest for the international online poker sites that still service U. S. players, which is perhaps the reason that Lock Poker has been able to stay around as long as it has.
