Minted Poker customers who have given up on ever seeing their deposits again may be able to recoup their losses. It’s not a great chance, but it’s a chance. The beleaguered online poker room announced yesterday that it is moving from the Everleaf Gaming Network to the really-never-heard-of-before Plutos Poker Network.
The Everleaf saga has been a messy one, one which has left players and skins alike disgruntled. In short: players can’t get their money off the sites. While the poker rooms are taking the public relations hit, they are pointing the finger at Everleaf Gaming Limited, which processes financial transactions for most of the poker rooms on the network. Thus, though poker rooms like Minted seem want to help their players get their funds without waiting six months (or forever), their hands are tied and their cries to Everleaf seem to fall on deaf ears.
In March, Minted Poker even went so far as to encourage its players to cash out from its site (or at least try to do so). The poker room wrote, in part:
We have tried to work with ELG’s management for several months to push the cash out delays along, in the past they have always managed to improve the situation however currently we feel it is unlikely a solution will be found.
Mintedpoker took the decision to remove all deposit options around 4 weeks ago to prevent players potentially losing more funds into the Everleaf Gaming Network. The management, COO and owner still remain unresponsive.
As they have not responded with any accurate time scale for over 4 months, we feel it necessary and in the best interests of players to advise them to cash out all funds from their player accounts, contact the LGA and file a complaint.
The move to Plutos is not the traditional move. Rather than transferring player accounts, Minted will be duplicating its player base on the new network. The reason for this is twofold: a) Minted was not going to be able to transfer player funds along with the accounts, and b) it still wants players to be able to login to their Everleaf Minted accounts to track the progress of cashouts.
In an effort to make its customers whole, Minted will be offering players moving to Plutos a non-deposit bonus. To cash out this bonus, players must rake one Euro for every Euro received, effectively 100 percent rakeback. In addition, players will be eligible for a “releasable bonus” (a bonus which is not immediately playable, but is released in increments) which is released at a rate of 75 percent of rake. Players will continue to receive this bonuses until they receive money equal to the funds stuck on Everleaf or until Everleaf pays up.
For its part, the Plutos network is almost not even a blip on the online poker radar. The online cash game traffic monitoring site, PokerScout.com, does not even have it in its rankings. It currently lists nine poker rooms on its site (Minted would be the tenth), including some former Everleaf rooms, such as WinPKR.com and AlbDigitalPoker.com.
