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.