So they're a typical American bank?When a bank lends $100 that debt becomes an asset of the bank. So even if the bank doesn't have the cash to cover all the deposits, they should have assets worth more then the deposits. In theory, the assets could go bad -- but in ordinary times the good assets will cover the costs of the bad assets. In non-ordinary times you get things like the collapse of IndyMac and Wamu
FullTilt made a monumentally bad decision when they decided to credit players' accounts with deposits that were never actually completed, a decision that allowed them to continue to operate and collect rakeYeah. Why on earth would they do that? Did they have some rule like: you can play with money you deposit, but can't withdraw? What would stop someone from "losing" money to a friend and having them withdraw? Seems bizarre.
The people who make a living player poker lose an incredible amount of money at the poker table. The actual figures are staggering. It's just the amount they win is slightly more.Due to really annoying rules about how you have to claim poker income, I typically reported "income" of approximately 40 times my net winnings on my taxes every year and then had similarly huge "losses" to report. Whatever amusement value reporting an income of over a million bucks offers was far offset by the negative effects on AMT and limited deductions brought on by the artificially high "income."
Stars didn't loan money to their pros. (or least not much that we've heard. They paid pros salaries and probably buy-ins, but that's it.)I heard a few stories at the WSOP this year that suggested that they also did it to some degree but on a much smaller scale. This, in my opinion, was primarily because Stars was not run by fellow high-stakes players. This meant that the loans tended to be directly related to buy-ins and advertising related expenses. They also didn't have the super-high-stakes games running that drove most of the crazy money movement that happened at Tilt.
Stars had a better relationship with, or less shady taste in, middlemen. All of the money processed from US banks to Stars went through, none was run off with etc. so they didn't have to watch attempted deposits fail or disappear.My sense is that they used a lot of the same people, but that Stars cut things off when they didn't have relationships. There were a lot of times I heard that e-check processing wasn't available on Stars on a state by state basis. It appears that Tilt continued to accept e-check transactions even when they didn't have a processor to support them in the hopes that they would eventually find one. I can think of at least three times that I had to get a check mailed to me by Stars because they didn't have a payment processor in Virginia. One time they wired it through Wal*Mart and I had to pick it up in the local store. The Wal*Mart people were clearly put off by paying me $20,000 so I could go to a live tourney.
Stars has a bigger presence overseas. Because they were still making money from European Players, they could pay back US players. FT's market was majority US.This was a huge factor. Tilt was like 80% US players, Stars was much more diversified.
I, and everyone else who plays poker, have weekly fantasies about one day playing there again. :C missU pp <3 <3 <3Man, playing 15/30 & 30/60 on Party back in the day was like standing outside with a bucket when it was raining money. It will never be like that again even if Party comes back in some brave new world. The standard of play has risen so much since then. I look back on my hand histories from those days and laugh.
If the DoJ thought it was a classic ponzi scheme -- set up with intent to defraud, why haven't they brought criminal charges? I suspect they know that they'd never be able to make that case if they were held to the standards of a criminal court.It is fairly common to file criminal charges after the civil litigation proceeds, especially in situations where they don't know all the facts yet. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the criminal charges already filed against the sites are amended to include the new allegations before all is said and done. By holding off on that, they have significant leverage to force a settlement and get the principals to cough up cash in exchange for a preemptive deal on the criminal charges.
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Rick'sthe shady gambling website!"posted by bardic at 10:05 PM on September 20, 2011 [2 favorites]