I was just reading a thread where Shane from Lock Poker is trying to explain why cashouts from transfers have to be stopped because people are buying up the dollars in the market and then requesting large cashouts.

It appears that frustrated players who need their money are selling off their funds at half or less than their value on the website. The players buying those funds are using their playing or affiliate status to shorten the amount of time it takes them to get their cashout.

The solution to the Lock cashout problem seems to be to let the private market handle the cashouts and some of the deposits. The site can also accept deposits from people via WU and other ROW deposits methods.

Essentially what they should do is only allow people to cashout if they have a certain dollar amount in their account. Ten thousand seems to be a good minimum amount to assure a robust market. So then when a person wants to cash out they are referred to the transfer thread. You greatly limit the amount of people that can cashout and let them profit off of the cashouts and deposits. Lock can then pay these small number of market makers by wire transfer. Sidestepping the need to send out checks to US players. For US players that want to cashout directly from Lock their balance needs to be above 10k or whatever number Lock chooses as the minimum.

That would restore the market price.

Scams and Monopoly just off the top of my head. Horribad idea.

Worst idea I've heard yet. You are asking WAY too much of players, and you're asking WAY too much in regards to trusting that everyone shares the same intentions (of not scamming). You will have nothing but nonstop scammers dipping their greedy fingers into this, with an absurd amount of players emailing Lock how they were scammed. It's already a little risky here n there for some people. You're asking this to be the standard? And who makes the final decisions on who was scammed or not? Lock? Based on screenshot proof? You'd have endless photoshopped screenshots and all that jazz of people claiming this or that. It's just a real stretch even having this as a suggestion. No, no, and no.

A simple statement like this: Balances below 10 thousand Lock Dollars will not be redeemed for cash by players residing in the United States. Please consult one of these(links) trading threads to redeem balances below 10 thousand dollars in a private transaction. Please note that any transactions conducted outside of the website are not endorsed by us and the risk for such transactions is born entirely by you.

Balances above 10 thousand dollars are redeemable by wire transfer subject to minimum playthrough requirements that comply with money laundering regulations.

You do realize that the withdrawal problems are being experienced by both US and non-US players, right? And why would you want to lose all of your smaller stakes players? Why would I play on a site where I had to continually use a transfer thread as my only withdrawal option simply because I do not play for that much online? And not only that, but that I would have to sell my Lock money at a DISCOUNT?

Just to clarify, you want a poker site to make a policy/statement that if you're a U.S. player trying to withdraw less than $10,000, that you have to go to a transfer thread and sell your money at whatever the going rate would be (even if it was .9), you'd be demanding such players to withdraw at a penalty. Oh, and to top it off, these players have to trust that the buyers (we would have no idea who they are, companies working with Lock, other players, etc.) are going to transfer real $ in return? And THEN, if we get scammed, it's our word and screenshots vs. theirs? Please understand how absurd this is already.

Well that is the reality of the situation. If they can't process the small payments then that is the reality that people have to deal with. It is much easier from their perspective to cashout less than 300 people than it currently is having to deal with trying to cash out 5000 people.

What you would end up having are a bunch of well bankrolled people handling deposits and cashouts for people and no one would get scammed because they would be making a profit from the trading. It's a smart move for Lock because in private transactions allowing people to help your players DEPOSIT is a really big deal for them profit wise. People are already willing to pay 15 dollar fees just to deposit 100 bucks via WU. Does Lock get mad at Western Union when they make that profit even though it hurts their levels of potential deposits? No, because they really have no choice in the situation.

In a transfer thread people will be doing that same transaction and charging much less for it. They might charge 5 dollars and that means Lock ends up with larger deposits. Everyone benefits in that situation. The customer saves money,the transfer thread guy makes money,Lock makes more money.

They would be well served to have the limit be 10k for their ROW players also. It just saves them a ton of hassle of having to deal with trying to find payment processors. In reality it's better for the grinder also. If the fees are too high(they wouldn't be) in the transfer thread they can keep grinding until they get to a substantial amount of money and then make their cashout. Sometimes it's good for players to eliminate the ability to cashout tiny amounts of money because it forces them to get a stable bankroll. When you're cashing out 300 or whatever out of a small bankroll it can cause you to never build enough dough up because you kill your whole momentum. Knowing that you can't get it unless you get above 10k takes people out of their comfort zone.

they cant cash out 300 ppl from what I can fig out. maybe try 100k amounts and 30 ppl, looks like over 10 players overload there pipes

Op fails to realize that lock is broke

THIS. It amazes me how people keep coming up with these brilliant ideas for cashouts while completely ignoring the fact that Lock Poker DOESN'T HAVE the cash to pay out every account with a balance if they had to. Accept reality people, even if you have $$ on the site.

I repeat again. Scams and Monopoly are two problems. Losing low stakes players is another problem. Even if it were feasible this would be one of the dumbest ideas I've seen to date.

I can't believe what I just read.

Anyway, from what I can tell Lock has been following your advice. They're really good at limiting the number of people who can cashout, and at sidestepping the need to send out checks to US players.

Man, you've got Internet Poker Executive written all over you!

By the way, the market price is set by the market participants - and it says that Lock dollars are worth 30 cents. Of course, that's based on limited information; the true value could be less.

Shhh don't tell Bernanke!

LOL

The OP made me legit LOL

Worst idea of all time. "you don't have 10k? Here's a link to the 2p2 xfer thread! If you get scammed its your fault though!"

Let's assume that Lock is solvent (of course). The solution for Lock with payment processing would be to only accept bitcoin deposits and only handle withdrawals through bitcoin as well.

No DoJ, almost no processing fees, fast transactions, untraceable and 100% anonymous. I'm sure JDB could adjust to that fairly quickly.

bitcoin.

yes, win poker bitcoin works great. why can't lock do this.

According to one of the mods in this forum, Lock Poker has been following Bitcoin and after careful investigation of Bitcoin they felt that it's not a viable option for them right now.

Another great decision made by lock mgmt. I mean wu and checks have been working out great so why take a risk with bitcoin.

they're broke

there is no risk: bitpay.

Because nobody explained them how to go about it and what btc actually is, how they are generated and distributed and nobody cares enough to dive into it either.

Surprise.. ebay and paypal looking at supporting bitcoin as well and in Berlin btc has gone off the internet and is widely accepted.

bitcoins is the nuts. significantly cheaper for processing, almost zero fees for poker sites and right now they pay processors out the ass.

I agree. I would take a chance on receiving a bitcoin transfer than waiting 2-3+ months for WU. It would solve a lot of Lock's problems assuming that they have the funds.

Yes, interesting discussion regarding cashout problems. But Lock can't acquire currency for free, whether it's dollars, euros, gold or bitcoins. All the telltale signs are pointing to a cash problem, not a cashout problem.

Obviously, it's highly unlikely that Lock has the funds. What other explanation fits the observed facts?

We've seen this all before.

+1 for BitCoins. If it's really processing issues and not liquidity issues, make it happen Lock it'd be GREAT for your company. At first, you'll see a big drop in funds on your site i'm sure because many will want to cash out as it can be done quickly (even regular support could handle the cashouts in this case). Over time, though, you'll restore people's faith because they'll know they have at least one secure and fast way of cashing out no matter where they are (US etc.)