A light at the end of the tunnel.

what a surprise

I have money tied up on Lock and I actually see PrimordialAA's point.

I do want to know whether or not Bodog or other sites I have my money on currently are solvent.... but this is what we have to deal with under the current unregulated and ambiguous legal environment. Who knows when any of these sites could start exhibiting signs similar to Lock? No one expected FTP to happen, but ev1 thinks their money is safe on Bodog just because nothing bad has happend yet? I've already had 3 sites take money from me straight up, going on 4 with Lock.... So now adays I keep as little online as possible. You have to be pretty silly not to.

I agree 100% that we will never see proof of segregated funds from Lock because, dunh dunh dunh, there are no funds. As for why people aren't bugging other sites to prove they have the money to pay, well they prove it by paying people. Pretty inane comparison to even make in the first place.

Correct..

All we have is cold hard facts. Bovada is paying, lock is not...end of story. That is why they are #1 despite their laughable layout.

We need to stick to facts, BS aside, you don't pay...**** off. until things change "lol" this is how it should be. No posts of positivity or BS should change this.

/Thread

My guess would be that it stands for Gross Gaming Revenue. Gross usually means before deductions, so hopefully that just means they need to rake 15% of the transfer amount without any deductions for fees, rakeback, bonuses, etc. As for whether that will be based on dealt rake or some form of contributed, I'd expect they'd use the same method they use for promotions, RB, etc.

But this is just my assumption - hopefully someone from Lock can clarify for you.

You're making a big assumption here. If Lock were to show dramatically improved cashout speed for an extended period of time, many people will let up on the solvency issue IMO. Of course Lock has damaged their relationships with some players to the point where nothing less than audited statements will make them happy, and even that won't be enough for a few.

The thing is, after all that has gone on, people probably aren't too keen to wait 3 or 4 weeks to see if cashout times improve - they're looking for answers now. If Lock isn't able to provide any further assurances that satisfy anyone, you shouldn't expect to see the questions go away either. Basically, if players are going to have to wait and see if cashouts improve, you're going to have to wait even longer before you see improved cashouts change people's attitudes. That isn't so surprising, is it?

If this is the current policy... will your cashier be updated as to where each individual player will be able to see the amount of money they will be able to cashout..

IE will the cashier say the accurate amount in your account that will be eligible to withdrawl, or will you just have to guess as to if the verification team will accept your w/d or not..

thanks

This has to be weighed up against the deposits that keep coming in to lock from other players while people who know better are trying to pretend everything might be ok.

It's not like allowing lock to continue operating will result in money just going from lock to the players.

As long as they're in business, there is a small chance players will get their money back from lock but it is guaranteed that money will be going from players to lock.

Its pretty ridiculous to even talk about forum posters "destroying" Lock anyway. What destroyed Lock was them making crappy investments with money that wasn't theirs to spend in the first place. Even if someone gave them all the money they needed to square everything away, they'd just crash into the ground again anyway.

Great. Now allow independent verification that funds are segregated.

Finally, this is what ppl needed. Something black and white so players know when they can get their money. Thank you for not screwing us over afterall. Although I still think ppl that run a staking stable shouldnt have to play thru their money if it can be verified from the horses.

Let's assume just for a second (and I'm not saying it's true or false) that there was a group of people that actually ganged up to slam the value of Lock$'s here on 2+2 or any other forum that has a P2P thread and those people fixed the rate on which they would buy Lock$ knowing that a large number of players would be willing to bit the apple to get at least 50-60c to the dollar (few weeks ago) all the way down to 30c / dollar.

If that is true then Lock "kinda" did the right thing by cracking down on P2P transfers even if they went about it in the wrongest way possible by not making an announcement or actually investigating this right before they went ahead and just cancelled a gazillion withdrawal requests.

I say "kinda" because I believe no poker site would like to see that a massive amount of the money "in play" is taken off by people that buy up the money on 30% of it's value. The site has to act on it and to be honest the new policy isn't that bad. 15% raked on a received 2P2 is very doable without taking a loss and P2P traders will fix them 15% into their purchase rate anyway.

My reasoning has nothing to do with their slow processing times and if Lock is broke or not. It's ONLY related on policing P2P in a manner to avoid manipulation in the future.

I always wondered who sets the exchange rate for poker $'s and it is pretty obvious that it's not based on trade volume or demand like in the forex world.

I tried to sell off a few of my Lock$'s a couple of times and that was when the value in the P2P transfer thread was still around 60-75c / dollar.

To no surprise I was only messaged by people who have a large trading rep on 2+2 and funny enough everyone offered pretty much the exact same rate, not willing to negotiate at all.

Hence this crack-down isn't as bad as some might thing but there is still plenty of open questions for Lock to answer in regards to payment processing.

Edit:
Of course it's still Lock's vault that people would actually be willing to sell their money on 30c for having the worst cashout times in the industry.

Now here we already have the dilemma. The press release and Shane stated it's based on GGR but I've also seen one post by Shane where he said MGR.

Please clarify.

You're confused about this. The marketplace is not rigged or price fixed, it operates on supply and demand. The price of Lock fell right in line with cashout times and people's faith in Locks solvency. Nobody has to sell Lock for less than they want. But buyers are only willing to invest so much in a site when there's almost no chance they can cash it out. You can't arbitrarily say the price should be X -- that's fixing and rigging it, letting the rate float is the best way for the market to function.

Further, Lock shouldn't care what a person pays for funds. If I decide to ship you $100 as a gift, does Lock have the right to just steal that $100 from you, because you don't deserve it, since it was free? I think not.

Lock didn't fix the price of funds either. Lock was selling at .50 before this fiasco started, now it's dropped to almost half that. Lock is the only person manipulating the price down, not 2+2ers.

Lock deciding that its not fair for you to buy funds at .3 and cashout is the same bull**** reasoning they came up with for fair play tech -- its not fair that you're so good at poker, so **** you, you're not allowed to play anybody worse anymore. It's socialism basically*.

*But even though that's the reasons they gave, I think the real reason they've been doing all this is to stop cashouts. They were just butthurt that people were making easy money and trying to cashout when they're busto.

Think about this....

An individual comes onto this 2+2 forum and offers to buy as much Lock money as you can throw at them for 35c on the $. No questions asked! Money by PAYPAL in your hands within 2 hours of your t/f to them.

How much of the funds do you think that this would CLEAR from the available funds in Lock Poker?

5%...20%...50%???

Nomatter what % you might put on this 'offer' it would be incredibly beneficial for the Lock owners as it would remove this % from the money pool at 1/3rd of 'real' value thereby cleansing the system of withdrawable monies...especially IF the individual offering such a deal was employed by Lock to cleanse the money pool in this fashion.

I'd call this a 'win-win' and maybe this is something ol Jenny should consider doing!!

Bovada is primarily a sports betting site that offers poker to its customers, so of all the poker sites I feel safest playing poker on their site, as far as getting paid when we win. Everything I've heard is they pay in a timely manner (timely meaning 10 to 14 days) and at least you get paid. I would'nt deposit 5 cents on any other site, especially lock poker.

The reality is that you have to ask all of them, especially Lock Poker.

Have you looked at the "license" that Lock Poker has that allows them to run their gambling business? It's nothing more than window dressing.

No where on that site is there any assurance of "player protection". If one could find it on there, any reasonable person wouldn't feel confident that the licensor had any power to do anything to stop Lock Poker from commingling player bankrolls with their expense account.

When you look at companies that do business in regulated environments, they are licensed by Malta, Alderney, Isle of Man and Gibraltar etc. all of the licensor websites give some type of "player protection".

The fact that Lock Poker accepts American players will not allow them to get a license from the above companies. So who does the consumer turn to? They turn to Lock Poker, they ask that they prove solvency. Lock Poker in turn blames the consumer for wanting to know if their money is protected.

Lock Poker is so slack when it comes to everything that even the Curaco License it holds is wrong. It's for LockPoker.com not LockPoker.eu

The reason it hasn't been corrected is because it's not a big deal, the Curaco License is meaningless anyway.

Lock Poker has so many bad habits, it's impossible for me to believe that they will survive doing business this way.

I see your point and I didn't mean to imply that the market value has actually been brought down by people ganging up to drive the price down. However in theory it is possible especially on a small market like the 2+2 transfer thread.

It is done in the forex world, recently has been done on the btc exchange and if a group of people really wanted to and has the required funds it is certainly possible.

There is no arguing here. I ship lock $'s to my wife on a regular basis and considering that she's a low stakes MTT player raking $15 on a $100 transfer in order to withdraw is questionable. However, she only cashes out her MTT winnings anyway and could always ship them $100 back to me.

I agree. The long processing times and Lock's bad communication skills etc. are one of the main reasons why players would be willing to sell their funds in a "panic" like fashion. So yes, it's Lock's vault that their $'s lost their face value. However, Lock's incompetence in communicating with their players or processing of funds (having the funds or not) wasn't my reasoning of my post...as that is obvious. My reasoning was the introduction of this new P2P policy with the 15% GGR and Lock's claim of recent events.

fair play tech is a clear failure but unrelated to the P2P policy. Sadly Lock isn't the only site that is looking at this FP crap. Party is going the same way.. total game killer.

certainly one option besides many others.

I WOULD ask any US facing site that was having the type of issues Lock has. HAVE I done so? No, because I made the decision post BF not to put money online in the current unregulated US market, so I'm somewhat less aware of the issues of each site. However, because I'm still a poker player and an avid 2p2er, when an issue gets big enough to attract my attention, I have no problem joining with other poker players to try to ensure customers aren't getting ripped off, whether my money is at stake or not.

But the larger issue here is, why won't Lock prove their solvency? Don't give me some company line about the risk of exposing their operations. Are you kidding me? No one here is asking to see Lock's bank accounts themselves. They are asking for independent verification of Lock's financial status. Surely, somewhere on this entire planet, is a company or individual that Lock would trust to review their information (a non US person, even, so there's no risk of that info falling into the dastardly hands of the DOJ) that would also be acceptable to the poker community at large, so that when that company or individual said "I've reviewed Lock's books, and from what I can see they have player funds segregated and safe", the entire issue could be put to rest.

Is this industry standard? Probably not. Neither is taking 6 months to pay customers, or unilaterally canceling cashouts without announcing to customers that there's an issue, or taking 2 weeks to announce a simple change in p2p transfer play through policy.

How about Lock do something non-industry standard that actually benefits their customers for a change?

Meh, seems about right to me. 'Mo money, 'mo problems.

Is it industry standard for an online poker company to accept US players?

Is it industry standard to ask an online poker company to verify if they have player funds segregated? Yes, when they display a licence from a company that has some credibility, that company asks to see if the player funds are segregated.

Their current licensor is a complete joke and has no credibility.

Here's an excerpt from Alderney Gaming Committee which audits online gambling sites all of the time unannounced:

In the above, there is no mention that the information has to be disclosed to the public. It states that certain criteria has to be met.

Lock Poker will not allow a third-party to verify any criteria simply because they can't meet the criteria, not because they don't want to.

Additionally, Lock Poker is doomed because in order to grow in regulated markets, they will have to get a licence from more reputable companies like Alderney to do business legitimately. e.g. Curaco Licensing will not fly in the UK, they only can do business there right now because they are under the radar.

as mention a few other times. Who cares about this other stuff when, you cant withdraw?

Not sure if this was mentioned but how will we know if we generated enough rake?? Do they automatically cancel all cash outs that don't meet criteria or will we have to wait months before they're canceled??

Note to Jen Larsen Larson:

Having read the majority of Joseph's / Shane's posts I can only conclude that depositing on Lock would be pointless.

Seriously, the choice you made in representatives speaks volumes to your managerial abilities. Add to that the possibility that you had a hand in directing / composing these mindless, illogical and ridiculously incomplete responses only cements said conclusion.

I think it's clear Lock is not going to reveal their banking info to anyone...3rd party auditor....baby jesus....not going to happen.

I think the best players can hope for at this point is to start seeing checks/wu's/skrill payments from months ago show up in their mailboxes/accounts.

To me the best realistic show of faith at this point is to see the oldest outstanding withdrawals posted in here report they "showed them the money"...following up with faster completion of newer withdrawals.

I don't think seeing newish ROW withdrawals and newish WU withdrawals tells us anything...letting anyone cut in line for withdrawals at this point would be a bad sign...that they were still more show than go. Let me see these 5 month old checks/wu's...etc appear and clear....then continue to improve from there.