I agree with this. Except the skins didnt go broke, the parent company claimed it's liquidating which hopefully doesnt mean they left with the money Enron style (marrying strippers/trips to Aspen, etc). But i agree that Tusk shouldnt have any reason to go broke here b/c what is their overhead? they're basically a parking garage for our funds from what i understand. Unless they were investing our money poorly or something.

maybe MLSCHAFF or anyone who understands these things can shed light on whats a typical reason that a big corp. liquidates? is it usually b/c they're broke or is it usually b/c they lost some strategical lynchpin to their success and cannot function profitably? like in this case maybe losing the Ecogra seals as well as being informed their two biggest skins we're affiliated with rakeback companies that operated in violation of rakeback agreements and Tusk just thought all that was too much to overcome profitably and that they should negotiate a way out immediately. It's all speculation but I'm wondering why companies liquidate as opposed to filing for bankruptcy in which case we'd really be f*cked..

Are you ******ed?

Battlefield and the skins are not broke, they are not the ones going into liquidation, it's TUSK. Please read the thread properly and keep your inbred, ******ed little comments to yourself.

You mean like, maybe they parked it in a hedge fund or REIT?

us housing bubble probably took down tusk lol

i have no idea if it's even legal or even standard to invest a pool of money that they had access to but i suppose it's possible..but if say they are in fact broke, it would be one of the ways it could happen imo. Along with basically funneling it out Enron style.

I think I covered a lot of this in my earlier post, but I'll add a few notes here to hopefully clarify.

First of all, there is zero evidence at this point to suggest that the player deposit money is gone. Zero. None. And there certainly isn't any indication at all of anything criminal going on. All of the "sky is falling" type talk is unfounded and isn't helping anyone.

Why might Tusk decide to liquidate?

Even if 100% of the player funds were still intact (I'm not saying they are, but we also don't know that they aren't), there could be very good reason for Tusk to liquidate.

Thinking that they don't have overhead is wrong. They have employees, and therefore a payroll to make. They have offices, and therefore leases to pay. They have payment processors which charge fees. They have servers which are likely either leased or financed.

It is a known fact that Battlefield and R9's were Tusk's 2 largest skins. We don't know how big a % of their business these skins comprised, but it is likely substantial. If MGS was pulling these licenses, this would represent a major hit to Tusk's revenue stream. The overhead expenses I mentioned above are largely fixed, and not easily scaleable downward if Tusk lost most of its business unexpectedly. Therefore, it is very likely that Tusk would not be able to cover their expenses without income from Battlefield and R9's. If their working capital was tight to begin with, or if they had started to dip into player funds already to operate (not saying that this has or has not happened) then the loss of these skins may have been enough for management to say "we'll close up shop before we get into a bigger world of hurt".

Entering into this liquidation may actually be a very responsible thing for Tusk to do, rather than attempting to continue to operate.

Now before people start flaming me and calling me a shill - I have 10K tied up right now in this mess. I have no relationship with MGS or Tusk. I am only stating opinions and assumptions based on my knowledge of business liquidations.

The answer to your question is that major companies that abruptly cease operations and liquidate usually have serious financial problems. Quite often problematic businesses operate until they have no cash whatsoever and are unable to pay their current bills.

That's the answer to your question. I didn't say that it has anything to do with Tusk.

This kinda stuff is going to happen in the volatile online poker world until the US government steps in and starts regulating things with US companies involved. Like, HarrahsPoker.com would surely be a site where your money was 100% safe.

Another possible scenario:

Tusk's basic cash-flow problem right now may be that they refuse to misuse player funds. Maybe your account balances are all safe-and-sound in a savings account but Tusk is unable to meet other expenses such as payroll and rent.

It could even be that the only problem is Tusk needs to go out of business but they took fees from the white-label skins for future services they are now unable to perform. Maybe they spent that money on operating expenses and now they can't pay refunds to the skin owners.

It would be ironic if Tusk was 100% honest but a bankruptcy court refused to respect it. Can anyone comment on the legal status of player funds? If Tusk has properly kept them separate can they still be taken by the liquidator and used to pay other creditors?

We all should be learning a lesson here. Regardless of whether this works out well or badly, the potential is there for a total loss. It's important to learn about a poker room before you trust them with large amounts of money. For example, it's fairly well-known that BFP didn't operate its own cashier. It's very well-known that Microgaming doesn't hold player balances for its operator-customers. If you deposited large amounts of money without researching these facts then you didn't do your homework.

Bankroll mangement is more than avoiding games that are too big for you. It also means not investing too much money in one site. There is no deposit insurance. There are no perfectly safe sites. Spread your money around or keep some of it offline in a bank. It's reckless to have all of your money in the world in the hands of a single offshore gaming site.

Hopefully this never ends up in a bankruptcy court. A lot of this might depend on language in the contract between MGS and Tusk. If MGS wrote a good agreement then it would include provisions that allow MGS to take over player funds and leaves other unsecured creditors as the ones that are screwed.

As far as items like having taken the $25K set-up fee from white-label operators and now not being able to perform services promised - that does not create a claim against assets for the white-label skin owners. Their claims would likely be limited to outstanding rake payments. Breach of a contract for services does not create a claim as a creditor unless there is a "deposit" involved, such as paying a contractor $5K in advance to do a $20K job replacing your roof, which he never started. A fee of this type is not the same thing as a deposit. A deposit creates a liability on the books of the company accepting the deposit, while a fee creates revenue.

Ah, those years of business school and my former banking career are finally coming in handy.

Perhaps losing the skins was an issue, but, as Pokeraddict stated earlier, this is primarily an online casino company, not a poker company. Just taking a look at the Alexa traffic ranks of their casinos and most well-known poker rooms now, I see 3 casinos in the top million sites on the web, but only one poker room (Red Nines).

I don't think we actually disagree on very much. Much of the rakeback skins business is coming from players who have accounts on other Microgaming skins but are not using them very much. It's one thing to sign up a player and a very different thing to convince him to deposit lots of money and play a lot of hands. How one views this scenario is a value judgment.

I do find it ironic that you use Doyles Room for an example. They were the go-to room for rakeback deals on the Tribeca Tables network until it disbanded. They took a huge amount of business away from the regular skins.

PS: If anyone deposited money in Doyles Room without researching their history then you didn't do your homework. There are lots of interesting threads from early 2007 when the U.S. players were abruptly terminated.

Link?

Is there a debt for any security in favor of MGS to bite on though?
I would very much expect Tusk's fees to MGS to have to be paid in advance (and as any non-payment would trigger more or less immediate withdrawal of service for them actually to have been so paid).

I don't see how you create a fixed charge over the player funds in favor of MGS - there is no obvious debt and even if there was some obligation to account for MGS for player funds in the event of contract termination and that 'debt' was purportedly secured , it would only be a floating not a fixed charge at best in most common law jurisdictions (as MGS on the face of it don't have day to day control over the funds) which charge would rank after liquidator fees (meaning it's real world value is dubious at best).

The best position would be if the MGS terms insist on trust accounts for player funds as then they are payable to the players in priority to other debtors (but that is usually a heavily advertised feature of sites that provide it and I haven't noticed any of these skins advertising that to be the case). Of course whilst that helps in the event of keeping any remaining player funds out of debtor hands, it doesn't necessarily help recover any player funds that have already gone (unless payments out are traceable in equity as having been made to someone with notice of the trust or who hasn't changed their position)

stevie miller said it best GO ON TAKE THE MONEY AN RUN, on a serious note has microgaming released an announcement on this issue? i think if they were in trouble they wouldnt be runing on the skins not involved with tusk, seems business as assual on my skin.

MGS would be able to create a secured position over player funds based on the necessary settlements between the skins and MGS. On every settlement date, the skins whose players lost money as a whole would have to send money to MGS, who would then send that money to the skins whose players won money. Not sure how often these settlements occur, but there would be a secured position in favor of MGS as a result, and this secured position may extend to all player account balances. It really just depends how the agreement between MGS and Tusk is written.

summary of the 40 pages pls?

Microgaming's statements are on their web site.

Cliffs Notes

I attempted to cashout from battlefieldpoker on friday. Now the money is gone from account but I haven't received any indication from either bfp (not surprised) or moneybookers that it has been processed. It had the reverse withdrawal option for couple of days so it does sound like someone processed it at some point.

Please tell me I got nothing to worry about

Ouga -

There's no way your wd was processed. When you hit withdrawal, it automatically took it out of the balance that is shown on screen and put it into their queue for processing, which certainly no one has touched since Tuesday. The reverse withdrawal option probably goes away automatically after 2 days. I don't think you are in any different situation than any of us, although it probably would have been smart to take a screen shot of your balance before you did the withdrawal request, since now you really don't have any proof of what was in your account.

If you've read the thread you know that I'm on the side of optimism. So I'd say you don't have too much to worry about as long as time isn't of the essence for you. Saying you have nothing to worry about would be going way, way too far though.

Ouga, I was worried about that too so I just took a screenshot of my balance within the 'reverse withdrawal' page along with the date on my desktop.

But yeah, there HAS to be a record of your withdrawal process somewhere so I shouldn't be worried. I just use my screenshot as insurance.

24h not 2 days.

Happens to me too, the reverse withdrawal option as been their since day one, 4 days maybe and today is gone. Don't know for sure what it means.

Hmm. Don't know then. I wouldn't read too much into it.

Bet Holdem

I decided to go back and refresh my memory on the sequence of events when Bet Holdem (Prima skin) account holders had their balances frozen in the wake of UIGEA. This is a different situation, but I thought it might be of some interest to look at how that one played out.

This info comes from Betcorp's corporate announcements. http://www.betcorp.com.au/Content.as...16&ContentID=6

October 13 (all dates 2006): UIGEA is signed. Betcorp freezes all U.S. accounts.
October 16: Company statement that intends to sell their gaming operations. It states that they had already begun talks with various parties, but could not complete a sale of U.S. operations prior to the enactment of UIGEA because they needed shareholder approval.
October 20: Company statement that a deal has been entered into to sell gaming operations to Bodog, conditional only on shareholder approval.
November 2: Shareholder meeting to approve sale.
November 15: Sale completed to Bodog.

As I recall, my Betholdem money was in my Bodog account within 1 day of the sale closing - although I had remembered this as happening in December, I realize now that I must have been wrong on that and it actually happened quicker than I thought.

So basically, exactly 1 week after our money was frozen, we were virtually assured that we would receive our balances in whole from Bodog, although the completion of the process would take another 3-4 weeks.

If Microgaming terminated the software licence with Tusk, how could Tusk be in any control of our money?