The long wait times and uncertainty for American players in cashing out post black friday has led people to pay exhorbitant vig to trade their money in poker accounts on merge, cake, and bodog for real money cash. Most people in the transfer thread are willing to accept vig around 15-25% but some desperate people will take as high as 50%. Obviously this underground process is highly risky and wasteful.

The solution? Well it's almost certainly true that any pokersite could offer quick, reliable cash outs for large amounts if they spent enough money setting up the service, even post black friday. Redundant payment processors could be set up in case the main ones go under so service is uninterupted. Other financial innovations and intermediaries could be explored and tapped. New contacts and business relationships and front companies can be set up. It's all a question of money. Anything in this world can be bought with enough cash.

The sites could pay for all this new financial machinery by charging more for cashouts, much more. It's been demonstrated in the transfer forum that people are willing to pay exhorbitant percentages to get cash for their poker money. So instead of having them pay each other that transaction fee, have the site charge them directly. It should be a tiered system possibly with many tiers. Charge people who don't have much to cashout and don't need it quickly the same $10 fee that happens now. People who want their money the next day could be charged perhaps up to 15% or even more. People who have needs in between these extremes should be charged an intermediate amount.

This proposal works for both players and the pokersites. People would have a menu of cashout options they can pick to suit their own needs. Pokersites attract players with their stable, customizable cashout options. It would fill the current gap in the marketplace which generates so much underground activity in the transfer thread.

Players deserve their entire account balance paid out, poker sites should not profit by charging a 15-25% vig on the players own money.
Payouts in countries where poker is legal is extremely fast, because they don't have to hide the transaction or do anything shady.

The sites(at least Merge is) are doing everything they can to avoid getting on the DOJ's bad side and your suggestions would be doing everything they can to get busted. I would much rather wait 4-6 weeks over 4-6 days if it meant the site staying open.

Kinda ridic to have to wait 4-6 weeks for a check to be processed, seriously wtf this that? Sounds like they just don't have to money to pay ppl.

I was able to withdraw using Western Union through Lock's Casino client and got my money in 24 hours. I really don't think it has anything to do with cash flow that is taking checks so long. They just doubled in size along with a bunch of existing players pulling money off the site, because of concerns after BF and UMW went under. It has led to a huge increase of check withdrawals and slowed everything down

Meh, all the threads on here about slow/limbo payouts and lack of support at some of these sites have me pretty much staying out of the current US online market until something gets regulated. I know that's not an option for people for whom poker was their job and they can't get anything else right now, but the online scene for US players is beyond volatile right now.

As a recreational player, I'm just staying out of it. Sorry for those who used to rely on my donations.

Evading the DOJ is part of what the extra money would be spent on. In fact the entirety of the money is used, in a way, to evade the DOJ.

And people are not entitled to low fees if it takes a lot of money for the company to cash them out in the current legal environment. This environment imposes a "tax" which should fairly be paid by the players themselves who cash out. If in a European country where poker is legal it takes x amount of money to process a cashout in a timely manner, it now takes (or would take) x+y to cashout an American player post black friday in a timely manner. This "y" factor includes steps to prevent detection by the DOJ- and there may be a wide variety of steps involving money the sites would have to utilize to prevent detection and prosecution.

The western union option seems quick and easy, but there is certainly a reason only Lock does it, and only does it through their casino for small amounts. If it were that easy every poker site would be offering it, and they would have done it before black friday on stars and tilt.

If the pokersites started offering it on a large scale as more than just a niche feature for certain knowledgeable Lock players, then the size and scope of it would start attracting the suspicions of authorities. Because of this the sites would have to then take expensive steps to make sure these suspicions are stymied or are never aroused in the first place. And because of this extra expense the sites either will stop doing it or start charging more for it and we're back to square one.

A solution? The solution is this, quit bitching and moaning about how long cashouts take. Why did PS and FT circumvent US law? To appease their customer base with fast cashouts. Look where we are now.

The real solution is to cashout via paper check. Have an account at a small, very small, local bank. My bank has 4 branches, thats it. They never question me as to where my checks come from, I just wait a week and let them clear. If checks take 4-6 weeks to arrive, then be prepared to cashout every two weeks or so to keep checks arriving in a timely manner.

I don't think any of the sites should spend money trying to set something up to deliberately circumvent the UIGEA. Seems like a bad business decision at this point - even if they could get away with it for a year or two, is it worth the potential risk of being charged and facing a billion dollar or more fine?

It would be better if more money/energy was channeled into supporting legal online poker in the US.