Will the responsible party please stand up?

We are writing this letter as two of the previous owners of Rednines.com, one of the “skins” / “white label solutions” connected to the company Tusk.

At the end of 2005, Rednines contacted Microgaming (then named Prima Poker) to explore the possibilities of becoming a skin into the Microgaming network. We met Microgaming and their representatives at a hotel in London in early 2006 in connection with the ICE gaming show. During this meeting Microgaming stressed the fact that they were backlogged in the process of accepting and adding new skins to their network already. We were then advised by Microgaming to contact Tusk (also known as MyPokerProfit.com) to get a deal through them instead, since they had a deal in place with Microgaming which made it possible for new partners to get a skin up and running within days.

This process is known as a white label solution, which means that our work on Rednines.com would basically be to get players, and get a revenue share of these players. In other words, Tusk/MyPokerProfit.com would take care of everything from Payment Gateways, holding on to player funds, dealing with Microgaming and handling customer support. The only information we had access to was the players signed up through Rednines.com, we could see their names, emails and their current rake. We had no way of even making a deposit to a players account without going through Tusk/MyPokerProfit first. In fact any poker room related issue had to go through TUSK.

This was far away from what we would prefer. Maybe we are guilty of being naive, but as Microgaming said it was an easy way to join the network, and Tusk/MyPokerProfits way of doing business was condoned by Microgaming themselves. This made the deal seem legit and secure for us. In addition to this, Microgaming said that once we were integrated in Tusk/MyPokerProfit’s system, it would be an easy process to re-convert us over to Microgaming as a regular partner once their queue was less backlogged.

Now, 2 years later Rednines.com is no longer running, along with BattlefieldPoker.com and several other white label solutions of Tusk/MyPokerProfit. Microgaming has not reached out to us, nor have we been able to get a hold of anyone with a say in Microgaming that could help us solve what happened. Even though it is several months since Tusk went bankrupt we have at several occasions tried to get a hold of someone that could take responsibility for what happened – unfortunately without success.

I have been told by many that they feel Rednines.com should pay up for player balances and their losses, and I can understand their frustration. The problem is that we never saw any of these deposits, we simply got a revenue share for our players rake. This was around $25,000 gross profit every month for the months we were operative. Microgaming was actually making a bigger profit than us on our players.

I would like to see Microgaming to take a stand in this matter, and be the responsible party, which means they should pay for the player balances. They have to take responsibility for advising partners in going into partnership with Tusk/MyPokerProfit in order to get easy and quick access to their poker network

I would also like to point out a few facts:

• During the existence of Rednines.com we never received a complaint by Microgaming or Tusk/MyPokerProfit in regards to rakeback breaches.
• A short while after TUSK went down we had a deal on the table with a poker site running in another network but we were denied by the liquidators to sell the customer base including its debt. This would have been a good solution even if the players would not have received all of their funds back at once.

Regards,
Thomas Mathiesen and Ronny Breivik

It is in my opinion impossible that Microgaming is not aware of these forums and the people in charge will for certain get wind of this thread and read it. Hence, a lack of response by an official representant would speak as much -or more- as any other reply.

Thank you Thomas and Ronny.

Just thought the link to the other thread should be added here so everyone knows what this is in relation to

Microgaming Screw Over 1000+ players

The fact that Microgaming actively pushed Tusk and their services on customers should increase their liability here.

I presume you've spoken to lawyers about this, what has their input (if any) been?

Edit: Actually, the replies to that question would be better off in the original thread to be honest.

I agree with Imbecil and I would believe that even if Microgaming were told of this, they wouldn't reply.

Contact between Bigt2k4's lawyer and Microgaming has shown that they are trying to absolve themselves of all liability so I would genuinely be surprised if they did do something for the players now.

Microgaming are complete scum, they probably couldn't care less to have anyone read these forums for them

This thing with another pokernetwork is way to sick!

thanks for the letter but I'm not really sure what this achieves.

I don't think anyone who had any idea was really blaming rednines/other skins for what happened. At least not anyone clued in enough to know of the existence of Tusk or of Microgaming/Prima.

Though it's not clear what this thread could accomplish, this is getting way less attention than I expected.

Ronny and Thomas: what were you trying to get going with this open letter?

We hoped this thread would put the focus on Microgaming's responsibility in this matter, and eventually would result in players getting their money back from them. We have no other interest in this matter except for getting the players money back. We will never get a revenue share of these players again, so our money are gone.

Plus, didn't they let the casinos(non-poker rooms) change owners without going through the liquidation process? I believe Casino Rewards picked up the Tusk owned casinos so why not give the poker sites the same opportunities.

Right on brotha!

I thought this was a good idea nobdy seemed to care though. See Ladbrokes is one of the biggest if not the biggest bookmaker in the UK and Ireland, they have a poker site with microgaming if you hurt there business it might get them to do something about it.

2+2 dosent support this situation either they went mad about the UB,AP situation when that was a diffrent matter it was cause some big names had some money stolen but they all got it back. Yet 2+2 accepts the 66k/year eurolinx pays for its own forum + what ever referer links they have.

Plus you still accepct the same from the 2 big rakeback providers who got us on these sites in the 1st place. Maybe if 1 or 2 big names on here had lost of money just taken no reason given they would be different about it but its one rule for us another for them.

Its good that you are trying to help, but posting an open letter in the zoo wont grab any attention. I've got 5 figures tied up in this mess myself and I would have never noticed this without without Imbecil pointing me to it in the other thread.

Try to get on the 2+2 podcast, make it a story with pokernews, contact the magazines, outside some "real" media attention Microgaming wont feel compelled to do anything.

I have a contact in PokerNews Portugal. Maybe I can talk with them to bump up this story (and the letter).

+1

err.. so now we start bumping this like we do the other thread?

also, should this turn out the way we're afraid it will, what do we know about the executives of tusk and microgaming? surely hundreds of people can manage to make their lives suck, yet stay within legal limits? are we allowed to say put pictures of their houses online, for starters? i for one have no qualms about that if i don't get my money back.

I'm curious as to whether anyone has ever seen a Microgaming Rep here on 2+2.

They are "The Invisible Men". At least in times like that.

There are several representives from Eurolinx who represent microgaming. Also i think pokerhost has a rep on the forum.

I don't care what anyone says if your site is on the microgaming network you are representing them as your microgaming's face to the customer.

The eurolinx rep's have lots of direct contact with mircogaming so maybe try to get their attention that way?

Funnymunny is the name of an MG rep at Casinomeister. By coincidence there was a Funnymunny posting in the other Tusk thread that wasn't helping to say the least. Anyway Thomas and Ronny, I wish you luck. Maybe go to people like Bryan Bailey (Casinomeister) and see if they can open a few doors. Has Ecogra been any help? There are so many MG names there that they must have some connection. I'm baffled that MG has buried their head in the sand here.

Thank you for giving us a little bit more information on how everything was structured.

Hopefully somehow this will get something done but like other posters have said, there need to be more exposure of this! But 2+2 cares more about getting advertisement money from eurolinx/microgaming then helping the people from the community it seems

+1 Great post Pokeraddict. Thank you for weighing in here with your thoughts in regard to this situation.

I sincerely hope that if Microgaming continues their policy of silence and ignoring this mess which they are at least somewhat responsible for that eventually player's feeling will be felt by the action of removing their play from Microgaming completely to networks that don't allow their players to be royally screwed.

Gah, 3rd page already. So did we give up on our awesome 210,000 viewed thread for this one and just bump this instead? What's our play here....

Ive been a voyeur with these two threads since the start and have funds tied up.

I emailed microgaming (no reply as yet) and reread this on their site.

So I thought Id give eCORGA [who microgaming co-founded (suprised me)] an email and got this reply.

I'm sure I recall a seal on the Rednines skin. Can anyone else remember and/or can Rednines comment.

My point was that if a seal was present when I deposited surely they have some responsibility during the seal was active and could have notified the microgaming network who could have then informed players when it was removed.

I am not familiar with eCORGA or what they are doing in order to protect players on Microgaming, whatever they are doing it surely is not working. We for one were never approached by them in any way, nor were we informed or invited to a partnership with them.

You can see how rednines.com looked in the past at this link:
http://web.archive.org/web/200607042....rednines.com/

As I wrote in the first post we were not responsible for anything else than to bring players to rednines, this was the way Microgaming wanted us to operate unless we were willing to wait more than half a year more before they could commit to even start the work on our operation into Microgaming.

Microgaming and MyPokerProfit were working together, surely MyPokerProfit could not operate the way they did without approval by MGS themselves.

Thomas

Shouldn't you have been more open to your customers about this construction? As far as they knew, they trusted YOU with their money.

Being a skin company for someone else and hardly having any control seems very dangerous to me.