I requested a withdrawal recently and I got a mail back from pokerstars. what is surprising is that they seem to have a new requirement now that you have to wager the entire amount of your deposit before it is eligible for a withdrawal. In other words the amount you can withdraw is related to the bet you make. So if you deposit 100 dollars for example and bet 20 and win, you can withdraw 20+20, 40 dollars. The 60 dollars you have needs to be wagered before it can be eligible to be withdrawn. In the meantime you can lose it all as well.

Previously you need to wait 48 hours after a deposit before you can request a withdrawal. They have been trying to fix their financial problems with first changing the VIP rules and then the rake thing and now this which is unfair to every player. You wouldn't get such b***** if you went to a real casino. What do you guys think?

Why?

What's the reason for depositing 100 when you only intend to bet 20?

I am talking about the principle of putting up such a requirement. it doesn't matter the amount i intend to risk. i should be able to withdraw my own money when i need to and without any hassel.

true talk.

another scam: if you deposit lets say 20$ by credit card, win 6$ and want to leave the site with all your money, well you cannot because they will creditback your inital deposit (20$) on your creditcard but the 6$ will be too small to cashout by creditcard (125$ min) and bank transfert (13$ min)

in resumé, you need to win at least 13$ if you want to cashout that profit.

They have always, as have most (if not all) sites, had a rake requirement before you could withdraw your money. Sites pay transaction fees every time you deposit & cashout, so they usually don't allow you to just deposit, play a few hands, then withdraw again. And of course there are anti-money laundering regulations as well.

Now, I'm not sure how the numbers you're talking about match up with what they used to be (if they've changed), but I know they used to give the requirements in terms of VPP or FPP/$. Rolling the money over once seems pretty minimal, though.

Edit to add: Just did a search, and found a few posts from 2010-2012 that all said it was 15 VPP per $100.

I have been able to withdraw after making a deposit. The only thing that was needed was a 48 hour waiting period. no need to wager every cent. I have even made a withdrawal of a transfer i got from another player without necessarily playing. so i think it is very unfair to demand this. Other pokersites like 888 do not have this. If they have an additional cost of transactions fees, then it is better to put up the option where player can pay that fee and get their money back without risking it all. It is not just play a few hands but wager 100% atleast once. Ridiculous!

Again, almost every site has this policy, and Stars has had it for at least 7 years. It could be that the sites enforce it inconsistently, but it will come up at some point on most sites if you try cashing out after very little play. Just because you haven't come up against doesn't mean it hasn't existed there for many years - if you don't believe me, a quick search will confirm what I've said. Here's one result from my search:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...erwise-834616/

What has always been problematic is that most sites are not very transparent about this policy - quite the opposite, unfortunately.

Have you asked Stars if they would let you pay a fee instead? Not saying they will, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.

the principle is wrong and if it is applied inconsistently it makes worse. stars seems to be losing it touch for the sake of pushing their stock price higher. Is there a VIP account manager number one can call to?

You're both right. Stars used to have a soft policy, if you made a habit of depositing/withdrawing without enough play they'd enforce it. Most players could deposit/withdraw as they liked, it only got enforced if you were trying to abuse something (Skrill promotion or whatever).

It's now a hard limit in the cashier, the funds aren't available to withdraw until played through.

The new requirements are very different to what they were previously. As it stands now you can put in loads of volume all of july and lose $5k as a example. Then you deposit on august the 1st and those funds are not available to be transferred or withdrawn without being fully wagered once. Just totally lacks common sense making it as difficult as possible to have utility of your funds.

Seems like amaya are actively trying to destroy their poker offerings and fully convert to casino games only.

You would only need to wager the full amount if you were planning on cashing out all of the deposited funds again. Any funds you put into a pot/tournament etc. will be available to cashout right away after they have been wagered.

E.g. if you deposit $5k and play 3 hands of NL100. You put $25 into the first pot, $25 into the second and $100 into the third one; in this case you would be able to cashout $150.

It's not like you have to rake $5k or wager the full $5k before you can cashout any of the deposited funds.

Fair enough. Since the whole idea of requiring rake before withdrawing seemed completely foreign to OP, my main goal was letting him know that isn't new, in general. As you and The Imp have pointed out, that policy has obviously become more strict now.

This question was answered by a PokerStars rep in another thread. The one time wagering requirement has nothing to do with rake. It is a requirement dictated as part of their licensing. This would be an anti money laundering action. It makes sense to some government lawyers somewhere so our opinion or bitching about it is not going to matter. It is also not a PokerStars specific issue you are going to run into it with any licensed operator. Some politicians think online gambling somehow is a haven for organized crime and terrorist funding. So we get stuck with admittedly dumb things like this so they can feel they are stopping ISIS.

Saying most sites require this is just nonsense in the ROW part of things. I can't think of one other site that would make you do this that isn't an offshore site. Worse of all it has to be rolled over on the poker side when most of my action is on sports betting which is ridiculous. Also to the point above most gambling sites are suddenly interested in money laundering when it comes to you withdrawing to delay the process. In the UK, looking you up on the electoral register is suffice for licence requirements but they want to know your life story with documents.

This isn't 2006 - sites are regulated and should be able to negotiate competitive transaction fees.

Please show the relevant AML regulation. Many people deposit/withdraw all their funds on the same day from sports betting sites.

If a site doesn't like you depositing and withdrawing they can refuse your business.

Insisting that someone gambles almost certainly runs foul of responsible gambling policies.

The term itself is probably "unfair" in the UK and other jurisdictions with similar legislation.

Anyone in the UK who complains about this will 100% have their funds released (what that means for the future relationship I don't know).

What are you talking about? Sportsbetting is calculated exactly like poker; if you place a bet of $20, you will also be able to cashout $20 from that deposit.

Also, why would you deposit $20k for example if your intention is to only bet $10 (unless you want to launder money).

The last part is utter rubbish. You are literally saying that any account that has provided documents should be allowed to do whatever they want. If you are trying to launder money, which account would you use in that scenario:

1. A dodgy account with a history of fraud
2. A clean account, which has been clean in the past

You seem to think that 'at one point' legit people never go rouge. Well pal, you might want to have a look in the xfer threads and NVG where some of the most trustworthy people are outed as scammers.

The UK Gambling Commission provides an example of suspicious activity:

"Money is deposited by a customer or held over a period and withdrawn by the customer without being used for gambling. For instance, suspicions should be raised by any large amounts deposited in gaming machines or gambling accounts that are then cashed or withdrawn after very little game play or gambling."

http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk...-terrorism.pdf
Section 8.12, example 4


The Malta Gaming Authority state as part of their Systems Documentation Checklist:

"The Terms and Conditions should state any restrictions on withdrawal of funds not used for wagering / betting"

http://www.mga.org.mt/wp-content/upl...hecklist-1.pdf
Point 2.7.6.6

While the MGA requirement is not phrased in a way to make this type of restriction mandatory, any operator who does not state such restrictions in their T&C would have to justify this during the licencing process.

i was asking stars support about this and also recieved the answer that it is due to licencing. when i asked about exact rule/law and if they can point me to the source they refused to do so and only answered that everything is on their site.

after that they allowed me to withdraw all my funds without need to wager them before. this will be impossible if the licencing will be the case. i am pretty sure they will not risk their licence because of this.

i can prove all this with emails if needed.
they are lying as always since amaya takeover.

The policy existed pre-Amaya. I always thought it was reasonable enough. Back in the day I used to receive transfers and had to play through a certain amount of rake before I could withdraw. I emailed support and asked them directly how many VPPs I had to earn and they gave me an exact figure. I always played through that much and withdrew no problem. I don't remember it being an unreasonable amount of volume.

This happened to me, I had no interest in playing poker on stars. I must have rolled over my balance in sports bets by was only allowed to withdraw winnings. My available withdrawal never went in to my deposited amount. Stars support gave copied and pasted answer and balance is just sitting there.

If sites were so concerned about money laundering then they shouldn't let you deposit anything before verifying your profile. However, you deposit and lose 'dirty' money then stars and any other site doesn't care. Betting shops in the UK seem to survive without you needing to give every document to receive your winnings where you can bet anonymously.

I have no idea what their fees actually are, nor what the exact AML requirements are. What I do know is there are fees involved, so I can see why poker sites would want to see some kind of action before allowing withdrawals. And if sites didn't require any action whatsoever, it certainly would be a great way to launder money.

My own opinion is that it's reasonable for them not to allow people to continually cashout without sufficient play. But there also should be some situational allowance - especially for long-term, active customers. Perhaps that's not realistic for some reason, IDK.

If sites were only concerned about money laundering, then that might be true. But of course we all know they are most concerned about their bottom line, so they're going to happily take your money and sort out AML later.

I don't think that's a great comparison. If there was a way for you to hand online sites cash, I'm sure they'd happily take it and pay you back the same way. But when you're able to sit at a computer and send money electronically, they're now facing multiple ways to be defrauded that are much more limited when they deal with you face-to-face.

The regulations are not written in a, "you must to A, B and C", style. It says you must develop an AML policy and procedures to enforce that policy. Then they give guidance such as this:

When an operator applies for a licence they develop a policy that makes sense in the context of the service they are offering. That policy is reviewed by the licencing authority and either approved and becomes part of the operating restrictions or it is sent back with further guidance to be amended if it is deemed to not be adequate. PokerStars deals with multiple licensing authorities and it is best for them to have consistent policies across all licenses as much as possible. So sometimes the most restrictive jurisdiction ends up controling policies in more permissive jurisdictions.

As Bobo has said several times a one time pass through is not an overly onerous requirement. It also serves the buisness interest of ensuring a minimum amount of rake generated to offset transactional costs.

This analogy does not work at all. In the case of the betting shop you walk in hand them your money, make your bet and they hand you a betting slip and you walk out. If you win the bet, you go back hand them the slip, they give you your winnings. You could use this as a way to launder money but you have put 100% of your money at risk. And while you can do this anonymously for small amounts if you make a significantly large bet you will not be able to remain anonymous. The shop will have a betting limit below this value if they want to avoid the need to have a system to record that information.

What you can not do at the betting shop is anonymously hand them $1000 and say please hold this for me I will be back on Thursday to pick it up. Which would be an analogy of someone depositing money to an online gambling site, then withdrawing the money without ever placing a bet.

This is perfectly normal. The terms are written by lawyers. A routine customer service rep could inadvertently write something that isn't legally correct, and this could then be used against them at some later date.

if their first line support cannot answer such legal questions why they did not simply push requests to someone responsibile for this?
also they have prescripted answers for everything in the universe exept questions about their licencing rules?

i repeat: they ALLOWED me to withdraw WITHOUT wagering first after my complains. it means it is not licencing matter, they will not be risking to lose their licence for my 150 euros.

It is a licensing matter, just not in the direct way you're implying. Their license doesn't dictate "you must make this rule in your cashier or lose your license".

They're cost cutting throughout the whole company, this way they don't need staff members to manually review any flagged accounts and make decisions. They save on staff costs and also force some players to play/bet more than they wanted to. Win/win for Amaya.