The lack of communications from the DOJ has been ridiculous, but you're just being childish. What would you have the PPA do different?

Are you ****ing serious? For starters, how bout they stop acting like docile little catamite house slaves and get MORE aggresssive. Sending ****ing letters is NOT aggresive...its what soccer moms do when they want a Walmart refund because they got over charged 35cents on Grape Koolaid.

They should be on Fox news/MSNBC/etc. absoultely SLAMMING the DoJ. What a perfect opportunity to do it during elections! They have half a BILLION ****ING DOLLARS and they just are content to keep it in their hands....and do you think that money is sitting idle, collecting dust? Pffft.

No lets send more angry emails that get dumped into a junk mail box, and sorted by a computer....never to see the light of day....or human eyes.

Getting money back isn't even part of the PPA mission. It is something I'm glad we can help out with, but it's not something anyone ever promised you.

If you prefer, feel free to pursue your claim independently of PPA. There's no reason not to.

That sounds like a good idea....if our goal is never to get repaid.

This is EXACTLY what im talking about. This post is from the Vice President of the PPA. I rest my case entirely. Just keep reading and rereading the above post if youre wondering how the PPA has been repping Poker Players for the past 6 years.

Reprehensible statement. I actually had to choke back the vomit after reading that. Enjoy your free lunch at the DoJ, I recommend the Turkey on Rye with tomato and mayo.

And I had to hold back my laughter at your plan to scream at the DoJ and to get mass media coverage of our plight, as if non-poker players would get signs and protest the DoJ at the horror of players having to wait a month or two to get repaid the money the DoJ got back for us.

You know... screaming and yelling always gets you far, right? Have you ever had anyone change their mind because you screamed at them? Has anyone ever said to you "you know, I am a jerk. Now I see since you screamed it at me and told me so"?

Dude, the DoJ could have said we deserved to lose our money for playing on offshore sites. Instead, they insisted on full repayment for U.S. players and held up the sale of FTP assets to ensure just that. Now, they are going to go through their process for remission.

I really don't know why you think you deserve more than that. Where would you be without PPA and DoJ?

PPA is not stopping you from pursuing any other avenues. Go ahead and do what you wish.

Forgive me for not laughing.




When did I say "Scream"....I know when I did...never. Nice misdirection though. Nice hand sir.

...sure im not going to find your name on one of my ballots tomorrow?

Sigh...**** it...

Poker is just a game at the end of the day; all things being equal.

Right?

where can i d/l the software? i d/l'd from full tilts site and have the .net version, and it only shows play chip balance along with my address.

I think the bigger issue is just the scam factor. I bought a good amount of money from RoW players and since I posted about it publicly had some people contact me about buying US funds. The issue is that although RoW had reason to sell even if they weren't going broke (they thought the value was lower than I did), that's not really true for US players. We are going to get our money, it's just a matter of when. If someone wasn't on the verge of going broke they likely wouldn't be selling their FTP money. The odds of a person who is close to broke scamming is astronomically higher than someone who's doing fine financially. So although objectively FTP money might be worth more than 65c (or w/e it trades at nowadays I've ignored it since it was confirmed we're getting our money), the added scam risk is generally going to make it trade at much lower than it's actually worth. And if they're reputable enough for me to believe they're not a scam risk they'd have enough people they could just straight up get a loan from rather than sell their FTP. Sucks for the legit people without a good rep in poker going through hard times but that's just the way it is.

THIS

The PPA is and has always been worthless, and they have accomplished almost nothing, which is amazing given the funding that they had.

Their lobbying efforts have all been a colossal failure, and they pretty much run and hide whenever they have the ability to do something useful that happens to be out of the scope of their precious mission statement.

The PPA board is extremely arrogant, and their representatives refuse to take constructive criticism without turning it into a personal battle.

Never once have I seen a PPA representative say, "You're right, we messed up. We'll do it differently next time" or "Hey, that's a great idea. We hadn't thought of that before!"

Nope. The PPA dictates to us from above what we should do, and we need to get in line lock-step behind them, or we aren't committed to the cause.

Don't bother trying to reason with them, unless you enjoy arguing endlessly on the internet.

This is ridiculously false. PPA reps have been on the news defending poker (Pappas is amazingly good), writing articles/editorials online (idk about in newspapers?), and they've lobbied in congress. They turned what was once a slam dunk "no one cares about poker players" attitude by our lawmakers to people who actually talk with the ppa before implementing policies. You do have a point with the way some of their representatives talk on 2p2, but it's understandable that they'd be a bit upset after doing all the work they do only to have posters talk about them being worthless.

Think about this though. How many people have heard of FoF? How many religious social conservatives are in this country? Now how many people do you think care about online poker? The numbers are just not even close. FoF is a humongous organization that almost everyone has heard of, whereas the ppa and the online poker movement before the ppa hadn't even been heard of by most people. Now look at where we are now. We have a bill that has a decent chance of passing that will legalize online poker. Of course it's not the greatest bill, and there were definitely some concessions made to get votes, but that's how politics work. When you have a group like FoF and the entire gop platform against you do you really expect the ppa to magically implement the exact laws we want? What do you honestly expect them to do?

Dude, I've jumped on the PPA (particularly Rich Muny) a few times when I think they've mishandled forum threads and such, and I'm usually the first one to support taking organizations/people to task on the tough questions nobody likes to ask, but 90% of the PPA criticism I see is completely ridiculous. It almost always amounts to "With very little understanding of the situation, I picked out of thin air a level of results I think the PPA should have achieved by now, based mostly on what I wish would happen, and am now going to throw a tantrum about it because I have someone to blame".

The PPA has had 6 years and accomplished very little.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard, "We have a bill with a decent chance of passing", only to see it go nowhere, I would be richer than Isai Scheinberg.

The PPA also has a habit of taking credit for things that were going to happen with or without their involvement.

We are not talking about a grassroots organization with a few thousand in funding. The PPA has had millions of dollars in their budget, and we have seen virtually no results. Furthermore, their leadership is arrogant and refuses to believe that anyone else's ideas have any validity, unless those ideas happen to mirror theirs.

What I see from the PPA are a bunch of commands on what we should do to help, but very little open discussion or polling of the community.

I was never expecting overnight miracles, but six years is hardly overnight, and some tangible results beyond excuses would be nice.

Now, if the PPA honestly did their best and still failed, I wouldn't fault them. There's only so much that lobbying can do, and I understand that. However, this organization is completely closed to changing their direction and/or assessing where they might be going wrong, and anyone who dares challenge them is treated like a pariah who hates freedom and those that fight for it.

When you represent a community, part of the responsibility that comes with it is LISTENING to the community's membership. The PPA is very poor at listening.

Engineer, I understand your in the middle of a beef and this guys being doucey, but this is not a good statement. I hope setting the Full Tilt situation right and getting us our money back is part of your mission. It's certainly a part of returning some level of legitimacy to the industry in the US. I remember when we could click donations to the ppa via our ftp account. You guys can't forget who you used to be in bed with even if you have new sugardaddies now.

This rage is going to grow exponentially as the ROW is playing on the site that the DOJ seized from Americans and sold to a Canadian, meanwhile holding our money as long as they ****ing want. It is outrageous, and there is a certain bit of appeal that the injustice would have with the general population. You guys should play on that if this drags into next year.

I have 1.2 million

Man I hate this position. It makes it seem like US players are just some peons who should feel lucky to have any bone tossed their way. It's very unbecoming of the fine and distinguished men of honor we know all poker players to be.

The theme of this thread has become wondering how the DOJ could let ROW players get paid without making US players whole, presuming that making winning US players whole was good politics.

Today being both election day and FTP launch day is probably not a coincidence, the government likely insisted on that schedule, and the administration likely insisted that the remission process wasn't made public until after the election.

Most of us assumed the government would want to announced victim remission prior to the election if possible, but if their decision is to pay balances and treat losses as if fraud wasn't a factor to depositors, or vice versa - either way one set of 'victims' would cry foul - it makes a lot of sense not to announce it just before the election.

Regardless of the PPA says at their DOJ meeting, my guess is we hear something in the next 10 days or so.

Let's hope so. Essentially silence since August.

unfortunately, no ones 'guess' means much of anything. lol

If we don't hear soon there's always Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years to look forward to predicting new news.

Do you realize how long 6 years is in the grand scheme of things? Government does not work fast. For reference, look at how long it took the DoJ to collect evidence and eventually charge FTP/Stars/Cereus. I think it took them something on the order of 5+ years from the beginning of their investigation to unsealing the indictment? Again, they are fighting against groups like FoF and the entire social conservative movement in the GOP. These people have a lot of ****ing influence. If you expected to go from them winning the fights handily (do you remember what the vote to introduce UIGEA into Port Security was? It was a ****ing landslide) to passing favorable legislation in 6 years, and anything else is failing, you're just dreaming and don't understand politics.

Thanks to the PPA, when the news does a piece on internet poker, even Fox News will have their ignorant anchor, an anti-poker hack, and then someone like Greg Raymer or John Pappas arguing our side. Before the ppa they would simply interview someone from the government who would talk about the evil gamblers donating to Al Quadea. The ppa can totally take credit for shifting the frame of debate on internet poker in this country, and that is not a small feat.

So while I'd love them to have completely repealed UIGEA, legalized poker with deposits with a credit card, and prevented black friday, that's simply not a realistic solution. You have to realize the fact that they are fighting incredibly strong organizations and voting blocks and quite frankly the fact that they've shifted the debate in this country's political process in only 6 years is a feat in and of itself.


I'm not sure about their funding, but take a look at the opposition. You think FoF is a grassroots organization with a few thousand in funding? Up until very recently the casinos were all against us. You think they only have a few thousand in funding? The NFL is against us, you think they only spend a few thousand lobbying? The fact that they're putting up a fight is impressive when you look at the kind of opposition they're up against.

I'm curious as to how much you've tried. Care to link to some threads/posts where you've suggested something or attempted open discussion where ppa people have shot you down or shut down debate about a topic?

When I turn on Fox News and they discuss online poker, I see guys like John Pappas speaking up for my right to play poker. When I talk to non-poker friends, they actually understand that poker players are not just evil terrorist-funding degenerates. Similarly in those same 6 years, you don't think the other side has been fighting tooth and nail to expand UIGEA and actually give it some teeth? The fact that despite UIGEA being a landslide before the ppa, and them being unable to strengthen it into something that enforceably bans US players from playing online poker is impressive in and of itself. Do you think FoF is bitching about how they've failed to win the battle to ban online poker? I'm still playing on sites like revolution and merge and despite them being on shaky legal ground at best, I know that I can not be charged with a crime. The fact that FoF has failed to make that a crime in 6 years is a victory in and of itself.

I do agree that sometimes TE in particular gets a bit too defensive, and can make some inappropriate comments. And although usually he's quick to point out that his posts on 2p2 are his personal views/accounts and not always the views of the ppa, people are going to give more weight to posts made by the green name with the ppa logo, that's just the way it is.

That said, I have talked with TE in the past and know that he actually is open to listening. But the average person who wants them to "listen" simply wants to tell them "make ftp give me my money back, and make online poker legal already". What do you actually expect them to do? Again if you can point out places where people have made legitimate suggestions or attempted to open discussion and the ppa has shot it down I'd like to see some links.

amen zach. people lamenting the lack of an ideal solution are ignoring the many worse alternatives that could have (or could still) happen.

In a recent post, Shyman Markus indicates that US players balances will continue to show $0. Is there a way for people to confirm that their outstanding balances are correct?

If the DOJ says you have $10 and you're sure you have $10K, wouldn't it make sense to rectify the error now rather than wait a number of months to discover the error?