at some point you probably just wont be able to open AP/UB and they will disappear if it came to that

To be completely honest I'm kinda surprised this hasn't happened yet.

its looking more and more like a depressing reality

Do you think people are still depositing on AP?

Why is AP/UB paying out anything out at all? if they were just gonna run with the money why would they pay out anything?

as long as people are playing on the site then they will most likely keep the site going. if there was no traffic im sure they would cut and run.

They have very very light traffic now.

I have been wondering for awhile what reason do they have to keep site going?
Forget the rake, the 100 players playing are not the reason to keep open.
There has to be some reason that I havent read yet that makes them put rakeback into our accounts, keep the slow slow payouts going to non US players and actually have someone from support answering emails and such.
Why bother? They would do me huge favor to come out and say my $8500 tied up there is gone forever so I could stop reading the few threads I read each day and make clean break from my online poker life. This is more painful then the one time i had my back waxed by 3 asian woman.

Current rake generated is prob around 3-5k/day which is prob close to current daily payouts but nowhere close to covering the expenses to run the site. Essentially I think they are just stalling on that front and trying to find an important financial solution on the side (get the discussed uncollected EFTs, maybe get some clueless investor's $$$ etc...) It's worth losing couple of thousands a day at the moment trying to find a solution.

As cruel as this may sound if you don't expect the DOJ to give you any financial help for the US players, if you're UB why aren't you bailing out on the US players? Get some financial help, re-brand with a new name, confiscate the transfered US to non-US funds+chip dumping after april 15th if needed and have a more realistic shot of staying afloat with less then 50% of the current player liabilities? Non-US players slowly get 100% of their money back within a year and US players make noise and get a certain % from the DOJ.

Am I wrong in thinking FTP has no shot to survive if they don't pay US players but UB as a small one? This whole idea was initially brought up on Haleys blog a month ago and has not been discussed since.

agreed

good news is, this is the lowest point possible for everybody. During the next few weeks (could be 1 or 10 weeks) the site is either going to shut down and we can all move on (excluding any demands/movement towards the DOJ) or the situation will get slightly better with some sort of press release or improved payments. No way they can keep status quo that much longer.

NONE of this money will EVER be released. Not one cent taken by them historicaly has EVER been released. They are keeping it to go toward the 500MM fine. END OF STORY.

Since you are so certain, what kind of odds will you lay me?

that, and why even keep the US/non-US cashout distinction?

with virtually no games running and probably few/no deposits, it seems pretty unfair to continue discriminating when basically NOBODY is generating rake and you have people like guigui sitting out all across the lobby idiotically. for the same effort he could probably one table 50nl while watching porn. instead of a ghost town he'd prefer a virtual graveyard.

i have no money on cereus - i just feel bad for everyone, especially americans who've suffered waiting with no way to get even a cent of their money.

fwiw there is some traffic on the site (more than i expected) and i think gui's tactic is helping some games get started. pokerscout btw hasnt worked since they blocked usa players i think

My guess is that there are two reasons:

1) It's a convenient way to prevent many players from cashing out with some sort of excuse. Obviously, they were not able to allow US players to withdraw before they reached an agreement with the DOJ (on May 10 if memory serves). They can't repay everyone, so they're just gonna keep the policy.

2) Many in the company apparently believe that the site will continue to service non-US customers for the foreseeable future.

There's a possible third reason as well:

3) There's basically nobody making these decisions right now, so trying to read into them is silly.

This seems way more likely than most people want to give it credit for, imo.

The one thing I don't understand with this whole mess is the signing of the DOJ agreement. If I'm AP and I have the Antiguan government behind me, why not just ignore the indictments and stay open to US players? It seems clear that would be the most profitable move short and long term since such a giant portion of their customer base was American.

They could have imposed a 500 max/week withdrawal and there would be at least 3x rake being generated with US players live. Even with this cashout solution they could have been the 2/3rd biggest US room. Maybe I'm missing something but I can't come up with a reason why a decision maker at Cereus would cut US players off unless they had some sort of plan to pay US players out.

yopur statement isn't totally accurate pokerscout has not been tracking UB/AP for more than 2 weeks however I been clicking onto the application and this past w/end was the most traffic they had since black friday seems like they leveled off on sunday there was 6,900 and probably about 500-1000 were play money players and during the week they are averaging 4,000-5000 at there peak time same number probably for play money. I read another post 3 up from mine or more maybe the guy said why didn'y UB/AP just say DOJ go F yourselves I couldn't agree more they should have told them to F off and keep the US open what could of the DOJ have done??? any suggestions?

a mirrion to wann

not much, write them a sternly worded letter, and keep confiscating processor funds.. but there comes a point when nobody is willing to process those transactions due to what the DOJ is doing.

so 100k in an us players acct is worth about $0 rt now

what is 100k in a non american acct worth rt now?
(as in i need to cash all of it out rt now)

..........


also, i agree 0% chance the doj gives any money back. that was a "tax/penalty" for business conducted in their market without permission. it has nothing to do with player accounts.


......

4) There are no decisions to be made other than what is my next project/scam and how much can we sell the software for

Very interesting. It's obvious that Cereus won't be paying the US players without the frozen money. Furthermore, it's almost certain the US Govt won't give Cereus direct access to the funds.

The big question is what's going to happen when Cereus ultimately folds up shop. With Americans getting shafted reportedly $20+ million, will the US Govt attempt to keep the money they have locked? A story like this will get mainstream press.

Apologies, I didn't realize PokerScout had stopped tracking them. However, I find it hard to believe the numbers you provide are accurate. I'm guessing you are non-US? Only because you can see real money games that are going on and I, being in the US, cannot. I remember before BF they were getting ~3,500 players for their WSOP and $50 freerolls so I assume that accounts for nearly half the traffic you are seeing. When you say "probably about 500-1,000 were play money," what gives you this impression? Almost 6,000 real money players? How?

As far as UB/AP telling the DOJ to f**k off; if this had happened US players who remained playing there would certainly have no way to cashout. No processor in their right mind would allow transactions that essentially give the DOJ the finger. IMO, testing the patience of the DOJ will never turn out well for the other party.

I received another echeck fwiw on the 14th. Hopefully its not my last one.

So I downloaded the UB software just to check how much traffic there was (did not sign in and have no intention of doing so).

Right now: 12:30 PM ET, there are 75 real money cash players on the cereus network. All NLHE (no other games going). Highest is 1/2NL (2 players).

There are a little less than 200 players enrolled in various real money tournaments currently running (excluding freerolls). There are 26 players playing in real money sngs.

I counted these up manually, so I can't guarantee the absolute precision of these numbers.

Im on getting the Omaha going so come join and play lol