Unfortunately Pokerstars are probably holding most of the cards here (pun fully intended), including point 39. in the claim about transferring money to other players, which if it was not solely for the purpose of facilitating the movement of money, but was for staking a player or paying out an investor then is likely in contravention of Pokerstars' player transfer rules.
"Transferring to other players:
Our transfer tool should only be used to help other players fund their accounts so that they can play at our tables. Any other use of our transfer tool is prohibited and transactions that do not meet this requirement will be rejected.
If you wish to stake other players without playing at the tables yourself, then we recommend that you send funds to these players using a money transfer service outside of our site."
Source: https://www.pokerstars.com/help/arti...oth-xfer/8949/
At face value this means that you can be given money by the player who wants to play, e.g. in cash or by bank transfer, and then transfer the equivalent amount from your Pokerstars funds for them to play.
It appears to prohibit any other form of activity by player transfer, including buying pieces of someone or funding them for a staking agreement. It is a totally dumb set of rules given what happens in the real world of poker but it is in their rules.
Another point likely to favour Pokerstars is, number 43.
43. "Activity and account access from within the United States". This doesn't explicitly say during the comp in question, so perhaps technically any access from within the US even if one isolated log in to check a balance weeks after the SCOOP win might be in breach of their terms.
Also, in my experience of the law and of legal rulings, a company
allowing something that is in breach of their terms to happen (because they either didn't notice it or didn't have the resources to police it), doesn't necessarily mitigate it when it happens again at a later date or later period.
The above needs to be a basic principle of law/regulations otherwise it would mean that the lack of policing of something breaking the law/regulation by an organisation up to a certain point in time would then make it okay for the breaking of the law/regulation to happen during a later time when it
does eventually become policed and detected.
My non legal, purely human view on this is that Pokerstars are most likely trying it on here. They are a gaming company for starters! (so not exactly the most ethical of businesses), and their own player funds transfer rules are out of touch with reality when it is plastered all over staking forums on the internet that players are routinely breaking the regulations by stating that investors can ship to Pokerstars user name xyz****.
The bottom line IMO is unfortunately that Pokerstars are likely to win this case based on a bunch of BS technicalities that by the strict letter of the law will favour them.
It sucks and I feel bad for Gordon Vayo.
Last edited by SageDonkey; 05-08-2018 at 05:54 PM.