Unless TUSKs business plan involved stealing money from skins a 60% rakeback would not affect a thing. Please read my numbers again. Tusk had roughly 17% to pay operating costs etc (plus the 25k skin fees). That 17% is fixed regardless of what rakeback was. They can't touch the 65% the skins get because its not their money. TUSK takes the same amount of money whether a skin gave 60 or 0 rakeback.

I suggest you read the first post again. A skin can pretty much never collapse under this system just liek an affiliate cannot collapse (they are almost the same)

The best way to conceptualize this is to ask yourself could an affiliate ever cause a casino to callapse? The answer is no, because affiliates only give out rakeback from THEIR OWN PROFITS and do not touch casino money. This is the same situation here.

The reason people keep yelling at battlefield and rednines about rakeback is because fellow casinos wanted them kicked off for months as their high rakeback deals were stealing players from other sites and in turn causing somewhat of rakeback war.

Partly agree. I think the better way to look at it is how important is the money to you at the moment. For me even though I have a fair bit tied up seeing a fraction of that now is more important than seeing the whole thing in 2-3 more years.

The suggestion, as I understood it, was taking 20% next month, and sacrificing the remainder. The 20% (rather, 15%) is moreorless guaranteed, though the timescale certainly isn't. If I was out 1K, I'd say, sod the rest and give me £200. If was out 350K, I'd say, no way am I ditching 280K, even if I can get 70K quite soon. That was my point.

Anyway, it's somewhat beside the point. The liquidation will run its slow course.

Folks, speaking purely as a reader, and not wanting to be seen as trying to lay the law down on any oldies: I question the value of purely "BUMP" posts. When I was trying to read the sister thread in the internet forum, I eventually gave up on the basis of the avalanche of the "bumps". They can really cause loss of interest, because you start to think that since nothing new is being added, why bother to read the thread?

The last thing we want is for the general forum readership to start losing interest in the matter. Any comment, however banal, does in my opinion beat "bump".

I agree never been a fan of bumps. You can always come up with something to add or pose some sort of question regarding liquidation or other issues. It also serves to keep the conversation going.

my point was simply that if tusk has operating cost which they would be able to afford using calculations of receiving 17% rake from 27 or however many skins there were and a quite a few of these skins go under or are losing money due to their overly generous offers and not able to pay, this loss of income may cause tusk to have operating costs higher than the money coming in. i have no idea and was just speculating.

Yes but I am saying that tusk does not touch the money that was going to skins. Or at least they wern;t suppose to. Rakeback had nothing to do with them losing money. As mellow has said its likely tusk was doing some very bad things or someone in control of their money was.

The skins can;t go under, they have no operating costs. The skins on TUSK were just glorified affiliates who really had nothing to do with the running of the casino except from a marketting standpoint. This is why I said they were just like affiliates. All customer service payouts etc handled by TUSK. TUSK was the one who ran everything (actually MGS handled alot too but I won;t get into that to avoid confusion). The skins really did nothing (of course most of us players did not know this and this was only found out afterwards)

TUSK grabs 17% of rake on microgaming. Skin grabs 65% and microgaming grabs 17%. There is no crossover in funds. The skins never held players money.

Don;t know how much more I can explain since I think I'm being pretty upfront. With the numbers I provided you its impossible for a skins rakeback of 60% to cause any problems for tusk. TUSK Skins have zero operating costs (unlike other skins) which is where I think you are getting confused. Unlike other skins who have support staff, handle withdrawls and have expenses on TUSK the skins did none of this. Essentially TUSK was one big skin with 27 affiliates.

TUSK had 17% to run the company with. They could not take any of the money microgaming or the skins had. Microgamign or skins could buy hookers with their share of rake and it would not change a dime that TUSK got.

surely the skins have their own promotional costs and so on. you are probably right in your point, but to say the skins have no operational costs must be wrong.

Skins have pretty much the same "operational costs" as any web presence, domain name, hosting etc, plus whatever costs dedicated affiliates incur - listings, advertising and whatnot.

Which is to say: nothing, to all intents and purposes. Small change.

WHEN ARE WE GETTING OUR ****ING MONEY?

hi

I think we are kinda going off topic though with skins operational costs (although I completely agree that they are essentially nothing).

The point is the skins were financially independent from TUSK. Even if they had operational costs of a million dollars per month they would not affect how TUSK does business. Just how if a party porker affiliate had operational costs of 1 billion a month they could not affect party poker. The skisn were sinmply affiliates.

My beef is how nearly all players thought the skin or MGS was running the show and handling money. Nowhere in TOS was it ever disclosed that TUSK was in charge of stuff. No one knew who they were yet they were the one's handling our money.

I doubt very many of us would have deposited knowing that it was a third unknown entity that was running everything. Many people like myself thought MGS handled the money.

At this point seeing it before 2010 would be a good thing. I'd take the over though...

Oh ya and keep in mind, we still only see a portion of it.

What happened to the rumour Microgaming held a substantial part of the money? Just that; rumours?

Don't ask me. I know absolutely nothing about that. And until I see any evidence I'm not going to to bother speculating how long it would take to get that.

I'm just talking about liquidation.

no, it is true, but the hard evidence is in the hands of the liquidators, so people have disregarded it.

So where are we in all of this? Will this get resolved this year? When will the liquidators and the judges go ahead with resolving this case?

I'm not sure that any court proceedings are involved.

Does this mean that:

1) It is a corroboratable fact that Microgaming, and not Tusk, holds Tusk player funds? How has this information come to light?

If yes, then is it the case that:

1) The liquidators have this information and plan to disclose it?

or...

2) The information with be withheld by the liquidators, and will not come to light.

In any event, this suggestion is highly unusual to my way of thinking. It's never been my understanding that player funds pertaining to a licensee are helf by the provider and not the licensee.

I didn't have time to read all the replies in this thread. So if i'm late or something, I'm sorry. I had a problem once with a microgaming site that left and didn't pay me. I got on BetonUSA's new site and they told me microgaming had my money. It took me about three weeks and some threats to get microgaming to even answer my emails. With the answer it didn't take me long to get my money out of BetonUSA. What I learned from this is the individual sites hold your money till you enter the tourney then if you win microgaming immediately transfers the winnings back to the site you signed up with. Below is part of the email Microgaming finally sent:

"We understand your frustration. If BetonUSA have advised you that Microgaming holds your tournament winnings or that Microgaming is in any way responsible for making any payments to BetonUSA players, then they are misleading you.

On the 20th December 2006, the Microgaming Poker Network terminated its relationship with BetonUSA as a result of BetonUSA being in arrears with payments due to the Network. BetonUSA is therefore no longer a part of the Microgaming Poker Network. Neither Microgaming nor the Microgaming Poker Network have ever held, or been in control of, any of your funds or the funds of any other player on the Network. All BetOnUSA player funds have at all times been held and controlled by BetonUSA. BetonUSA is well aware of this, and its statement that Microgaming or its Poker Network holds player funds or is responsible for the payments to players, is false and is known to BetOnUSA to be false."

__________________________________

I hope this helps, glgl
RiverAnAce

Read through this whole thread.

Whole situation is strange.

Really feel for you guys but....

What were you doing chasing too good to be true offers on pokey little "I am here today, likely gone tomorrow" poker rooms. Asking for trouble. A new poker room/skin offering 50%+ rakeback is not going to be around long. If a new online bank sprung up offering crazy 25%+ interest rates for savings, would you not be slightly suspicious?

Seems plenty of people hit did not pay attention to the first rule of bank rolling. Do not keep more than 20-25% of your bank roll in one place.

Chasing Microgaming to be held responsible for this is a total waste of time.

Final conclusion to this thread.. No one has a clue what is happening or what actually happened... including me..

Nothing like the blind leading the blind.

Also read somewhere (am trying to find where.. Can't remember which forum and was some time ago) that TUSK was actually set up and "owned" by one of Australia's richest men. Who, it did not say but must be pretty easy for you guys to dig down and figure it out. If I were to have a guess, I would say James Packer, based on, he is the only super rich Australian into "Media/entertainment". However, in saying that, rich guys tend not to be stupid and to 100% connect any "Rich Australian" to TUSK is going to be the same route as trying to hold Microgaming responsible.

Good luck to you all but am definitely not holding my breath.. If you get between 5-10 cents on the dollar (with a ceiling cap), you will be lucky.

Seemed to have missed your bit here BigT.

Very interesting and good work. You should give up poker and become corporate sleuth.

Keep it up.

The part in bold is solid advice.

The rest of your post just plainly contradicts the first sentence in your somewhat messy post.

Too true Imbecile. (Great name by the way. From you mother or father's side of the family?)

This whole thread is messy. There are so many contradictions, conjectures, assumptions that reading through it, it is impossible to actually believe any of it or know what is true. Some guys really have put the work in to get to the bottom of this but at the same time they still, unfortunately, are still nowhere closer to knowing what actually happened. I doubt we will for quite some time.

In saying that, whenever it happens, you guys all deserve to come out of this on top. Keep it up.

50% RB for non-US sites is nothing exceptional - I've been playing cash games for 4+years and have never played anywhere I haven't had at least that in RB or bonus equivalent.

Currently I'm on Will Hill (iPoker) and getting over 60% (at least until the £600 sign-up bonus runs out).

But yes - it's an important lesson generally - diversify the places you hold your online roll in and research the safety of anywhere you put a significant % of your roll.

Because they were supported by Microgaming, and as such the pokiness of the individual ops was somewhat beside the point. Granted, a gargantuan mistake in retrospect - we now know that Microgaming is no more trustworthy than RTG or any other fly-by-night tinpot provider. However, wisdom with hindsight, bla bla bla...

It wasn't unreasonable of the players to trust Microgaming, on the basis of what they knew at the time.

Here is a list of sites that wont be gone tomorrow.(Probably old valuations but a rough guide)


The top 10 list of Companies offering Poker are:


Skypoker - BSKYB PLC - Value 25158M Euro
Ladbrokes - Ladbrokes PLC - Value 2476M Euro
Bet24 - Modern Times Group - Value 2330M Euro
William Hill - William Hill PLC - Value 1778M Euro
Paddy Power - Paddy Power PLC - Value 1160M Euro
Party Poker - Partygaming - Value 1068M Euro
BWIN Poker - BWIN Interactive Entertainment AG - Value 758M Euro
Pacific Poker (888) - 888 Holdings PLC - Value 631M Euro
Unibet Poker - Unibet Group PLC - Value 457M Euro
Eurobet Poker / Coral Poker - Rank - 446M Euro
Source Yahoo Financial.