Because of my place of living, I'm still able to play at Stars. How will US players do to continue playing O8?

I'm really sorry for how things "develop". We all suffer.

With ourselves.

Plaaynde-

No matter where I lived, I would worry about my Pokerstars account. I'm not terribly well informed, but I don't think that just b/c you're outside the US that your account is safe. I think the Feds are going after the entire company, not just US accounts.

-Bryce

Thanks for your concern. My hundred Euros will probably be a nice addition to the campain.

I'm seeing my play as a more difficult play money game right now.


Edit: struck me that play money is still working for everyone. If only that worked for me, I probably would see how to achieve the highest win rate possible there. But, as I once analyzed when reading Psychology of Poker, money is only about 20% of the reason I play. Intellectual challenge and simply trying to win are the main reasons.

I'm a Canadian living in the UK and I just cashed out over half my bankroll (from Stars) to try to beat the rush of players that will be looking to do the same thing.

I wonder how much of a deposit reserve FT and Stars holds in liquid funds? I think we may be about to find out.

From what I read, Stars' license required that they keep the players funds in separate bank accounts. Base on that info, the player's money should be liquid. However, all the money in the US payment processor's accounts are tied up.

Account funds are held in trust by a registered bank; even if PS got totally busted (which isn't going to happen - they're not US based), the funds would be safe

i just started a weekly homegame in central indiana, pm me for details.

I'd like transportation from Idaho, & the ability to buy-in with Stars/FTP IOU's.

@strikr300 - aren't you seriously ****ed now since you're playing for a living? Or is this finally the break you needed to go pro bowling?

i think he's married, strikr can you confirm? oh man i wish i wouldn't have blown off so many relationships for poker the past couple years and had a safety net girlfriend to float me cash for the next year or two

there goes every1's SN/SNE goals... (including mine)

You are right as the money "should" be safe in a third party account but that really doesn't mean anything. They money would still have to get to you in the US. Now if we all move to another country then you would be able to get the money so If I had 40 or 50k like some of you I just may be willing to do so in order to get the money out. Just be careful about the laws regarding taxes and bringing in large amounts of money. But at any rate it is still illegal to receive money in the US from pokerstars so even if the money is safe that doesn't mean there is a way to get it. The government isn't going to allow us to receive the money IMO. If you gave a crack dealer money for crack and he got busted before you received the crack do you think the feds would say no crack for you but here is a refund?
I was going to attempt live play this week end but my heart currently just isn't in it.

I think there are new business opportunities that may have come out of this whole ordeal.

1) psycho analyst
2) bankruptcy lawyer
3) grief counselor
4) repo man
5) funeral director

Stars is saying that the money from players outside the US is safe and that for us it would just be business as usual.
If it's true or not, i don't know BUT i will let my roll on stars and won't cashout.
It's kinda the same thing that happened to a major swiss bank. They started struggling and everyone thought they should get their money away to put it on another bank. That caused most of the problems later on, since the bank was ready to handle the problems they first had.

Even though i pay a lot of rake to play i'm still very pleased what stars has done for me as a player. After all i'm just gonna trust them i guess.

side question: would it be possible for u guys to transfer ur money to some pokerstars account outside the US, so the receiver could cash it out for u? Or are u not permitted to do ANY money transactions on ur account?

Apparently you see the light in the tunnel.

it doesn't allow anything. We can't even play in freeroll tourneys.

That's probably because there is real money payout.

Has anybody tried the highest play money stakes? Are they playable for training for example?

Has anyone heard of any possible time frame to get our money off of ftp/stars and how they are going to handle it? Surely the possibility of the government keeping the funds isn't likely is it?

Training for what? If we have to wait for legislation to allow online play I can imagine the play to be different than it is now. Live play is different than online play so its not going to help you in that aspect. And do any of us really play for fun? I am pretty sure we are all in it for the money.

I have some background in chess in my youth. It was natural to play "for fun", which is trying to figure out how to win, for example. It was also natural there was no money in it. Maybe we should do a poll about this some time, why people on 2+2, and in this forum specifically, play poker.

So back to the actual theme of the thread. Where are you U.S. based guys going to go?

How likely is the same thing to happen to Merge, Cake, or Bodog?

This would actually not be all that bad, if the u.s. players could keep most of their funds in an ewallet, and just keep enough $$$ on the sites to play, but the **** w/ neteller, epassport, and ewalletxpress, makes this extremely risky.

Also, I am curious, since Merge and Cake are networks if the feds were to go after them, do they shut down the entire network??? Seems impossible, considering they would prob. have to shut down the network servers, which are all obv not within U.S.' jurisdiction...

another question, does the U.S. gov. have ability to shot down U.S. players' access to poker clients by having ISP physically block the traffic from b/w u.s. players and sites?

I think that a lot of players, myself included, had a lot of money online and are not likely to redeposit with another site until the issue or returning these funds is resolved.

+1 I only have $1719 on pokerstars ATM so not as big of a loss as some of the players but with all the uncertainty going on there is no way I would put a penny in another site. If they went after the 3 largest with success they are all in jeopardy.