I guessing the sites agreed because their main concern was being able to get US players our money back.

Aslo, the domains are still in control of the DOJ, the domain seizure hasn't been settled yet,legally speaking. This agreement just allows the sites use of there domains, which is still under control of the DOJ, so in a sense the DOJ is judge,jury and executioner if they (the DOJ) feel the sites aren't living up to the agreement. At least this is the way i read the agreement in my non-lawyer understanding.

that does sound like stars has their nuts in a vice. im surprised i havent read this before

That all makes sense nova. It just didn't seem like much of an "agreement" to my non-lawyer mind since the DOJ holds all the cards. But PS does have the option of litigating the seizure itself if the DOJ decides to exercise its authority to break the agreement, so PS does have some leverage.

Not standard. To be honest, I've put provisions like this in settlement agreements when I was dealing with very shady characters (who I thought might try and litigate anything) and I had a lot of bargaining power.

I think this provision's presence tells you that Stars didn't think it had a lot of bargaining power (or that they used whatever power they had to include a "no consent to jurisdiction" clause which I am sure was a dealbreaker for them).

It is not standard, but I disagree that this is indicative of Stars and FTP thinking they did not have a lot of bargaining power. If the DOJ unilaterally revokes the deal, the sites would lose almost nothing: it does not hurt the sites to not have to pay US players because the DOJ wont let them; and while losing the Domain Name is a hassle, it is an easily surmountable hassle. Plus they would then get to file a lawsuit to get the Domain Name back.

The DOJ did not have to make the deal in the first place. It was the DOJ who showed weakness here (mostly, I think, to avoid bad publicity regarding player funds).

How does it hurt the sites if the DOJ kills the deal for no good reason and the sites then say: "Sorry US players, we'd love to pay you but your DOJ wont let us" ?

IMHO, the sites' lawyers agreed to this provision because it appears to save face for the DOJ (their the "sole deciders") but really had no practical effect on the sites.

Skallagrim

IMO this clause is the DOJs way of protecting against "illegal" transfers disguised as player refunds and to prevent the site from receiving money via the .com...I expect the DOJ to be very heavy handily supervising these transfer when they finally begin...

I think it's misconstruing the situation to say that the DoJ "showed weakness" here. It's simply not in anyone's best interest for the players not to get their money.

It hurts the sites to not pay players, even if the DoJ won't let them, because it makes the funds of foreign players appear less safe. A similar situation could easily arise in another country and it's good for the sites for players to be able to expect to receive their money under such circumstances.

It's bad for the DoJ, or more specifically, for the politically ambitious prosecutors from the SDNY, to have millions of Americans feeling they were robbed by their own government.

This is the main reason I've been pretty confident from day one that Stars and Tilt players were getting their money. The alternatives are absolute no win situations. It's not like the prosecutors themselves get to keep the money they've seized if they don't let the sites pay the players. The Neteller situation a few years back played out the same way for the same reasons.

Dropping in to say Stars support told me my cashout that "went through" on the 15th would be refunded to my account, still hasn't, but it took me like 4-5 emails to finally pry a definitive answer from them

so that's good, still worried it's stuck in limbo but PS support has never lied to me before

pstars and ft getting their .com domain names back is an irrelevant issue with respect to usa player cashouts. u guys are babbling about a ridiculous and insignificant event in the greater scheme of things.

the cashouts are initiated within the poker client, and even when ft and pstars' .com domain names were seized, players could (including usa players) still log on to the poker clients and could still access the cashier screen. the .com domain names have nothing to do with the operation of the poker client or the poker sites' servers. the servers that run the poker sites were not seized (practically impossible), only the domain names were, therefore the players never lost access to their poker client or the access channel to the poker site server itself.

what's most important in the doj and ft/pstars agreement is that the doj will allow one payment processor to be designated for the sole purpose of facilitating in the banking area the return of people's cash.

the poker client does not allow americans to withdraw/transfer anymore

What he's saying is that the .com domain names are nothing more than a red herring here. Aside from Full Tilt's characteristic **** up releasing an update that linked to their .com site when it was already dead, the domain names are irrelevant. They're like entries in a telephone book. When you already know the sites' phone numbers (as anybody with the clients already downloaded does) then the domains mean nothing.

The DoJ temporarily returning the domains is alot like them temporarily allowing the companies to be listed in the white pages again. It means absolutely nothing for their customers who all already know their phone number. What is unclear is if this is some sort of posturing from the DoJ or shocking ignorance as to what domain names actually do and are.

irrelevant to the domain name seizure. the reason u cannot cashout is because the top management of both pstars and ft have decided u cannot cashout or player transfer (i dont care to speculate about why). then more recently, they programmed the poker client code to auto disable the above functions (since, for instance, there's no point in letting u initiate a cashout via the client when it will never be processed and approved by the site anyway because of company policy).

or they just don't care anymore about the .com domain - they can function just fine from the .eu domain and have already moved everything over...

Correct, it wouldn't have been approved by the site. But they don't need to change the software's functionality to disallow players from withdrawing or transferring. Why did they do it?

Regardless of that, how do you expect the players to go about requesting their funds? Do you think that FTP will change the software again, giving Americans permissions to withdraw, and then we have a limited window before they change it back? We are going to have one method of getting the money, so I doubt they'd open the cashier up, where we have our choice of processors.

It seems set up for us to request our funds by submitting such a request on their website. Can you give logistical reasons why this will not work?

Agree.

No chance they "just don't care anymore" about their. ".com" addresses. ".com" is the standard domain for businesses worldwide and the sites' .com addresses are very significant components of their brand values.

dunno about player transfers.

my best guess for cashouts, is that changing the client to block cashouts was prolly made to prevent giving the wrong impression to players that cashouts were working as normal; in addition, the sites didnt want ppl continuing their attempts to cashing out only to later bombard support with inquiries regarding the status of their cashouts and with complaints about cashouts being later reverted.

i dunno about ft, but pstars has said that the cashout function in the poker client will be temporarily disabled until they find a suitable "payment processor." my expectation is that once pstars resumes its cashouts for the usa, they will simply enable again the cashout function inside the poker client. i have no idea what cashout methods for usa players will be available at that time.

requesting a cashout via a website? why would the sites set aside extra man hours and spend all this extra money to mimic but on a website what their respective poker clients already can do? everyone still has access to their player accounts within the poker client.

why is PS being so shady about giving out cash outs? it seems like they're just stalling for some reason...

Why do any of that? Why not just send all U.S. players a check since they can't play any more? Why should players even have to request a cashout?

If I remember correctly, when InterPoker quit taking U.S. customers that's what they did.

Yeah, it's definitely because of them that we're still waiting for our money, and not the DOJ.

InterPoker probably didnt have a consent agreement with the DOJ that required an independent monitor to verify the only processing of payments done to US players was the return of balances.

Really? It's been a week and there payment processing system just got completely blown up, there are hundreds of thousands (maybe million+) that are affected. It is going to take them awhile to get ready to move on returning funds. Besides they have thousands of withdrawals that were in various stages of processing that they have to figure out whether the player received funds or not.

That wasn't the point of my post. I wasn't commenting on the delay. I understand that.

What I'm questioning is all the talk about requesting payout from the .com website or the cashier within the client. Why does it matter? You shouldn't even have to request a cashout. They should all just be processed automatically once processing actually starts.

This is one of many posts since BF that illustrates that most people just don't think for themselves. Since the DOJ indicted PS, PS must be shady.

Some will view it as stalling, others will give them the benefit of the doubt. No one really knows what's going on behind the scenes right now, but years of experience tells me those with money on PS should be sleeping easier than those dealing with FTP and to a much greater extent, UB/AP.

not all afftected players want to cash out completlely or at all. pstars has made it widely known that affected players will be able to move offshore and, after doing so, will be able to re-establish access to real-money games.


but even is we assume all affected players want cashouts, chances are very slim after all that's happened that banks and payment processors will risk running afoul of the doj by providing financial services to either ft or pstars. both these sites are in the doj's crosshairs and are toxic to any financial entity operating on planet earth.