"Cash Transfer" Issues for US Poker Players Post Black Friday

Online Poker Cash Transfers

In what is universally accepted in the poker world as "the good old days" before UIGEA, US online poker customers had access to cashout methods such as ewallets and echecks, where cashout times were nearly always measured in hours and days. Since "Black Friday", customers of the US online poker market has seen wait times extend out to weeks and months in a lot of cases. The Revolution Network, who features sites such as Cake Poker, Juicy Stakes, and the issue-plagued main skin of the network, Lock Poker, now measure their cashout times in seasonal increments rather than weeks or months. US facing players of the unfortunate enough to have deposited at Lock Poker have seen wait times of over six months for checks - with some waiting over eight months in extreme cases. UPDATE:  Lock Poker no longer pays out players.  Hundreds of players have been waiting for 24 months for payouts.  Lock Poker is a PONZI SCHEME!  Do NOT deposit at Lock Poker!

Various networks have found creative ways around these withdrawal problems, using all sorts of withdrawal methods to help fulfill the cashout needs of thier customers. One such method is the "cash transfer" method. Cash transfer services such as Western Union and MoneyGram have helped with some of the processing burdens, as poker players in the US can request a withdrawal from a poker network - and in short order, pick up cash in hand from any of tens of thousands of local brick and mortar locations all across the United States of America.

To facilitate these withdrawals, online poker networks have mostly contracted with third party processors located in third world countries - places where it's easier to hire large groups of low-paid workers to run around sending and receiving "cash transfers." Since Black Friday, as this method has become more popular, millions of dollars have been passed back and forth between the US and small, poor nations.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist at any of the companies that operate cash transfer businesses to note marked increases in transaction volume. Some of these transactions can begin to appear quite suspicious once particular volumes are taken into consideration. Let's face it - the average US citizen isn't often sending and receiving thousands of dollars half way around the world to Costa Rica.

The Merge Gaming Network, once a pillar of this type of payout format, has drastically reduced the amount of cash transfers it provides to their player base, never having offered it to all players by having an obscure and never published procedure for players to "unlock" a cash transfer withdrawal request. Other networks, such as Revolution, however, have offered these services en masse.
 

Blacklisted from Western Union and Moneygram

Very recently reports have begun to surface on online poker forums with heavy US user bases that poker grinders from multiple sites reported being blacklisted by cash transfer services. Normally, receivers are not blacklisted - it's the senders that are often barred from further business. However, it would appear that given the nature of the the way these third world, third party payment processors are operating, this is not a viable solution for WU/MG to close off these "gray market" transactions. Yet, WU has begun blacklisting users they have identified as making use their services for online gaming withdrawals. This has happened in the past to players on the Bodog Network (Bovada for US players) and players on Lock Poker.

Reports from these players indicate after having sucessfully received anywhere from around $10,000 to $20,000 USD, they were suddenly flagged and blacklisted. Often these users have reported that just before being banned from using money transer services, they were suddenly and uncommonly asked to provide their Social Security numbers when attempting to send or receive money.

What is a player to do? Some "experts" advocate keeping transactions under certain limits. The general figure of $800 has been bandied about as a maximum figure in order to fly under the radar. This however is not known to be true and is not something one should take as a recommendation. Others suggest going to multiple locations to send and receive funds - but in this day and age of computer tracking, that is simply not a viable strategy for evading notice. Likely, these sites have recently refined their means of detecting online gaming behavior and begun cracking down - which leads to a very disturbing revelation recently made very public by the aforementioned Revolution Network skin Lock Poker.

The reason that there are networks or skins that can boast cashout times of a matter of days using Western Union or Moneygram is because of player volume initiatives and the number of cashout requests they handle. Bovada, the US facing portion of Bodog, reports wait times of between 3-7 calendar days for WU/MG requests - and after cataloging player experiences, the evidence backs up Bovada's stated timeframe. Intertops, a Revolution Network poker skin, has a similar timeframe for cash transfers. PokerHost, a Merge Network skin with its own independent cashier system, offers 3-4 day WU/MG wait times. Both Bovada and Intertops have strict guidelines in place for cashouts and player procurement - with Intertops going as fas as limiting their US player base to an invite-only system. And despite Bovada's steadily increasing number of players, they have put in place key elements (such as anonymous usernames for players and limiting rakeback to avoid an influx of pro-level players) to make sure that when the time comes for a cashout - even a cash transfer - they can pay it in a relatively quick fashion since players requesting a cashout are light compared to a place like Lock Poker.
 

Which leads us right into the Lock Poker aspect of this. Lock Poker, back in mid-2012, broke away from the Merge Network (wow that made flagship skin Carbon Poker happy) and revamped the former Cake Network into the Revolution Network. Lock had no qualms about limiting player influx - not only did they reportedly poach players from Merge, they opened the floodgates for US players by offering huge deposit bonuses and unhealthy rakeback and VIP programs. Players jumped to Lock in spades, and the network saw a new wave of players and thus, the deposit and rake money flowed in. But almost right away, cashouts started to become a problem - they were few at first, but eventually, the problems grew to rather larger proportions.

Lock was ill-equipped to handle the amount of cashout requests that they began to receive. Payments to players were made - however, timeframes steadily became longer and longer. Some of this can be attributed to terrible business decisions - but that's a different commentary for a different day. Suffice it to say, players who requested payouts in March of 2013, just recently, began reporting that Lock was unable to process Western Union payouts. Instead, players would receive a check in its place.

Without saying it publicly, Lock basically admitted issues with Western Union over offering this service to their at-one-time large player base consisting of rakeback-seeking regulars who often made cashout requests thinking their money was safe. One of Lock's cashier reps stated the following in August 2013 (via 2+2 forum poster "winchips"):
 

"It seems Western Union has held your March payout pending an investigation. As per WU, this is still ongoing and (we) must wait to complete this before processing or cancelling this request. But due to the long wait, I have asked our Cashier Manager to make an exception and credit the $2000 back to your Lock account. All future requests must be done via check to avoid this issue. Also, our Cashier Manager will convert your current Western Union payout for $2000, to a check payout instead, prior to processing your request."

Assuming you can get past the horrid grammar of this email response to a player's cashout query, the gist was that Lock was either going to re-process this player's request as a check, or completely cancel the request and ask the player to re-submit a cashout with only a check payout method available to him.
 

The implications of this revelation could be far reaching for US players who depend on cash transfers for payouts from poker rooms. With Western Union being more proactive to stop would be "illegal online gambling transactions" (WU is federally backed by the US government, making it more or less in line with banks who are restricted by UIGEA to allow their customers to use funds via their systems to "gamble" online), and due to the fact that Lock has been generally regarded as the largest room to utilize cash transfers, this method may not be around much longer - especially if Western Union implements tighter restrictions on third parties sending money to players in the US. So while poker rooms such as Bovada and Intertops currently use cash transfer services such as WU or MoneyGram without much issue, it remains to be seen how long this method will remain available.

For the sake of online poker players residing in the US, let us hope that other means of acquiring their hard earned funds can be procured. Some networks, such as the Winning Poker Network and ACR Poker, have begun offering their players prepaid debit cards that can be loaded via cashout request via their skin's cashier system. The wait times for this method have been swift (not a lot of data is public on this, however) - though players pay fees every time they use the card, similar to most any prepaid debit program. Perhaps if this method continues to gain in popularity and more rooms offer it to their players as a form of cashout process - maybe then will fees begin to lower.

One thing is certain, however - in this day in age, payouts in online poker is no certainty. Some come closer than others; but in a post-Black Friday world, one tends to err on the side of caution. The ice is thin, even though it may be traversable. Here's hoping that one day, soon, there is more certainty for all players - especially those who have been put through the proverbial ringer when it comes to receiving the payouts they are owed.
 

Multiple staff members contributed to this commentary.

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