The following was reported by eGaming Review:

Mastercard crackdown leaves US players unable to pay

US-facing operators have been hit by an overnight crackdown on online gambling payments by credit card giant Mastercard. The US company is believed to have toughened its stance on the widespread practice of operators coding egaming transaction as other kinds of online commerce, which will all (sic) its US customers from using their cards to gamble online.

Rival US card giant Visa is rumoured to have taken a similar measure, although this could not be confirmed at the time of writing.

The action is a sign that banks and payment companies are preparing for implementation of America’s Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which bans the facilitation of online gambling by payment companies. This was originally supposed to have been enforced from 1 December 2009, although the US treasury later approved a delay allowing companies until 1 June 2009 to comply…(more)

In the followup article, it was established that Visa was also implementing the restriction on US customers:

Visa declining US egaming payments

The crackdown on US online gambling credit card payments that began on Wednesday is being operated by Visa as well as rival US credit card giant Mastercard, EGRmagazine has now confirmed, with tens of thousands of US online gamblers likely to have been affected.

As reported yesterday, US-facing operators were hit by an overnight tightening of restrictions on the use of credit cards for egaming transaction ahead of the implementation of America’s Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) law on 1 June, which bans the facilitation of online gambling by banks and other payment companies.

The action was at the time of writing confirmed as applying to US-registered cards issued by Mastercard, but rumours that a crackdown had also been launched by Visa had not been substantiated. However eGaming Review has now confirmed that these too are subject to the ban. Repeated attempts to use a US-registered Visa card by an eGaming Review reporter on PokerStars last night were declined, with the American poker giant sending an email in response that read:

“Status: DECLINED.

Your credit card transaction has been declined. If your credit card information was entered correctly and you have sufficient funds, your transaction was probably declined due to Internet gaming restrictions set by your credit card issuer…” (more)

So:

In order to better avoid of the USA anti-gambling radar, some gambling operators accepting US customers have been coding their Visa and Mastercard transactions in a manner as to not appear as gambling-related. The correct “internet gambing” merchant code is 7995; some operators have been putting their transactions through thus, and taking a chance as to whether or not the deposit goes through; others have not.

To put it another way: they’ve been trying to cheat the system.

Since the February crackdown appears to have been applied retrospectively to January, players now face the prospect that their deposits – with which they will have had plenty of time to play, and lose or win on accordingly – will now almost certainly not be honoured by Mastercard and Visa, resulting in an effective chargeback. This may have a knock-on effect when it comes to winning players receiving their payments.

And while the general tone of the internet discussion on this matter has been one of condemnation of the US administration in the wielding of its prohibitionist axe, I would personally like to ask this question: why should we not lay the blame for this squarely at the door of the online gambling operators, still dealing to US customers, who tried to cheat the system in the first place?

Their motives were purely profit-driven in attempting to stay below the radar. But it is the players, who committed no wrongdoing, who may suffer as a consequence.

It is of course also the case that not all operators have been trying to cheat the system. Some, such as Pokerstars, have been coding their transactions upfront as “internet gambling”; in fact, in another EGR article they made a point of distancing themselves from the practice:

PokerStars does not, nor ever has engaged in the practices of mis-coded credit card transactions. We have therefore been unaffected by any crackdown by Visa or MasterCard to close down such mis-coded processing accounts.

So, all well and good for the folks who’ve behaved honestly.

But the casinos and sportsbooks that have been trying to put one over Mastercard and Visa, whatever the ultimate cost they pay as a result of this matter may be, do not deserve any sympathy.

They particularly do not deserve any sympathy from those players who may end up seriously inconvenienced, and possibly out of pocket, as a result of their duplicity.

There’s been, predictably enough, quite a lot of discussion of this move that has such potential sweeping effects on the industry: see the No more Mastercard article at Bookmakers Review, and the Mastercard blocks US poker discussion at 2+2 Poker (“Intentionally mis-coding a CC transaction is a crime in many places around the globe.” – I quite agree); also my own Mastercard and Visa online gambling crackdown article, and one tiny piece of mainstream media coverage, the Timesonline online gambling comment – actually, quite funny, so I’ll quote it:

Operators including PokerStars which continue to defy the US ban have been hit by a crackdown on internet gambling payments by Mastercard and Visa, the credit card companies.

Great. The one piece of mainstream media coverage gets it completely wrong.

Ad

An e-mail ad for an online poker site showed a photograph of a young woman. Text stated “ONLINE EXPERIENCE IS MEASURED IN GAMES, NOT YEARS. JOIN THE NEW BREED. Annette Obrestad – “ANNETTE_15″.

Issue

1. The complainant objected that the ad was irresponsible, because it might encourage children and young people to gamble.

2. The ASA challenged whether the ad breached the gambling provisions of the Code, because we understood Annette Obrestad was 20 years of age.

[]

Assessment

1. Upheld

The ASA noted Betfair’s assurance that no under 18s would be sent the e-mail because of the age-restriction arrangement they had with Lucky Lotto. Whilst we accepted the ad had not been deliberately targeted at young people in its distribution, we also noted the Code stated that marketing communications should not be likely to be of particular appeal to children or young persons, especially by reflecting or being associated with youth culture. We considered that Ms. Obrestad’s online handle in the ad, “Annette_15″, together with text stating “ONLINE EXPERIENCE IS MEASURED IN GAMES, NOT YEARS”, implied that Ms. Obrestad was even younger than she was (aged 20). Because of that, we concluded the ad was likely to have particular appeal to children and young people, and that, by representing a successful young poker player with the implication she was 15 years old, it could encourage young people to gamble and was therefore irresponsible.

On this point the ad breached CAP Code clauses 57.2 and 57.4l (Gambling).

2. Upheld

We noted the Code stated that no one under 25 years of age should be featured gambling in a marketing communication, or playing a significant role. Because Ms Obrestad was 20 years old and because, as a professional poker player, she played a significant role in gambling in the ad, we concluded the ad breached the provisions of the Code.

On this point the ad breached CAP Code clause 57.2 and 57.4n (Gambling).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Betfair to ensure that no one who was, or seemed to be, under 25 years old appeared gambling or playing a significant role in their ads going forward.

Thanks to our commenter for the tip.

Previously: BetFair has been ordered to drop starting price ad. — Misleading BetFair ads are now banned in the UK.

Almost exactly a year later, lightning appears to have struck twice; one of the top-ranked Microgaming poker rooms, Eurolinx, is currently giving every impression of teetering on the brink: previously fast withdrawals delayed up to three months and counting, with escalating improbable and varied excuses.

In mid May this year, the slow eurolinx withdrawals discussion was initiated on the popular “2+2 poker” forums. I have dissected the discussion at painful length in the Eurolinx withdrawal problems article I’ve written for my own site.

Here are some select highlights:

In mid May, the clearing time for bank transfers had been unexpectedly extended:

The live chat rep told me that it is a delay on the bank side and the transfer was initiated on April 23. Forgive my ignorance of the banking industry but why does an electronic transfer take in excess of 3 weeks to clear?

At the end of May, customer service at Eurolinx appeared to be living in cloud cuckoo land:

As far as I know we have been paying players normally, so in your case I am really sorry that they have not paid you on time.

By early June, problems were apparently acknowledged:

I spoke to the managing director on the phone earlier. He explained to me that they are having problems with their payment processor that is returning a lot of transfers without proper notice.

…followed soon after by an additional couple of excuses:

“Either they have provided us the wrong bank details, or our bank is very strict on big amount withdraw, they will take longer time to check, to ensure there is no money laundering.”

By early July, something almost truth-sounding was emerging:

“Kindly note though that there are some delays in processing at the moment, due to tightened security checks on withdrawals. I am afraid I do not have a strict time frame to provide you with. Your withdrawal will be processed as soon as possible.”

Mid July, and it’s bad news time for the worldly-wise online gambler – the dreaded bonus offer:

“Due to certain payment processor issues we encountered within the last months, we experienced some delays when processing withdrawals. I am aware that you have been affected by this problem and I hope you accept our sincere apologies. In addition, I would like to offer you a special bonus as a form of compensation.

Please find a $500 bonus credited to your Eurolinx poker account…”

A “going out of business sale”? I’ve seen them before.

By the end of July, it all looked good:

“The problem has now been fixed, however, we have some withdrawal backlog to deal with. That is why your withdrawal was not able to process on time.”

So there was a problem after all? What happened to the security checks / wrong bank details / money laundering concerns / the-dog-ate-your-money excuses?

By early August, a player waiting fully three months for his money acknowledged what everyone was thinking:

13th of May here, still waiting. Yes, I do believe they are broke at this point. There is no other reasonable explanation and there hasn’t been one for a long time.

To date, rough player tallies of amounts owed are in the region of half a million dollars. Some payments were being reported over the previous few months, allbethey vastly outweighed by unpaid withdrawal requests, but over the last week or so I am not aware of any player receiving a payment. In addition, customer service appears to have stopped fielding questions and is directing all enquires to the “finance department” – which doesn’t reply.

A Casinomeister warning was issued, and Eurolinx was put on Casinomeister’s no help possible list, for “reasons of veracity”, which I assume means that Bryan Bailey thought they were lying to him about the situation – which is quite likely.

Around the same time, an affiliate posted about a Eurolinx affiliate non-payment issue at the same forum. It would seem that players and affiliates alike are now receiving the cold shoulder from Eurolinx.

Eurolinx is actually licensed in a jurisdiction which borders on reputable – see the terms and conditions page:

“Eurolinx” is a company owned by Eurolinx International NV, whose offices are held at PO Box 6052, Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. It is marketed by same through an exclusive agreement with Eurolinx Ltd, whose offices are held at Vincenti Buildings, Suite 409, 14/19 Strait Street, Valletta Malta. Eurolinx shall heretoafter be referred to as the “Company.”

Eurolinx is licensed in Curacao under the master license #5536/JAZ.

Unfortunately, registering complaints with the Caracao Licensing Authority is probably not going to reunite players with their funds, since the funds appear gone.

But why? How does a poker room lose money?

Earnings come from the rake, the commission taken on a percentage basis from each pot; the players’ deposits are simply redistributed amongst the players during the course of play. In order to make a profit, the rake needs to counterbalance and exceed the room’s operating expenses. Such expenses would be: licence fees, affiliate payments, staff costs and bonuses.

But these costs should be relatively easily calculable and should not end up spiralling out of control.

So where did the money go?

It remains a mystery which I suspect will never be resolved, whether or not Eurolinx manages to get back on an even keel. On the basis of its former reputation and the fact that the room is still technically operational, many players are currently advocating continuing to play, in order to generate more rake income for the room and help to bring it back on track.

This looks like a risky and rather hopeless strategy to me, as the rake was far greater when the problems started than it is now, player good faith notwithstanding.

Welcome to the underwhelming world of Microgaming poker.

…again.

I heard that their software is a joke.

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Let me kick off by commenting generally on the relationship between a provider of online gambling software and the players who ultimately end up using it:

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Techinically speaking, there is none. The provider licenses the software to a client; the client then offers the software to players, and the provider is not a part of this latter relationship. This is a contractual fact, and it makes sense as well – if you sell fresh fish to an outlet, and the outlet leaves the fish on the shelves too long, resulting in poisoned customers, it is not your fault. It’s logical.

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And yet, software providers DO take responsibility, at various levels of involvement, for their players, notwithstanding their lack of legal or contractual requirement to so do. Why do they do this?

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Without preempting any of my more detailed comments further down the page, the simple reason is that it makes business sense; it imbues the provider’s indirect player customers with fundemental confidence in the product, and this has great reciprocal value.

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Provider says: “you’ll be safe here”.

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Player says: “thanks; I’ll play”.

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Players are safe, provider makes money. That is the basic premise at work here.

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So: onwards.

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Microgaming Poker was launched in 2003, an offshoot of online gambling software provider Microgaming. Originally called “Prima Poker”, it was rebranded to reflect the provider’s name in 2006.

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Microgaming is one of the oldest software providers in the business, having opened its doors way back in 1994. It has, to a date, a one hundred percent record of bailing out players from failed licensees – I will go into in more detail about this further on.

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The Wikipedia Mirogaming entry makes interesting reading:

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In late February 2008, twenty-seven Microgaming-powered poker rooms closed when their licensee Tusk Investment Corporation Limited went into insolvent liquidation, leaving all players who had funds in those rooms to claim as unsecured creditors in the liquidation.

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It is not yet known whether players will recover any of their money.

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Sounds intruiging.

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The first sign of trouble was an apparently innocuous report issued on 15th February 2008 by eCOGRA, an ostensible online gambling inspectorate, initiated and part-funded by Microgaming, and which endorses most of the the Microgaming operations:

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An onsite review was recently conducted by eCOGRA`s Compliance and Advisory Services staff at the operations for the following casinos as part of a normal seal renewal process:

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Challenge – www.challengecasino.com
Golden Reef – www.goldenreefcasino.com
I Big Casino – www.ibigcasino.com
Music Hall – www.musichallcasino.com
Nostalgia – www.nostalgiacasino.com
UK Casino Club – www.ukcasinoclub.com

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The audit revealed failures in compliance with eCOGRA`s Generally Accepted Practices. It has therefore been decided to suspend these seals pending further investigation.

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During the discussions about the above eCOGRA statement on the Casinomeister player forums, a representative for the casino group in question popped in for this update:

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We have been in discussions with eCogra and these purely administrative issues will be resolved shortly.

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In no way has our honesty, integrity or customer service been questioned and our reputation speaks for itself!

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We are expecting our eCogra seals will be reinstated very soon, but in the meantime it is business as usual.

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Since eCOGRA’s announcement had been so innocuous, this didn’t seem at all unreasonable.

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Unfortunately, the whole operation was gone seven days later.

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The following Tusk licence termination statement was reported by a prominent online gambling commentator:

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Company Statement:

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Microgaming announces that it has terminated its software licence with Tusk Investment Corporation – with immediate effect, after having received Tusk’s notification of its plans to put the Company into liquidation.

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Microgaming is presently gathering all facts related to this matter and will provide further announcements as and when information becomes available.’

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About Tusk

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Tusk Investment Corporation Limited operates a number of casino sites and poker rooms:

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Casinos:

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Challenge Casino
Golden Reef Casino
Music Hall Casino
Nostalgia Casino
UK Casino Club
Big Casino

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Poker rooms:
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Battlefield Poker
Royal Card Club
Red Nines
Arctic Poker
Raw Poker
Poker.ie
Daily Poker
Flush Draw Poker
Will Bet Poker
Bet Road Poker
Grand Central Poker
Off The Rail Poker
Privy Poker
Berserk Poker
Atomik Poker
Dave’s Poker Room
Hetman Poker
Hot Pepper Poker
Poker Seas
TilttAA Poker
Loose Games Poker
CPT Gaming Poker
Ice Bear Poker
GoHard Poker
Caya Poker
Mr Urban Poker
Poker Sweden
Euro Poker Dream

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Blimey.

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What was that eCOGRA told us?

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The audit revealed failures in compliance with eCOGRA`s Generally Accepted Practices.

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Well, I can only say that this was one hell of a “compliance failure” which led to the collapse of fully 34 casinos and poker rooms. Way to go, eCOGRA. Any chance of a slightly more accurate statement next time? “Licensee dead in the water” would have been a tad more accurate than “compliance issues”.

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Anyway, to cut to the chase: liquidators were appointed for the Tusk group, as reported by Microgaming in their 20th March company statement, and those six casinos in the previous Microgaming statement, which had player liabilities of $194,000 in total, were taken over by another group.

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That another group took over the defunct casinos was good.

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Unfortunately, the good news stopped there.

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The liabilities to the poker players was a bit more. A little over $5,000,000 more, to be precise.

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To be even more precise, the total poker player liability was $5,312,923. Five million, three hundred and twelve thousand, nine hundred and twenty three dollars.

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It is therefore maybe not so surprising that a buyer did not come forward for the poker rooms in the way that the casino buyer did.

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But what about the customers of the twenty eight poker rooms? Who is responsible for paying these players their balances?

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These poker rooms were all “skins”, or “white labels”, of Tusk Investment Corportation, operating their poker branch under the name “My Poker Profit”. Skins are glorified affiliate sites which send players to the parent company (in this case, Tusk) but with no access to player funds, the financial side being handled exclusively by the parent company. The “skin” has information on player numbers and maybe other relatively trivial matters, but they have no control over the finances.

-

For an excellent Tusk operator’s description of the skin concept, and other relevant matters, see the open letter to Microgaming at the 2+2 forum written by one of the skin owners, Red Nines Poker:

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At the end of 2005, Rednines contacted Microgaming (then named Prima Poker) to explore the possibilities of becoming a skin into the Microgaming network.

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We were advised by Microgaming to contact Tusk to get a deal through them instead, since they had a deal in place with Microgaming which made it possible for new partners to get a skin up and running within days.

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This process is known as a white label solution, which means that our work on Rednines.com would basically be to get players, and get a revenue share of these players. In other words, Tusk / MyPokerProfit.com would take care of everything from Payment Gateways, holding on to player funds, dealing with Microgaming and handling customer support.

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The only information we had access to was the players signed up through Rednines.com, we could see their names, emails and their current rake. We had no way of even making a deposit to a players account without going through Tusk / MyPokerProfit first. In fact any poker room related issue had to go through TUSK.

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Let me interrupt the narrative here to add a personal comment on “skins”:

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Skins are nothing but bad news for the player. They create endless confusion through lack of any real clarity about the parent company, the result of which is that the players end up being completely misled with regard to who is responsible for their money. In this case, clients of “Battlefield Poker” thought that “Battlefield Poker” held their money and paid them; some, in fact, thought Microgaming held their money; NOBODY knew the truth, that Tusk Investment Corporation held their money, because noone told them, and the Tusk involvement would have been buried deep in the terms and conditions at best, if it was mentioned at all. Here are a couple of representative comments made by players in the lengthy discussion at the 2+2 poker forums:

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where are the player’s bankrolls held?

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are cashouts/deposits done through microgaming as a whole or is each skin seperate in that regard?

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Sorry fella, wrong on both counts.

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So is Tusk or Microgaming holding the players’ money currently?

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Getting closer, but they still don’t know.

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So, total player confusion.

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I have heard the absurd justification that skins serve a “niche” market; for example, if I am a one-legged Mongolian crocodile trainer, I would like to play at a gambling operation called “One Legged Mongolian Crocodile Trainers” more than “Ladbrokes” or “William Hill”. What absolute nonsense. How do our professions or hobbies dictate our preference for the name of the gambling operations we patronise?

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Skins serve one thing alone: the gambling industry. They allow individual operations to effectively transform and mutate into any number of other operations, with apparently distinct identities and all the adherent marketing and profit potential for the original parent companies.

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For the player, they create nothing but confusion and trouble.

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Or, in this case, the loss of $5,300,000.

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Anyway, moving on:

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The poker side of the Tusk collapse has been discussed at huge length in the monumental 27 Microgaming skins to close discussion at the 2+2 forum. I have not read every one of the 3000+ posts, but what I have read represents little useful information; for the most part, players are expressing their general confusion and anger, and a hope that their balances will not be lost.

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One startling fact to emerge from the discussion is that the skin operators appear to have been treated with the same scant disregard by software provider Microgaming as the players. If you look again at the Red Nines open letter:

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Rednines.com is no longer running, along with BattlefieldPoker.com and several other white label solutions of Tusk / MyPokerProfit. Microgaming has not reached out to us, nor have we been able to get a hold of anyone with a say in Microgaming that could help us solve what happened. Even though it is several months since Tusk went bankrupt we have at several occasions tried to get a hold of someone that could take responsibility for what happened – unfortunately without success.

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I have been told by many that they feel Rednines.com should pay up for player balances and their losses, and I can understand their frustration. The problem is that we never saw any of these deposits, we simply got a revenue share for our players rake. This was around $25,000 gross profit every month for the months we were operative. Microgaming was actually making a bigger profit than us on our players.

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I would like to see Microgaming take a stand in this matter, and be the responsible party, which means they should pay for the player balances.

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This latter feeling is also expressed by the players, some of whom took it for granted that Microgaming would honour their balances – these comments are taken from the mighty 2+2 thread:

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I believe Microgaming has covered players’ balances when things like this have happened with casinos running their software before.

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All the balances are covered by Micro Gaming.

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Microgaming has been around since before online poker, and I don’t think a player has ever lost money when one of their casinos or poker rooms shut down. I’m sure your money is safe.

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In this case I would think that Microgaming would step in to cover player balances, and as such your money should be safe.

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I really doubt that Microgaming will allow the money in accounts to be lost.

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Unfortunately, notwithstanding the opinions and hopes of both players and skin operators alike, Microgaming has failed to communicate.

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In mid-2008, six months after Tusk / My Poker Profit collapsed, Microgaming received a letter from a lawyer representing one of the players who had a large investment, notifying them of a proposed court action. The player in question reported the matter in this short 2+2 post:

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My dad sent microgaming a letter notifying them he was intending to take them to court. Within 4 days he got a response from a firm in Toronto (they have hired legal counsel already) saying they take no responsibility and that our accusations against them were erroneous.

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So: no comment from Microgaming, apart from one denial of responsibility when they were forced to respond.

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Earlier on I mentioned the provider / player relationship, and the responsibilities thereof. Now would be a good time to start to consider them in detail.

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Two questions to consider:

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Is Microgaming going to honour the balances of the players involved in the Tusk collapse?

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They may yet, but it doesn’t look good. They have been uncommunicative to all involved parties, and the one occasion that they chose to break silence was to deny any responsability. It may be the case that they are waiting for the liquidation to run its course, at which point they’ll survey the damage and take the necessary remedial action.

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However, since they know the numbers involved from the liquidation report (see below), they know exactly the extent of their potential liability and should therefore be able to give some sort of indication of their intentions. The fact that they have not done so suggests to me that they are not planning on making the players whole.

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So it’s not looking good.

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Should Microgaming honour these balances?

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This one’s easy: yes. Microgaming should compensate the poker customers of failed licensee Tusk Investment Corporation, notwithstanding the fact that, as the software provider, they have no legal liability. There are two reasons for this:

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In the first place, it’s the right thing to do and they’ve done it before.

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It’s the right thing to do because the players are, at the end of the day, customers of Microgaming. As I said in my opening remarks, players, for their part, have the confidence of knowing that, whichever licensee or skin they’re patronising, they are safe because Microgaming is safe. Good for Microgaming, good for the players.

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And yes, it’s happened before:

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When the Tropika group failed in 2001, Microgaming paid – see the Microgaming to pay all Tropika players thread from Winneronline.

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When Goodfellas Casino failed, Microgaming paid – see the Goodfellas thread at Winneronline.

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On these occasions, Microgaming did the right thing and should receive all due credit.

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Why would they not now?

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Aside from the moral responsibility and the good business sense of helping – and the potentially disastrous business consequences of not – there is another slightly less altruistic reason for expecting a provider hand up on this one:

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Microgaming directed the skins to Tusk in the first place.

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Look again at the open letter at 2+2:

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We met Microgaming and their representatives at a hotel in London in early 2006 in connection with the ICE gaming show. During this meeting Microgaming stressed the fact that they were backlogged in the process of accepting and adding new skins to their network already.

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We were then advised by Microgaming to contact Tusk (also known as MyPokerProfit.com) to get a deal through them instead, since they had a deal in place with Microgaming which made it possible for new partners to get a skin up and running within days.

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This was far away from what we would prefer. Maybe we are guilty of being naive, but as Microgaming said it was an easy way to join the network, and Tusk/MyPokerProfits way of doing business was condoned by Microgaming themselves. This made the deal seem legit and secure for us.

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In addition to this, Microgaming said that once we were integrated in Tusk/MyPokerProfit’s system, it would be an easy process to re-convert us over to Microgaming as a regular partner once their queue was less backlogged.

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So, Microgaming specifically directed these potential skin customers to Tusk.

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And Tusk failed.

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If you look at the liquidator’s report to creditors, you can see that during the financial year in which Microgaming recommended Tusk to skins Battlefiend and Red Nines, they were hardly doing well, with a total profit of $282,000 for the year – you can see screenshots of the relevant pages in the liquidation report section of my other article.

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Maybe in late 2005, when Microgaming made the Tusk recommendation to these skins, they were doing less badly.

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Or maybe they only had the 2005 report to go by, which may have been better.

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Or maybe Microgaming knew that Tusk was struggling, and tried to help by sending them skin customers. Eeek, now there’s a thought.

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Or maybe they didn’t look at the figures at all?

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However, at the end of the day, Microgaming recommended Tusk, which was NOT the solution that at least two of the skins wanted, preferring a direct arrangement with Microgaming whereby THEY would take care of THEIR players in all matters, financial and otherwise. These potential licensees did not want to hand over these key aspects to an unknown third party, such as Tusk. They wanted a responsibiity that they were denied – look again at Red Nines’s comment:

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This was far away from what we would prefer. Maybe we are guilty of being naive, but as Microgaming said it was an easy way to join the network, and Tusk/MyPokerProfits way of doing business was condoned by Microgaming themselves. This made the deal seem legit and secure for us.

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And now, these skin partners themselves are owed money by Tusk – $1,522,649 to be precise.

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So quite the charming little disaster all round.

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Assuming Microgaming fails to honour the players, they can they expect to receive around fifteen percent of their balances from the liquidation – if you look again at the liquidation report, you’ll see that there is $1,400,000 cash in the bank against the $9,000,000 total creditor, or about 15%.

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Of that $9,000,000, the sum total of the poker player balances is a cool $5,312,923.

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Hopefully, Microgaming will break silence on this and offer to compensate the affected players. If they do not, it will be their first failure in these circumstances, and it will send a big, fat, red warning to players that their deposits at Microgaming operations are no longer as safe as they once were.

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It may be of interest to note the full list of Microgaming poker clients.

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The point of saying that is not to warn players against patronising the listed operations – some, like Ladbrokes, are big names and very solid.

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The point is to be aware that should any of them fail, it must not be automatically assumed that Microgaming will bail out the players, as once was the case; as such, players should not simply rely on the name of Microgaming when choosing to play there.

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I will be keeping on top of ths matter, and will report any developments.

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- YooPick – (a FaceBook application) – (MSR + AMM)

- Yahoo!’s Yootopia – (?)

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I am a researcher employed by a leading award winning UK based independent production company, that specialises in factual programmes. We are currently researching the online poker industry, for a forthcoming documentary that will look at the broader issue of the regulation of the online gambling industry.

I am interested in hearing from people who were or are involved in any disputes with their online poker provider. I would be particularly interested to hear from persons involved in the recent incidents at Absolute Poker and Ultimatebet. And I am keen to track down anybody with inside information relating to the recent Betfair heist (not least the player who goes under the name “Chillindude”).

All information received will be treated in the strictest confidence and anonymity will be afforded to anybody that wishes to appear in the programme, but does not wish their identity to be known.

In the first instance, please contact me at the address below, so that we can arrange a meeting.

Email: pbenckendorf (at) web.de