Full Tilt Poker Ponzi Scheme

Posted by Dave on September 28th, 2011 filed in Poker News
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By now, you have probably already heard this poker news; but it is something that I have to cover anyways.

I never had actually played on Full Tilt poker, mainly because I liked PokerStars better. But I did have a feeling that Full Tilt was up to no good well before this ESPN article dropped a week ago. You may very well have a similar story to the one I’m about to tell.

I play weekly in a poker league at a local bar. Obviously, some of the people in my league played on Full Tilt. I knew that something was wrong around January this year because 3 of them deposited money into their account and did not have it taken from their bank account. They didn’t ask or didn’t care but used the money to play poker. Then, they all were about to cash out the money that had never been taken from them in the first place.

They only did it one time and it wasn’t a willful attempt to defraud Full Tilt. They had made the deposit; what if they never looked to see if the transaction went through. If these guys who have a limited knowledge were able to do this, that means that there had to have been thousands of people doing this intentionally once they knew that they could.

Full Tilt’s Ponzi Scheme

A Ponzi scheme is traditionally an investment fraud that is purported by a money manager. This money manager will claim that they are making a large profit with the investors’ money and pay dividends on time. In reality, the profit isn’t there and the money manager pays the old clients with new client money. Eventually the system breaks because there aren’t enough new investors to keep the scheme going.

Full Tilt isn’t a classic Ponzi scheme in that sense. I don’t believe that they went in a gave Howard Lederer or Chris Ferguson money from the players’ accounts. They made the money off the rake and tournament fees. I just so happened that they wanted to go on “business as usual” when they couldn’t actually get the money from players’ bank accounts.

The banks were told to stop gambling related transactions from going through. Full Tilt got around that initially by setting up 3rd party companies who would say the transaction is for something like golf balls. They would make the transaction an odd number like $99.87 if you made a $100 deposit. Once the government shut down these services, Full Tilt couldn’t get money from the players.

However, they were still giving chips to the players who made deposits and that money that couldn’t be accounted for. Well, that money ended up accounting for about $150 million in players’ funds that didn’t exist in the first place. Full Tilt thought that there would never be a run on the bank, so they would eventually get the money back from the players who tried to deposit it before anything went wrong.

Too bad for them that the US government took their legs out from under them when they seized Full Tilt’s website and told them to stop accepting American poker players and to pay them back their money. PokerStars had no problem being able to do this (and I got my $500+ back from them) because they never tried to pull a scheme like that off. Full Tilt went into bankruptcy.

I used to think that once the dust settled Full Tilt would be bought by another company and come back under its own name. With the Ponzi label attached, I don’t think that can be the case anymore. That would almost be like another company taking the name of Enron. However, it is completely likely that the rights will be bought and the name will be re-branded. Those servers still have contact info for the many thousands of people from the US that played poker at Full Tilt.

New Poker Tournaments

Posted by Dave on August 3rd, 2011 filed in Poker Tournaments
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I haven’t had anything like this to talk about for a while. First, there were too many online poker tournaments for me to promote any one in particular. Then, there is almost nothing to talk about because most poker sites aren’t open to me anymore.

However, I have found site that let me sign up for their new online poker tournaments. The site is named BetOnline and they are offering over $150K in guaranteed tournament prize money for the month of August. The best part is that since so many other poker players aren’t playing online, players like me will have a better chance to do well in these poker tournaments than normal.

There will be several tournaments that have guaranteed prize money per month. For any of these tournaments, a fixed amount will need to used to buy in whether real money or promo bucks.

You can also get a Tournament Bonus Guarantee from BetOnline. Deposit a minimum of $50 and you will receive 200 Promo Bucks of every $50 that you deposit. Max of 4000 Promo Bucks. You must request the promo bucks from their support within 24 hours of the deposit. These promo bucks can only be used on the guaranteed poker tournaments.

Freeroll Poker Tournaments

Need another reason to join? BetOnline has started offering daily freerolls called Hit & Run. These games are free to buy-in, however these tournaments may offer rebuys/add-on to players. All freerolls are on the hour and only the first 3000 entries will be allowed in. (FYI – there aren’t normally 3000 players that participate in these freerolls yet)

Here is how these freerolls work:

You will start with 1000 chips and blinds will go up every 8 minutes. There are re-buys allowed, which will give 2000 chips. There are also add-ons allowed; this will give you an additional 5000 chips.

BetOnline Tournament Schedule

BetOnline has a special event that you can use your promo bucks on lined up for each day of the week in August. On Monday’s, you can take advantage of Daily Freerolls; Tuesday’s are $1,000 Turbo Guaranteed, Wednesday is the $500 Guaranteed with a qualifier for the $10K tournament.

Thursdays are $1000 Guaranteed Tournaments; Fridays are the $500 Pop 2 Cash tournaments which sets up for the big weekend tournaments. On Saturday’s in August, you can play in the $4,000 guaranteed poker tournaments with you promo bucks and Sunday’s are the $3,000 guaranteed Turbo tournaments.

New Features at 888poker

Posted by Dave on June 18th, 2011 filed in Poker Room Reviews
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A little while back, I made a post that highlighted options for Australian poker players. The poker site that I highlighted was au.888.com, which is a site that is dedicated to the local poker players in Australia.

I have an update to announce to those players who are interested in playing at 888poker. This online poker site is the first in the industry to offer a revolutionary new way to play the game. It is called PokerCam and it is exactly what you are thinking.

888poker is offering players brand new tables called PokerCam Tables where you get to see all of your opponents on a webcam, but they also get to see you! This takes online poker to a different level.

For years, playing poker online and playing against live players didn’t really have a whole lot in common. Players who bluff a lot online never had to worry about having someone see the fear or anticipation on their face. All that will change with PokerCam. You will be able to play online and stare down your opponent. All you need is your own webcam; then sign up and play!

One other new feature that 888poker has introduced is the Teams Poker Series of contests. You can join a team of poker players, which is quick and easy to do. Then you will represent this team every time you play one of these contests. The points that you and your team win will be shared amongst the team members. This will also allow you to earn a share of the winnings for the contest.

Would you like to give these new features a try? Au.888.com is offering $8 free with no deposit required. You can play poker games like Texas Holdem for free. Then if you want to make a deposit, you can be eligible to receive up to $400 with a match bonus. 25% of this bonus will be paid to you upfront and the other 75% is earn through receiving Bonus Points from 888.

European Poker Sites

Posted by Dave on May 20th, 2011 filed in Poker Room Reviews
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There are a large number of Euro poker sites that operate inside of Europe and operate with European Union poker licenses. Besides Carbon Poker (listed below), none of these poker sites accept players from the United States.

These European poker rooms will have everything a poker player could want. In case you do not have a lot of money to spend, you can always try out the best low stakes poker sites.

If you don’t like to play raked hands, there are a couple other options that you can choose from. You can always try your hand at poker tournaments that can be found happening often all over Europe. If you aren’t ready to play in a real tournament, you can always try competing in an online tournament like the ones found at Poker Stars.

The other type of poker game that you might enjoy would be the sit and go poker tournaments. These are one to four table tournaments that require an entry fee. The tournament starts as soon as all the seats are filled.

How to get 30% Rakeback from Interpoker

If you want to get your hands on this unique opportunity to receive 30% rakeback at Interpoker, just follow the steps below. Before you proceed, you must know that if you are already a member of Interpoker you aren’t eligible for receiving rakeback by following the steps. Instead, you should give us an e-mail and let us know. We’ll be sure to make you a new offer.

To create your account and receive rakeback, first you must follow THIS LINK and sign up (if you don’t we won’t be able to give you your rakeback).

After signing up, please remember not to use the Refer A friend program used by Interpoker – using it won’t let you benefit from receiving your rakeback!

If you sign up, you can receive a 30% rakeback, and a 200% bonus for your first deposit of up to $1,000 on Interpoker. The rakeback method used on Interpoker is the contributed rake. Be aware, you only receive rake if you have generated 100 euros in rake!

Interpoker offers a lot of different poker games, such as: Limit Hold ‘em (games ranging from $0.02/$0.04 to $150/$300), No Limit Hold ‘em (Blinds’ limits are from $0.10 to $10), Omaha, 7Stud, Omaha H/L or 7Stud H/L. You can play lots of different play styles, such as Multi-table tournaments (which range from $0.50 to $150), Sit n Go tournaments ($0.50+$0.10 to $200+$10) and Heads Up tables ($0.25/$0.50 up to $25/$50).

You can deposit money on your Interpoker account through Neteller, Mastercard, Visa, Click2Pay, Moneybookers, PaySafeCard and Entropay. You can withdraw money from your account through all the methods above, and also through check or wire transfer.

How to get 35% Carbon Poker Rakeback

This section will teach you how you can create an account with online poker website Carbon Poker and receive a 35% of the rake that you generate when playing for real money. If you already have an account with Carbon Poker, this will not apply to you, unfortunately. But feel free to give us an e-mail and we’ll get back to you with other options.

First, follow THIS LINK (it’s vital that you do, if you don’t we won’t be able to track your account), and register at Carbon Poker. In the “referral code” field, enter “PAS600″ as the code.

It is critical that, when signing up, you don’t use the Refer a Friend program provided by Carbon Poker, or else, again, you will not be able to receive any rakeback. After completing these steps, just come back here and fill out the form that you see below and you’re done (if you already have an account with us, please log in first).

After fully completing your registration, you will receive your 35% rakeback automatically. Not only is this rakeback one of the highest available on poker websites, but, unlike others, it is fed to your poker account each day.

The rake is generated by every poker game you enter in with real money, be it cash games or tournaments. If you have not played for real money in the past two months you will also be eligible for a first deposit bonus!

With various poker games, such as Limit Hold ‘em, No Limit Hold ‘em, Omaha, 7 card Stud, Five card draw, triple draw or badugi, and limits ranging from $0.10 to $5,000 tournaments, you can be sure that you will find your place at Carbon Poker!

Poker Depositing Options

There are significantly more ways for poker players from Europe are able to use when depositing or withdrawing money from a poker account. There are not as many options for an American poker player. Here is a good article on the different depositing methods for online poker.

Are you from the United States? Then you should give Players Only Poker a try. They are offering a great bonus to new players!