PokerStars is Urging PKR Players to Submit Their Claims

Players who had unwithdrawn funds on their accounts on the late Microgaming room have until February 28th to submit their claims for reimbursement to PokerStars.

PKR, the poker room most known for its exquisite 3D animation shut down on May 3rd, 2017 - at first they didn’t inform their users about the reasons behind the “blackout”, later the Microgaming Poker Network confirmed via Twitter the site is in fact down due to financial difficulties.

The situation reminded many of the notorious Black Friday - although the scale was smaller by orders of magnitude - with players left worrying about how to withdraw their remaining funds on the site. Their concerns about losing all their money on their accounts were fully justified since the UK law is unclear whether or not PKR could use player funds to pay off their creditors.

With a happy turn of events, however, PKR and PokerStars reached an agreement in July; the most visited poker room has agreed to reimburse every player who had their funds frozen on the MGN room - again, a parallel can be drawn between this and the April 2011 events, even the official PokerStars blog made a reference to that when they announced the new developments in a post titled “Putting Players First”. The refunded money can only be credited to a player’s PS account, both existing or newly created.

Players only have two more days, until February 28th to submit their claims for reimbursement - they can do so through this link.

PokerStars’ parent company, the Stars Group released this statement about the issue, urging the wronged poker players to apply for their PS funds before the deadline:

“No player should be left unprotected and short-changed by an operator they trust. So if players do receive an email, or haven’t had the chance to log-in, we would urge that they do so before February 28. It will only take a few minutes.”

Email notifications have also been sent out with the same information. If you’re one of the affected players and haven’t seen the email from PokerStars in your inbox, make sure to check your spam folder.

About 60,000 accounts had funds at the time of the PKR shutdown - the funds total around $2 million. Stars may regard the money they pay out to former PKR players as a cost for a brand image improving marketing move since lately many in the online poker community have turned against the poker room for rake increases, cutting back on rakeback and pushing new, low-edge game types.