Warning Signs That It’s Time to Cashout From a Poker Site, Or is it Too Late?

Let's face it, online poker sites are not the safest place to keep your money.

Just ask any player who ever got burned by the likes of Lock Poker, Full Flush Poker, PokerSpot, Purple Lounge, Full Tilt, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. At least players have been or soon will be made whole at those last few poker rooms, but as for the others, player funds appear long gone and unrecoverable.

With so many instances of poker site instability - and I likely failed to mention a couple others - a question that naturally arises is whether warning signs of a poker site's demise were screaming loudly and players should have heeded the red flags and taken their money and run. Or, once the warnings are noticed, is it already too late?

While Black Friday came as a shock to many, and the shutdown of the top three sites/networks to US players was orchestrated by the government and not by the poker sites themselves, there was evidence that cashouts were not running smoothly prior to April 15, 2011 - at least at Full Tilt Poker.

I have copied and pasted an email I received from Full Tilt on November 13, 2010:

Re: Notification regarding your recent Check withdrawal

Hello Charles,

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately due to an issue with one of our 3rd party processors, your $1969 check withdrawal (0685327F ) has not been processed. We understand the importance of receiving your funds in a timely manner and apologize sincerely for any inconvenience caused.

These funds have now been returned to your Full Tilt account and you may initiate another withdrawal at your convenience. In appreciation of your patience in this matter, we have been crediting your Full Tilt Poker account with $50

We are having some difficulties with our 3rd party Check provider and as a result we have temporarily suspended Checks as a withdrawal option.The following withdrawal methods are available to you in the Full Tilt Cashier:UseMyWallet, Bank Account, Premium Bank Wire.

We recommend that you use one of those options until the Check option is available again. Please note we  dont charge any fees for Bank Transfer.
Unfortunately we are not in a position at this time to advise on a specific date when Checks will be available but we will communicate to you once the issue is resolved.

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,
Attila
Cashier
Full Tilt Poker

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a warning sign looks like. The poker world was to discover the following year that along with problems with check withdrawals, FTP was seriously mismanaging funds. Full Tilt honchos were failing to segregate funds and using "phantom deposits" to pay withdrawal requests such as mine.

On top of that, they were tossing 50 bucks to players who had cashout issues in order to keep players coming back. Of course, $50 is not a lot of money, but multiply that by every player whose cashout didn't go through and the money starts to add up.

I'm happy to report that I successfully withdrew all my funds from FTP prior to Black Friday. Admittedly, I was a bonus whore at that site, playing there only to clear the $600 deposit bonus. That's because my favorite site was Absolute Poker.

Before I pat myself on the back for avoiding the Full Tilt mess, I was not so lucky at Absolute Poker. AP was still in operation after Black Friday for a few months - even for US players - and I was dumb enough to continue playing there, or trying to, while I was also attempting to withdraw all of my funds.

That chapter is set to end within the next couple of weeks when roughly 7,400 undisputed AP/UB claimants will receive $33.5 million. My take will be .0000361 of that total.

Now let's look at some post-Black Friday poker site failures that most players who lost money will refer to by another name - scams. I'm referring in particular to Lock Poker and Full Flush Poker.

The writing was on the wall for an extended period of time at both poker rooms, with players clamoring for their cashouts and shouting from rooftops (poker forums) that the sites were up to no good and not honoring withdrawal requests. Actually, cashouts were being processed in trickles, a sporadic few here and there to keep players hoping (and playing) that the money would someday be in their hands.

Here is another example of a troubled poker site warning sign, an email I received from Full Flush Poker on April 7, 2016. Unfortunately, my in-box is littered with many such emails from FFP, all practically the same.

Re: Authorized cashout

Hello .

Thank you for contacting us.

We will continue working on your payments as fast as possible.

We apologize again for any delay related to your transactions but we can guarantee that your payments will be processed.

We really appreciate your patience during this transition period. We found many delayed payments that previous Management was not able to process.

However we are taking care of all those payments as fast as possible.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Regards,
Payouts Team

Notice the "guarantee" that I would be paid. Also take notice that blame is directed at previous management, a convenient way to keep players hoping that someday new management would right the ship and all cashouts would be honored. Yeah, right.

Full Flush eventually went offline in October 2016, leaving a bunch of players with worthless account balances estimated to total about $2 million. It was even worse at Lock Poker, a site I managed to avoid, where a reported $15 million was and still is owed to players.

I, like many others, continued to play at Full Flush for a time even when we knew the ship was sinking. I did receive cashouts every now and then during those months of uncertainty, perhaps due to changing my tune from badgering the hapless customer service reps to showing kindness and understanding.

Also like many other players, I found the action at FFP too juicy to ignore. The games were so soft, it was almost like 2003 and 2004 all over again, the glory years of online poker where anyone with a decent game was in heaven.

A recent article at PokerUpdate gave a few tips on when it’s time to cashout from a poker site that may be floundering (or running a scam). Following stories on poker news websites, searching the social media accounts of players, and checking online poker forums to get the true pulse of the poker community were mentioned as ways to possibly stave off potential cashout troubles.

Good, solid advice on each and every tip. The problem is that once players start sounding out about withdrawal issues via those channels, it’s often too late. Add to that the desire of players to want to continue playing and believing that the situation at their favorite poker site will improve, and you wind up with players holding the bag with no recourse to collect.