Over the weekend, we received reports from players that there were some issues with the exclusive $3,000 New Player freeroll that was scheduled at Party Poker on January 22nd. Due to the fact many players were not able to register for the freeroll, a makeup freeroll has been scheduled for this Saturday, January 28th. All Party Poker and WPT Poker players that were eligible for January 22nd freeroll will be invited to the makeup. Party Poker will be sending notifications to all players early this week. The tournament will be available in the Party Poker and WPT Poker lobbies on Thursday. At that point, players will then be able to manually register for the makeup tournament. Please let us know if you have any questions.
Just a quick heads-up that Pokeraddict will be on QuadJacks Radio today at 5 PM ET to talk to about a variety of subjects including cashouts for U.S. players, the impact of Black Friday and recommendations for U.S. players and non-US players. Pokeraddict will also talk a bit about himself and PAS. You can listen to the show here. Archive of the show has now been posted.
In this week's edition of the Weekly Industry Update, Harry Reid signals a federal bill is making progress and a Black Friday processor pleads guilty in New York. Check out these stories and more in this week's report. Reid: Federal Bill "Making Progress" While Nevada gets ready to regulate online poker and more states follow suit, Harry Reid offered fresh hope that a federal bill could still be in the cards. Harry Reid told a Gambling Compliance reporter that "we cannot have a series of laws around the country related to gambling." Most interestingly, Reid told the reporter that he was "making progress" with Jon Kyl on federal legislation. Jon Kyl has traditionally been one of online gambling's biggest foes but could agree to a internet poker bill if other forms of gambling were barred. Zynga Changes Position on Real Money Poker?: It seems that Zynga, the world's largest social media gaming company, may be softening their position on real money gambling. The company confirmed on Friday that they are now speaking with potential partners to "better understand and explore" the opportunity in real money poker. The entry of Zynga, which has 30 million monthly users, into the real money online poker market would be an undeniable game-changer for the industry. Full Tilt Poker Update: Last week Ira Rubin, one of the payment processors indicted on Black Friday that processed for Full Tilt, pleaded guilt to conspiracy charges in New York. Rubia was alleged to have helped offshore poker companies process billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds. As part of the plea deal, Rubia could face 18 to 24 months in prison. In regards to the Full Tilt Poker/GBT sale progress, there have been no major developments since Full Tilt Poker agreed to transfer assets to GBT in the middle of December. PokerScout Traffic Update: Online poker traffic stabilized last week accroding to PokerScout after a large 10% upswing the previous week. PokerScout was the only room in the top five to decline, however. Merge Gaming saw its traffic increase by 3%, likely due to a Bad Beat Jackpot that had increased to $1 million and was subsequently hit hours later. Jottings: Superuser scandal victims sue Ultimate Bet...Internet world rallies behind SOPA opposition, Megaupload seized following day...PokerStars CEO Steps Down...State race for online gambling begins...State profits from internet gambling may be smaller than expected...Iowa lawmaker making push for online poker.
At the beginning of each month, we post the top standard promotions for the month in the Poker Marketing Forum. Often times as the month moves along new promotions are announced by poker rooms. The promotions below are some of the best that you should be informing your players about for the rest of January. Party Poker Rake Free Tournaments: For the remainder of January, Party Poker is slashing buy-in fees on all multi-table tournaments. To celebrate this offer, Party Poker is offering a 100% up to $100 reload bonus and a $50,000 Depositor Freeroll entry to all players that use bonus code RAKEFREE. Minted Poker $1 Rake Caps Minted Poker has continued $1 Rake Caps on all USD tables through the month of January. Euro tables are not eligible for this promotion. Minted Poker will also be holding a large €10,000 guaranteed tournament on January 29th. Red Kings $85,000 Points Race Ongame's Red Kings is offers a huge $85,000 Points Race each month, and players only need to play for three days in a row to qualify for a prize. A player simply needs to finish in the top 120 chart for three consecutive days to receive a prize based on their performance during those days. The next three-day cycle starts with the accumulation of more Player Points. Betsafe Second $60,000 Race It's not too late for players to start accumulating Race Points towards Betsafe's second $60,000 January Race, which started January 17th. The leaderboard will pay cash prizes of up to $7,500 to the top 100 Race Point earners. In addition to the cash prizes, the Top 15 finishers from Race 1 and 2 will receive an entry into a $6,000 January Race freeroll in early February. Red Star $27,000 Rake Race The $27,000 Rake Race (really more like a Rake Chase) is one of the best offered by a Cake Poker Network site. Players that generate rake at 1 of 14 levels are paid predetermined cash prizes of $3 to $2,000. Many of the smaller cash prizes have been claimed, but there are plenty of opportunities remaining for players that generate at least $350 in rake for the rest of the month. These cash rewards effectively pay more than 10% extra rakeback to players. Intertops FPP Race Intertops, a popular Cake Network poker room, offers $6,250 FPP Races each week exclusively to their players. The weekly leaderboards pay the top 100 FPP earners during each promo period. Race 4 gets underway on January 22nd at 04:00 GMT and runs through January 29th at 04:00 GMT. Poker Heaven €20,000 Cash Race This race started on January 16th, but players have until January 29th to accumulate points towards this large race. The leaderboard will pay cash prizes to the tpo 50 point earners during the promotion period. This promotion is offered network wide but Poker Heaven seems to be offering the largest prizes. Players must opt-in via the Player Zone. True Poker $65,000 Points Race, $75k Gtd. Tournament The $65,000 Points Race has become a monthly staple and players joining the race today still have a chance to get on the leaderboard. A $50 prize is for the taking for currently just over 1100 points. On January 29th, True Poker will be offering a $75,000 guaranteed tournament. Players can enter by buying in directly for $109 for satellites for a low as $2.20. NoiQ €60,000 VIP Races There are two remaining promotion periods remaining in NoiQ Poker's main VIP Races. The Entraction Network room will be giving away €15,000 each from January 16th to January 24th and January 24th to January 31st. Cash prizes are awarded to the top 100 VIP Points earners during each period.
This post is coming out a bit later than normal because it did not seem fair to grade the payment processing over the holidays. With entire departments off for the holidays, and banks closed, the time required to process a cashout was going to be higher. Unfortunately, it seems that several of the U.S. friendly online poker rooms have been unable to catch up from the holidays. Almost every poker room experienced slower cashouts over the last 6 weeks than they had in the previous period. This month, I started grading on a curve. Cashout speeds are not quick for any U.S. facing room anymore so it is time to start grading on the new reality. Last month's grades are in parenthesis. True Poker/Americas Cardroom - A- (B) U.S. players have several cashout options on the network now known as the Winning Poker Network. The fastest options are cash transfer and the debit card option. Both involve high fees, but process in 1-3 days. Players can request a check and expect it in about two weeks unless it is over $1000. If it is over $1000, it is sent by courier and takes about one week. Players requesting over $5000 can receive a bank wire. The fee is $500, or the equivalent in player points. Bank wires over $10,000 have a $600 fee, or the equivalent in player points. Intertops A- (B) Intertops has a $150 minimum cashout for U.S. players. There are three cashout options at Intertops. Those are bank wire, check, or cash transfer. A check takes about one week and has a $50 fee. Bank wires take about 1-2 weeks and players receive one for free every month. Cash transfer takes about two days and has a fee of 5-10% depending on its size. Intertops is a member of the Cake Poker Network with their own cashier system. Bodog/Bovada C+ (B) It is unknown if the exodus of players after the change to anonymous tables has caused it, but Bodog/Bovada cashouts are taking longer than they did last month. Checks are now taking 2-4 weeks to arrive. Checks are often hand written, and sent from locations outside the U.S. Bank wires also take 2-4 weeks. Many players have reported not being able to cash out by Rapid Transfer anymore, so this is certain to be causing higher volumes to other methods. Everleaf Gaming C (B+) Everleaf Gaming was in the top spot last month. This month, Everleaf has fallen quite a bit. This is because cash transfers, the only option for most U.S. player withdrawals, is taking 1-3 weeks. Last month, these same transfers were taking 2-5 days. Bank wires are also available for cashouts, but the minimum is $5000. Even players outside the U.S. are reporting cashout speeds of 1-3 weeks. We will conitnue to monitor the cashout issues at Everleaf Gaming. Everleaf Gaming skins include Minted Poker and Cellsino Poker. Merge Gaming C- (C) Checks are taking longer at Merge Gaming than they were last month. Checks are now taking 6-8 weeks to arrive. Last month, checks took 4-7 weeks. Players can request a cashout for between $100 and $2500 for a fee of around $15, depending on their VIP level. Cake Poker D- (D) Last month, Cake Poker was taking 8-12 weeks to mail checks to U.S. players. Now it is taking 12-16 weeks for checks to arrive. After a slight improvement on cashout speeds, it seems Cake Poker is going in the wrong direction. Players can request a check for $500-$3000. WSEX F (F) We continue with our monthly warning about World Sports Exchange, and their sister poker room World Poker Exchange. WSEX/WPEX owe out over $700,000. Many players have been waiting over a year for a cashout. Even with the added liquidity of football season, WSEX could not lower their outstanding debt. In fact, their outstanding debt grew. Hopefully the slower cashout speeds are only because of the holiday season. We will check back in the next 3-4 weeks with a new report on U.S. online poker payment processing.
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