Poker world begins new era after PokerStars purchase of Full Tilt Poker

Regardless of the actual weather, the entire poker world woke up to sunshine and birds singing this morning, as the deal announced yesterday between PokerStars and the Department of Justice that will see PokerStars take over Full Tilt Poker and all player balances returned has finally happened.

Yesterday’s announcement that PokerStars would be shelling out $731 million to settle their civil forfeiture and money laundering claims; to purchase the assets of Full Tilt Poker; and to set up a segregated account to repay non-US players that were affected by Full Tilt Poker –which is reported to be $184 million.

There was a lot of information contained in yesterday’s press releases, from Isai Scheinberg stepping down within 45 days of the deal being announced, to the charges against individuals still standing. For anyone interested in the specifics of the deal can read the following press releases.

Read the Press Release from the Department of Justice

Read the Press release from PokerStars

Players like Blair Hinkle, who won over $1 million just before Black Friday and has never been able to access that money, are now patiently waiting for the payouts to begin from Full Tilt Poker, while players around the world patiently await Full Tilt Poker to relaunch under the PokerStars umbrella –which has proven time-and-time again to be the best online poker site in the industry.

US players will need to file what is called a remission in order to claim their funds from the US DOJ (basically making a claim to your account balance). Non-US players will be paid directly by PokerStars from the segregated account the site is setting up. Non-US players will be repaid within 90 days of the official agreement date (which will be within 7-days of yesterday’s announcement).

One area where players are hoping for a significant improvement with Full Tilt is in their customer service, which already seems to have been bolstered based on the following E-Mail response supposedly from Full Tilt that was posted on 2+2 by user Hobstarr:

Hello,

Thank you for your email.

Account security is of the utmost important to us, in our re-launch in approximately 90 days.

Extra security measures will be put in place to authenticate and validate all accounts.

Access to current/previous Full Tilt Poker accounts will only be provided to the owner of the account, as at June 29, 2011.

We will not be responsible for any account ownership changes, changes of detail since this date, nor transfers – and will work extraordinarily hard to ensure we are providing secure mechanisms for account access.

You will be able to cash out your entire balance once we have re-launched, in 90 days after finalising our agreement with the US Department of Justice. We can not provide more information on your FTPs at this time however.

We appreciate your patience in the meantime and endeavour to update all of our players as time goes on.

Please continue to check our FAQ for more information at: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/

Regards,

Simon

Full Tilt Support