Claims Process for Full Tilt Poker’s US Customers to Begin Shortly

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Monday, August 5th, 2013 | Written by Lucy Brown

One of the most contentious, complicated and longest-running impacts of online poker’s Black Friday appears to be steadily progressing toward a positive resolution for poker players.

The impact in question is the inability of Full Tilt Poker’s American customers to access their bankrolls, which have been in legal limbo for more than two years following the site’s shuttering by U.S. officials in April of 2011.

The U.S. government justified the Black Friday seizures by questioning the legality of online poker in America; Full Tilt contested those claims but faced a financial shortfall that brought about the room’s demise.

The progress toward resolution came via an announcement from the Garden City Group – the company selected by the United States Department of Justice to oversee the return of player funds – indicating that the process for submitting a claim to retrieve the frozen funds is expected to begin “shortly.”

GCG indicates that refunds will be based on customer balances

One of the more controversial parts of the Full Tilt Poker remission process involved determining the formula by which player refunds would be calculated.

Early indications from those involved in the process suggested that a number of methods were under consideration. One idea apparently floated within the DoJ involved only refunding players based on the amount they had deposited. Others involved some combination of deposits and transfers to determine what the payable balance should be.

Thankfully for players, those ideas were apparently rejected, as the GCG announcement clearly states that the formula to determine payback amounts “will be based on players’ final balances with FTP as of April 15, 2011.”

But that does leave a small open question for some players, as you were still able to play on Full Tilt on the 15th of April following the shutdown of FullTiltPoker.com.

Even as the domain went dark, the actual poker room software remained online and tables continued to run. That means for some players that their balance at 12:01 AM on April 15th might not have been the same as their balance at 11:59PM on April 15th, so the precise definition the GCG intends to use for establishing player balances will have an impact on the refund amounts of at least some part of Full Tilt’s former American player base.

Process of reuniting players with money could still drag on for some time

The announcement from the Garden City Group only states that the claims process will begin shortly, and does not outline the concrete steps between the start of the claims process and the actual return of funds to players.

Without such a roadmap, it’s impossible to predict exactly how long of a gap players might be facing; the GCG obviously has to collect and process claims first, and then one imagines there’s a secondary step of collecting and verifying payment information. There’s also the possibility that players may disagree with the number the GCG generates, triggering an appeal that will add even more time to the clock.

But even with that uncertainty, it’s still clear that the recent announcement moves players much, much closer to the return of their Full Tilt Poker bankrolls than they were when even the start of the claims process was completely undefined.

Some had even speculated that players could be waiting until 2015 to receive funds, a prediction that now seems a bit too pessimistic following the GCG announcement.

In the meantime, a variety of sites continue to offer online poker to U.S. players, and more and more states in America appear poised to regulate the activity.