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william hill
is there 2 many badbeats on this site?on william hill poker there isnt half as many...
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William Hill is part of Playtech/i-Poker. Good luck with them.......
Each to there own,If hills are better why play here?
FWIW I think the OP is Spamming of the worst and base type.
But would be interested in an expansion on your comment if your willing.
I owned a shareholding - 25% - in a skin of i-Poker. It was called "blondepoker com".
In brief.....
We had a small book of players, but we were a winning book, & they never liked that. What did they want us to do - tell our players to try & lose money? It was a ridiculous policy to try & enforce.
So, along comes a big raker - a HUGE raker - to our site, who deposited $10,000.
By the end of the Month (remember, we were on a network) he had spun the $10k up to $50k.
He rings me one morning.
"I cannot access my account".
We check it out.
i-Poker say "yeah, you (the Skin, us) need to pay a penalty of 35% of his $40k winnings".
"WTF?"
"I'm afraid you will have to"
"Good luck with that guys, see you in court". (In fact, our site was licensed by a Network in the Cayman Islands, so legal recourse was impossible.
So I ring the guy back & tell him. He says "fine, no worries, I will have to switch rooms & play elsewhere". We agree he has no choice, & I wish him luck.
He rings me minutes later. He had tried to withdraw his cash, & the cage had refused to alow him to!
We contact the network & are told "you will have to pay the fine before we will release your Clients funds".
AFAIC, that was illegal - the matter of the fine (not proven) was a third party dispute, & nothing to do with our punter.
The argument raged for several weeks, & then we got a letter teling us they were closing down our room.
The fine? They insisted we paid it, we refused. Our players had deposits of around $80,000 in total in the Cage, & so we were told that players could withdraw deposits until the net value of the fine remained - about $18,000 - in the cage, & then that $18,000 would be used to pay the "fine".
So, I informed everyone who had cash on the Site to withdraw their cash, & I also made a personal guarantee to each & every one of them that any gross shortfall (i.e., once the total deposited fell under $18,000, & was thus "impounded") I would pay personally.
The threshold was reached a few months later, & thereafter, everyone who tried to withdraw ended up contacting me, & I paid them from my personal funds. blondepoker did not have any cash, because i-Poker had soaked it all up by dubious "chargebacks"*, so I had no choice but to honour ther debts personally, & I did.
From time to time, I still get PM's from next door from absent or lapsed Clients who suddenly decide to withdraw their money, & get told "the room is closed, contact blondepoker". I pay all of them, in full, & quickly, from my own pocket. The amount still recorded as "on deopsit" remains at around $10,000, & I remain liable for all of that, & will honour it if the players ever ask for it.
* "chargebacks" are fraudulent credit card transactions. The "cage" managed deposits, & were taking multiple deposits from "poker players" in places such as Russia, Irag, Kazahkstan, Ukraine, etc. These rose from $300 per month to eventually peak at $17,000 one month, & we were held responsible, & had to pay every cent from our cardroom & casino earnings.
So no, I don't like them, & with good reason. And everyone thinks FTP were bad....
Can you imagine winning $40,000 on a poker site, only to be told you cannot have it because the Room is a "winning room"?
The policy of "net winning books are not acceptable" still remains in place at i-Poker, but as it happens, most of the Skins are net overall losers, so its OK.
Happily - & I rarely take delight in the misfortune of others, but I make an exception here - Playtech (complicated, but effectively WmHill/i-Poker) reported a drop of 32% in poker earnings (margin) in the past 12 months, which follows a similar though slighly smaller decline the previous year. A couple more years of 32% annual declines at Playtech & it will be time to turn out the lights.
So, I repeat, if anyone wants to play on i-Poker, good luck to them. Hurry up, though.
Meanwhile, at Sky Poker, traffic is massively UP year on year once again. Happy days.
I never liked i-poker for my own reasons but never realised how deep iit was. I always suspected something funny there.
Interesting read tikay. And again shows how loyal you are to helping good honest poker players out.
I think ther are very few people who would have had the decency and integrity to pay the differential out of their own pocket. So credit to you for doing so.
As you say whats the point in running up a BR for it not to exhist tangibly. Sadly I am having a similar experience with 888 just now. Have been withdrawing very nice sums of money for the last 3 months, but have now had my account suspended due to them investigating me for some kind of software misdemeanour. I think they believe I'm a bot. But just seems like an excuse to suspend my account.
Lot of dirty tricks out there.
Anywho, thanks for expanding.
Was surprised not to see an entry from them in the world leader board tbh.
ps.......my blonde poker account(of which i cant seem to find the details of)
had about 4k in it and i had forgotten all about it until reading this thread.
if you would like to bring it on saturday at dtd it would be much appreciated.....cheers,dave
(its still going strong 4 years later)
Very honourable taking the burden and paying them back out of your own money.
The OP is spam so take no notice of it.
iPoker is not an honourable company IMO - end of.
I followed the Blonde/iPoker story as it happened and what Tikay says is the unadulterated truth. It takes a man of honour to dip into his own pocket for the members - FT could learn something from that.
Next time some clown posts drivel on twitter or FB about Tikay, remember this story.
Whilst I much appreciate the "honesty" comments, don't you think that everyone has an absolute DUTY to be honest, & fair, when dealing with others? Do as thy will be done, & all that...
It's an onerous burden, but compulsory, in my opinion. Had the Site made a lot of money (it made nothing, in fact, when it was all added up) I would have kept the earnings, or my share of them, as "profit" to which I was properly entitled. The fact that it lost me money is irrelevant really - it does not remove the onus of honesty.
When we first opened the Room, several Members asked, as they were mistrustful of i-poker, "will you guarantee our Deposits?" The answer was "yes, of course", & I told them that. Thereafter, there could be no question of not fully reimbursing everyone. As it happens, it cost me money, but it could equally have made me a lot of money. Them's the breaks.
I should add that players on i-Poker should have nothing to fear, as long as they are with a reputable skin. I would hope any skin would protect their players in the same way.
I also, for the sake of balance, want to add that the nonsense on 2+2 recently suggesting that i-Poker employ their own "bots" to play on i-Poker was just that - nonsense. They do not. I don't like i-Poker, not one bit, but I think it's important to keep to the truth.