It’s definitely been a busy week on the poker front, so busy in fact that I’ve been unable to keep up with all of the news myself! So with that in mind I’ve put together the first (of hopefully many) installment of the PokerNewsBoy.com Week in Review, where we’ll bring you all the highlights and lowlights in the poker world over the past week.

Fortunately we couldn’t have asked for a more eventful week to kick-off this column, with some extremely disheartening news regarding US players Full Tilt Poker funds, the launch of the Ultimate Poker VIP Rewards program (unlike any we’ve seen in online poker), and perhaps one of the worst run stakes in recent memory –which is saying quite a bit.

Garden City Group tells US poker players that FTP funds are at least a year out

After some social media backlash as they tried to drum up votes for the Claims Distributor of the Year Award (which falls right behind Valedictorian of Summer School when it comes to awards) the Garden City Group (GCG) told the poker community that Full Tilt Poker funds were at least a year out! Bob Pajich over at Cardplayer penned a terrific article on the matter that I highly recommend.

Ultimate Poker goes with “Winner Take All” Rake Method

This week John Mehaffey at USPoker.com posted an article on the Ultimate Poker VIP Rewards Program, which is heavily skewed towards recreational players. Essentially, whoever wins the pot at Ultimate Poker will be credited with paying the entire rake when determining the distribution of poker points and/or any rakeback the site may incorporate.

It’s a revolutionary method, but we’ll see how the poker community feels about it.

Vladimir Geshkenbein’s Bogus Journey… to the WSOP

We have some controversy over at 2+2 concerning the BAP deal run by PKR Poker Pro Vladimir Geshkenbein (Beyne in the online poker world) as he had to cancel the BAP before the Main Event, having used/lost all of the stake money he received as well as the winnings from earlier WSOP scores gambling and paying off debts.

Geshkenbein cancelled the Main Event part of the BAP, after finding a new staker to put him in the tournament, and apparently there was some confusion as to what this meant. For the original backers this meant they were entitled to percentages of his 62nd place finish, but to Geshkenbein he was only on the hook for the money owed from the original deal; basically the profit/loss up to the Main Event along with a refund of the Main Event.

You can sift through the thread here, and here are the summary of the allegations and Geshkenbein’s response that were posted on 2+2:

Cliff’s on the situation:

– vlad sold 84k sched on pstrategy for wsop incl main @1.6mu, general package was at v reasonable mus and considered a good deal

-wsop starts well w deepruns/cashes

-~3hs b4 mainevent day 1c, he comes in the thread and admits he degened our money away w cg/sng/paying personal depts

-says he needs to cancel our deal and other backer offers him a 1timedeal which he has to accept to recoup funds for us + otherwise he cant play main

-he goes deeper and deeper, stakers are raging and angry, skype group of victims is founded which produces the aquivalent of 200 doc pages in ~5days

– we reach VG and negotiate for a deal which gives us action in case of FT (his max offer was full package refund if he makes top 27)

-vlad agrees to the deal if all stakers agree and the public bashing stopped, some stakers disagree, vlad says we dont have a deal and he wont negotiate during ME (meaning his original “offer” of 840$/% incase of top 27 and 637$/% (main*mu) counts atm, vlad stops communicating

– he finishes in 62th place

Vladimir Geshkenbein’s response:

A quick statement from my side:

The thread title is obv. ridicolous and false.

If i indeed wanted to scam anyone I would just not fkn communicate at all with anyone. Are you guys retarded?

I have very clearly cancelled the action for the Main Event, before it started. Obv. this was not a gentleman thing to do and i apoligized and still do apoligize. But I wanted you to understand the reasons of why I did it, thats why i posted a long post reveleaning that my financial situation is not the best etc. etc. I deeply regret doing this. Should’ve just cancelled it and not said why, wouldn’t have been such a pain in the ass that way.

When I posted this i made very clear that the action is cancelled & everybody will get the ME Action refunded, including Markup obv. As an apology I am now refunding the whole Main Event action at double markup, but some people never get their mouths full, eh?

Some people are trying to freeroll me now and demand shares of the ME in which i luckily got to cash, which is obv. not gonna happen.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, July 19th, 2013 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.