An update by the French regulator ARJEL in the Europoker liquidation case shows that the players will not receive any bonus rewards they believed were rightfully their’s at the time the site closed, and only 2/3rds of their total player deposits remain in situ.
There’s a term used in Lean Principles for eliminating defects called poka-yoke. Take the British plug as an example. If you don’t put the right male parts into the right female parts, you could electrocute yourself. Only this doesn’t happen because the plug is designed to fit into the wall without electrocuting you. They have designed the potential risk out of the action.
Now let’s take online poker.
Players take a risk when depositing money into an online account. The operator could keep the money, lose the money or go bust. It happened to Full Tilt. And it’s the reason that I am brushing up my French lessons.
The Europoker Saga
Sometime in the Fall of 2014, the French facing online poker room, Europoker, left the Ongame Network after Bwin.fr and partypoker.fr merged to leave the former prince of online poker without a crown.
The ultimate destination for Europoker was the iPoker Network, but they never turned up with bags in hand. Instead, their parent company, EPMEDIA filed for bankruptcy and the players were left wondering why the hell nobody had come up with a way to poka-yoke their money?
Reports at the time said the player’s funds were safe – and therefore another Full Tilt Poker debacle was not on the cards – but those funds didn’t include rakeback and bonuses. The players wanted this money – reported to be northwards of €200,000 – and the more complaints poured in, the stickier the treacle became.
EPMEDIA drafted in a trust company called Equitis Management to look after things.
And then the winds blew.
The sun rose.
The moon came out to play.
And here we are two years later.
A Europoker Update
The last time I spoke French was to tell someone I lived in Wales. I can say my name and count to fifty. So I need your patience as I try to make heads and tails of press releases issued by ARJEL.
From what I can gather, the judicial officer working the case (it sounds like a detective novel), has come to the conclusion that players aren’t entitled to the €200,000 in proposed rak back and bonuses. Presently, only one player has opposed this sanction and is taking his complaint to the Court of Appeal of Paris. The person in question is after €3,000. He must be a man of principle.
Good luck with that mate.
It also states that the segregated player pool had a leak. Only 2/3rds of the funds exist. The loss of money means people will go short. Equitis Management states that players will receive an amount based on the ratio of money they had in their personal account in proportion to the total money in the Europoker player’s funds account.
Which leads be back to poka-yoke.
How can we prevent a repeat?
It’s easy.
Listen to my interview with Ryan Gittleson of Virtue Poker and learn how you can poka-yoke the middle man to ensure this never happens again.
