Hi Karim,
Sorry for the delay answering your concerns, after Barcelona I had some minor surgeries that kept me away for a bit. Now, I would like to address this subject.
To be honest, I don’t feel that following numerous emails and phone calls between us I need to justify our actions further. However I am going to post up on this for the sake of a quiet life and for the benefit of other affiliates who might be reading.
The decision to leave the US was not taken lightly by DoylesRoom.com. If you cast your mind back to late 2006 you’ll remember that the industry was in a mess, processors were dropping like flies and the risk of arrest seemed very real. Legal advice received by the company strongly suggested a withdrawal as the only course of action.
Our plan was to withdraw from the US in an orderly fashion. But then the wild card came. Tribeca Tables, acting on legal advice of their own gave us a very short period of notice that they were closing their network to US players. In that time we had to inform all of our players and affiliates and find a way of settling all the player deposits. We had two choices:
1. Cut all our players off cold and pay them back their deposits (a monumental task given the size of the database and the lack of processing capability at that time). This would have taken a very long time and distracted us from our objective at the time which was to re-focus on Europe.
2. Do a deal with another US facing poker room whereby they would take over our players and their balances and we could pay across the cash for their balances in one lump sum rather than tens of thousands of small checks and e–passporte transfers.
We chose option 2 on the basis that it saved us the administrative burden of paying back all of our players individually AND it was good for the players in that it gave them somewhere else to play and preserved their loyalty points. FT stepped up to the plate and helped us out big time when we were not in a good place. The deal was about helping our players and allowing DBPN to move on. We have not received a cent from FT. If you have evidence that we have, Karim, then email it to me I’d love to see it.
Ultimately Karim, I doubt you’ll ever be convinced and you will always believe in some kind of conspiracy theory. As for DBPN, we just want to move on and get growing. If you choose to be part of that, that’s fine. If you choose not, that’s also fine.
Best Regards,
George Barahona
Affiliate & Sales Department Director
The Doyle Brunson Poker Network
US: 1-888-762-4192
UK: 08000-51-6737
Intl: + (506) 253-3984
[email protected]
[email protected]