Fallout From Black Friday Online Poker Indictments Continue

Fallout from the April 15th poker indictments continues throughout the poker world.  As U.S. players scramble to find a new online poker home, others are waiting to receive payouts from the big three sites.  Here is an update on some of the recent headlines related to Black Friday.

Fallout from the indictments continues

Pokerstars Returns Funds – Full Tilt Stalls

Pokerstars started processing withdrawal requests on April 26th and reports have been coming in since the end of last week of players receiving funds.  Poker Junkie blogger compncards confirmed that he received his payout request and that the request was indeed marked as coming from PokerStars.

Full Tilt Poker has yet to begin processing funds.  Originally, a FAQ was posted on their site that stated that an announcement would be made around May 2nd.  May 2nd came and went without any word from the site.

On Tuesday, multiple posters on 2+2 forums reported receiving emails from support.  One posted an email stating that an announcement would be made next week, while the other said that there would be an announcement later this week.

Online Poker Traffic Plummets on Big Three – Cereus Nearly Flatlines

According to a report on pokerscout.com on Monday, the big three sites have seen significant traffic loss.  Their numbers are based on the average number of players that visit the site and sit in cash games.

Since April 15th, Pokerstars has lost 26% of their traffic and Full Tilt has dropped a staggering 38%.  Cereus has had the largest drop in traffic.  Since the Black Friday indictments, 76% of their traffic has fled the site.

The Merge Network has arisen as the big winner from Black Friday.  They have seen traffic jumps of 69% since the other three cut off access to U.S. players.

In addition, Cereus recently laid off around 95% of their staff due to restructuring efforts by the company.  The company will now focus on their non-US customers.

Headlines are coming out nearly daily about the situation.  More announcement and changes are sure to come in days and weeks to come.  We will keep you informed on the situation as it develops.

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