Trouble For Lock Poker As Players Desert Pariah Poker Site

March 8th, 2015 | by Brian Corlisse

Lock Poker owed its players millions, but, with no regulator involved, will anyone ever lock ‘em up? (Image: uspokersites.com)

Lock Poker appears to be in serious difficulty as players continue to abandon the disgraced poker site like rats from a sinking ship.

Industry analyst PokerScout’s latest “Scouting Report” highlights the fact that player traffic at Lock has declined by 78 percent since February 2014, and has fallen by at least five percent each month over the past five months.

While a thread devoted to the subject on the TwoPlusTwo forums has identified nearly 500 players owed over $3 million, Professional Rakeback claims that figure is closer to $15 million. It seems there may be no way out of financial trouble for Lock, and that’s alarming news for players still waiting for cash outs.

Former spokesman for Lock, Shane Bridges recently broke ranks to say as much, when he told Pokerfuse that he felt the players funds would probably never be returned to them, citing a culture within Lock of financial mismanagement and corporate excess.

Asked whether the players’ money is now gone, Bridges said: “I never had access to any real financials, but with no significant movement on cashouts and promises of the big turnaround now being 12 months old it would be my assumption that player balances won’t be honored now.”

Picking the LockÂ

“Since departing Revolution in late October 2013 to re-launch as a standalone site, [the cashouts situation has] only worsened, with only a select few high-volume players receiving promises of expedited payouts,” concluded PokerScout. “Lock’s ineptitude resulted in plummeting cash game player counts.”

Before Lock was kicked off the Revolution Gaming network due to its payment processing problems, it had a 400 seven-day cash game average and led the US offshore market. Today the room struggles to average 50 players, and languishes in the nether regions of the PokerScout rankings.

“It’s conceivable that the majority of Lock’s remaining players are those who have behind-the-scenes agreements with management and the remainder are unaware casual players,” suggests PokerScout.

Lockdown

The frightening thing is that, while players are disappearing, there may be unsuspecting recreational players depositing money on Lock every day, unaware that its management have no interest in returning their funds. Lock continues to tell players that it processes withdrawals within eight to ten weeks, but the fact is that some players have now been waiting over two years.

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA) recently published an open letter to the owners of Lock Poker, demanding it open up about its solvency, or lack thereof, and its ability to pay its players. This, like the demand for answers from the hundreds, and possibly thousands of players owned money, fell on deaf ears.

Lock is in lockdown. Answering to no regulator, it may be accountable to no one. There’s no better argument for online poker regulation in the United States than the one illustrated here.