Popular cardroom Party Poker has run into short-lived trouble. An investigation by media outlet Pokerfuse has revealed problems with the player fund protection.
Established cardroom Party Poker recently had to revisit its Terms and Conditions (TOC) protocol, following an investigation by Pokerfuse, an established media in the poker industry. Their findings revealed that partypoker has not quite met the standards of player fund protection.
Put in simple words, this pertains to how the company intends to handle the money of active players in the event of insolvency or bankruptcy. As the terms were checked, there was no mention of returning the funds to the actual players, which prompted Pokerfuse to alert the operator about the issue.
The warning was met seriously as should be by any established market leader, but Party Poker had to hardly go it alone. Parent company GVC Holdings stepped in to intervene and offered a quick solution, complying with the laws and bumping the level of protection to an accepted standard compared to the scales of Party Poker’s operations. The level was since then upped from Basic to Medium.
As per the UK Gambling Commission, there are three levels of protection that a gambling operator may set in place lest customers end up footing a bill that is not theirs. The levels are Basic, Medium and High.
As per Pokerfuse’s investigation, Party Poker has maintained a low level of protection, that was not quite Basic but bore the trappings. After the parent company had intervened, however, the TOC have been fixed to reflect a higher level of security.
At the same time, the money was moved to a segregated bank account, which would allow the company to pay out any outstanding money or bankrolls should Party Poker become insolvent.
An ideal scenario would have been for GVC Holdings to create a separate entity which would just exist to handle the money and make sure that the money is kept safe. However, at the time of writing the article, GVC Holdings’ latest stance was that this would be difficult to accomplish at the present time, but was something the company could consider in future in order to bolster the level of customer fund protection.
Even before the amendments though, players didn’t feel anxious over the misses in the security offer. This reflects the operator’s untarnished reputation with its customer base.
Party Poker has been one of the most grossing card rooms online, staging online and offline competitions around the clock and year and extending invitations to ambassadors.
Partypoker is also the organization behind the famed LIVE MILLIONS tournament series, which have been taking place at several locations across the world. Partypoker has also been making strides and outpacing PokerStars in terms of popularity, albeit the latter has been working on a series of innovative products.
Meanwhile, following the update of partypoker, the company stands on equal footing with other established operators, such as 888poker, Ladbrokes, and others. Pokerfuse additionally noted in the investigation it conducted that more operators are now moving towards a ‘High’ level of customer protection, including PokerStars.
The High level is truly welcome by customers as a Medium benchmark simply means that the funds are likely to be repaid whereas the higher badge adds an element of certainty.
