Stars details FTP relaunch and player repayment plans

PokerStars has confirmed that Full Tilt Poker will relaunch in the first week of November, and has detailed the repayment plans for players with money on the site.

Players from France, Belgium, Estonia, Spain and Denmark will be able to recoup their funds through the PokerStars dot.country platform relevant to their jurisdiction, by ‘pairing’ their FTP account with a PokerStars account.

Dot.com players outside the United States will be able to withdraw funds from their fulltiltpoker.com accounts from 6 November, while a plan for Italian players is yet to be finalised with the country’s regulatory authority AAMS. PokerStars has explained in a statement that the outcome of its discussions with the Italian regulator “Will be announced as soon as possible.”

Players in the United States will be reimbursed from the US$547m figure paid by Stars to the US Department of Justice in its 31 July settlement. The DoJ has advertised for a claims administrator to assist with the process.

Further details of the French repayment scheme were detailed in a press conference held today by regulatory authority ARJEL, with Stars having agreed to set up a holding account at the request of the regulatory body in order to secure the funds of all players with accounts on its former rival’s dot.fr site.

ARJEL first licensed Full Tilt through the operator’s French-facing subsidiary Rekop in 2010, however it then moved to suspend the licence in July last year, less than one week after the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) suspended FTP’s four operating licences. Three of these licences would later be revoked altogether by the AGCC.

During the last week, Full Tilt’s computer hardware was flown to the Isle of Man from its previous location of Guernsey, as PokerStars remains confident of relaunching its former rival under an Isle of Man licence.