PokerShares to Close Betting Platform After Five Years
The Bank of Timex is closed, at least as the PokerShares business. On December 29, 2021, PokerShares revealed via Twitter that the company will cease operations sometime in January 2022. For several reasons, the five-year-old business will stop offering its poker-related staking services.
McDonald as Bank of Timex
At one time, Mike “Timex” McDonald was known throughout most poker circles. He was a beast at the online tables and took the live poker scene by storm as well. His first live tournament wins came in 2008 when he won an Aussie Millions side event and made the finals of two others and then won the European Poker Tour Dortmund Main Event for nearly €1M. His list of accomplishments continued online and live, though he moved to higher stakes and played more infrequently in recent years. Ultimately, his live wins alone totaled more than $13M to date, and his online tournament earnings exceeded $3M.
Timex was one of the “young guns” during his heyday. Not only did he love to play for high stakes at the tables, he enjoyed a good side bet and staking other players. He developed an idea called the Bank of Timex, launched it very briefly on social media in 2013, and shut it down promptly due to regulatory concerns.
Bank of Timex to PokerShares
Instead of serving as the bank, Timex chose to turn his ideas into a business, one he ultimately called PokerShares. It was a partnership between McDonald and high-stakes poker player Veron Lammers. The latter handled the business side, and McDonald used his name and reputation for marketing.
They initially launched it in January 2017. The goal was to offer poker players and fans an official platform on which to bet on players, buy pieces of them at reasonable prices, and avoid the high mark-ups of direct staking. PokerShares also served as a sort of insurance that bets would be paid.
PokerShares operated with a Curacao license and claimed a unique place in the market. Instead of poker players selling their own pieces, PokerShares offered to sell that action. They took bets for large and small tournaments but focused on high-profile events, publicized heads-up matches, and even some prop bets.
Expansion and Closure
Over the past five years, PokerShares remained a competitor in a growing field but seemed to remain viable. It had been one of the initial sites to embrace cryptocurrency and continued to do so. As an income boost, PokerShares also expanded to include some online casino games and dice.
But just before 2021 ended, PokerShares took to Twitter to announce that the site would shut down at about the same time that it celebrated its five-year anniversary. The series of tweets explained the thought process:
“It has been a rewarding experience to help make the poker staking market more efficient, give fans at home more skin in the game, and allow the community to have a better perspective on how the market tends to rank various players.
“As time has progressed our team has grown more focused on other ventures, and grown further removed from the ins and outs of top-level poker, as well as found regulatory limitations have limited our ability to continue growing our business effectively.”
The play is to stop adding new markets this month (January) and give players ample time to withdraw funds from their accounts. The current deadline is March 31, 2022.
There is still no message on the website itself, though members may have received private messages about the timeline of the shutdown.
RIP. It’s amazing this ever existed.
Someone who can make this could always do easier, more profitable ventures. With better scale and less risk. Thread pretty much says the same.
Thanks for having this up for our enjoyment 🔥 https://t.co/ad1lxZSzX8
— Nikolai Yakovenko (@ivan_bezdomny) December 29, 2021
