The Poker Bus

What Really Happened to Stacks Poker

Everyone remembers stacks poker, right? They were a new poker room that created a lot of buzz with their 3d poker software and the generous promotions they promised to big players. Unfortunately they kept pushing their release dates back and were never able to make it past beta stage.

While this was happening, nobody really knew what was going on. Some people even thought Stacks never planned to go live and was just using the site to build a massive email list of poker poker players. I made a post with my oppinion on stacks here.

It turns out my judgement was off. Just yesterday an ex stacks employee was nice enough to reply to this post with what really happened to stacks poker.

I used to work for Stacks. In case you’re interested to know what really happened…
The two guys that started the company Darryl and Tom were great to work for and really had a vision for what Stacks could be. They had an investor who I wont name, who made life extremely difficult for them from the get go. As a result of this investor their gaming license wasn’t granted in the fall of ‘05 as expected, and they didn’t receive approval until late January ‘06. They were forced to delay the beta testing because of the license delay from the gaming commission.

Once early beta began in February, Stacks started to let players in slowly, as they worked out relatively small bugs, and continued optimizing the 3D client. All of this coincided with a round of financing that had been promised by the main investor. The day came to close the financing, and the investor decided to try and steal the company away from the two guys that had slaved away for nearly 1 full year to build this awesome product.

Darryl and Tom have both moved on to great jobs, and are destined for great things, while their investor, who is a socially retarded, manic depressive jackass (only 28 years old) is back in the States somewhere, and apparently still thinks he can launch the site… proof of just what an idiot this guy is.
Apparently Darryl and Tom tried to work with another group in the early summer of ‘06 to refinance the company and buy out the investor. The investor apparently messed the whole deal up, and Darryl and Tom revoked their offer and willingness to work out any further deal. Both decided to move on with their professional lives.

I had a great time working with both Darryl and Tom, and will remain friends with these guys for a long time to come. I would jump at the opportunity to work with either of them again.