You are at: Help & Support > What are Held Funds and how do they work?
Held funds form part of your total cash balance and relate to your poker winnings in the preceding 24 hours, i.e. if you sit at a cash table at 3pm and leave the table at 4pm with winnings, those winnings will appear in your held funds total until 4pm the next day when they will automatically released. The one exception to this is where held funds are used to play poker, which is explained in more detail below. These funds are shown as held whilst Sky Poker performs routine checks to protect our customers against any potential fraud such as chip dumping and collusion.
You can use your held funds to play poker. If you currently have any held funds and sit at a cash table, join a Sit 'n Go table, or join a tournament, Sky Poker will use your held funds in the first instance to fund your selected game, i.e. If you have £20 in held funds and you join a £22 tournament we will fund your entry with the £20 from your held funds and £2 from your normal cash balance.
All your unused held funds are released 24 hours from the time you left the table and the winnings became held. Once these funds are released you can then withdraw or transfer these funds to other Sky products such as casino, games and sportsbook.
Please note:
Sky Poker reserves the right to hold any, and all, of a player's funds indefinitely as a precautionary measure whilst we perform routine checks for fraudulent activity. Fraudulent activity may include, but is not limited to, stolen credit cards, transfer of funds to other player accounts (chip dumping), forgery, collusion and the provision of false information.