Full Tilt Poker, the story as best I know it...

Since a lot of friends of mine read this blog that maybe don't keep as up to date on this stuff or play online a lot have asked me about this situation, I'll do my best to recap the events over the last few months near as I understand them.

So it started on "Black Friday", when the Department of Justice in the United States seized FTP, Pokerstars, UB/Absolute's accounts and charged many of the people in charge with various acts of fraud for going through third party channels to get American players' money online during this time after they had outlawed online gaming.

All sites were re-instated right away, with the ability to play for anyone who wasn't American. During this time, naturally, an absolute shit-load of players started withdrawing money from these sites(which obviously further hurt an already hurt business) because of fear, or in the case of any American player, because they have no reason to have the money on the sites.

Two weeks after the Department of Justice crackdown, Pokerstars announced they had reached an agreement to start paying players back, and since then has publicly stated they have paid back $120,000,000 of player funds to players from the USA.

Full Tilt Poker has paid back $0.

The reason for this is largely in the way the two companies kept their books. Pokerstars had segregated accounts for player funds, so when the DOJ came along and seized everything it was easy for Pokerstars to point to their books and tell them they needed the player's money back so they could pay them, and thus the situation came to a speedy resolution.

Full Tilt's big mistake through all of this, was not doing that. They had it all in one large pool, which the DOJ seized and has not as of yet(as far as I know), given it back to them. So FTP was stuck with having most of their assets seized, and a gigantic number of withdrawl requests piling in, and were stuck in no man's land. No amount of rake makes up for those two things happening simultaneously. When your player pool takes an enormous hit, the DOJ seizes a huge % of your money, AND there's a mass exodus from your site, there's no amount of rake that can save you.

So Full Tilt did the right thing, they started trying to find a loan from someone to pay out players for a share of the company.

Then Phil Ivey came along. To be clear, I've never met, nor played poker with Ivey. I think he's one of the few red pros I've managed to avoid online for my life in bigger tournies, so I don't know him, but I do know that I had a ton of respect for him, and lost a ton of it with his self-serving antics about boycotting the WSOP and trying to sue FTP. He made a goddamn fortune off the site, that much I do know, and unlike Tom Dwan or other pros who actually handled all this pretty well by pledging all the money he's ever made from FTP back to the players, he never pledged a cent. His $150 million lawsuit and public damning of the site also did them absolutely no favours in their search for a loan.

So FTP existed in limbo. During this time for us outside of the USA, it was business as usual on the site. We could desposit/withdraw, it was a bit slower, but no big deal.

Which brings us to yesterday. The Alderney Gaming Commission which controlled FTP's gaming license pulled the plug, largely because of their breach of gaming regulations because they haven't paid anyone back in so long now. As of now FTP is down. Has been for a day. None of us can get at our money.

There are rumours swirling about what comes next, Jack Binion is sniffing around buying FTP, and there are now reports that the Kahnawake Gaming Comission out of Montreal will license FTP and allow them to resume real money play for anyone outside of the USA, and allow withdrawls/deposits.

Despite the shock of Black Friday, and all the subsequent PR problems FTP went through, yesterday was the first day I ever got concerned about my money on that site.

During all this Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and the other pros with controlling interests of FTP have been completely MIA, which has certainly made them look like scum. To completely vanish, say nothing, and not do anything to comfort American players for months now, and now all of us, really is dispicable.

To any red pros who have actually been present and accounted for, I'd like to thank them. I don't think anyone's handled this whole situation better than Tom "durrr" Dwan, who has pledged to give back every dollar FTP ever gave him to help see players get their money back, and offered to buy FTP money from people for 90 cents on the dollar.

There are others, Marc Karam has been as open as can be about it on his forum(jackseven), I know people that have seen Erik Lindgren and a few others around the WSOP and they've been as open as they can be.

The big ones though, no where to be seen. Phil Ivey? Certainly did no favours to the site.

So, where does that leave me? Well, I have ~$8,000 sitting on the site right now that I have no access at all to. That certainly hurts. I have friends who had more than that on there too. As of now Full Tilt Poker is down, there is no way to get on to the site.

I'd put the chances of me seeing that money again at 30:70(which is very optimistic after this Kahnakawe report, if you'd have asked me yesterday I'd have said 5% maybe...).

It also hurts because as much as I've become disillusioned with the way they've handled all this, FTP still has by far the best software and tournament schedule of any site. MET's will be missed. Hopefully someone like Jack Binion does see a value in acquiring that software which is still the best in the business, and work on clearing up the image around it, because it's still a fantastic business model somewhere deep down there.

Hopefully that's moderately illuminating...rough day yesterday to say the least.