Poker Forum

This screams to me as the government having nothing better to do. They should really be more focused on helping get our country back on track.

I am optimistic that this will be resolved.

I wonder how people are saying FTP wasn't a Ponzi scheme. The basic defintion of a Ponzi scheme is "A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation." That seems to describe the FTP situation perfectly. Returns to players were paid from operating funds instead of profit, and it was done without the express knowledge of the "investor players" ... which makes FTP pretty much a textbook example of a Ponzi scheme.

"Mike "Timex" McDonald (@mikemcdonald89), and he was pensive about the action on Wednesday. "When I got 'Howard Lederer's Secrets of NLHE' DVD for my 15th birthday," he said, "I never imagined that one day I'd be voting him out of a poker league."

This statement is salient and illustrates the astounding fall from grace that the owners of FullTiltPoker have experienced due to the mismanagement of the site. Management misleading owners in business is pretty common and classic, so expect a long fight on this particular point.

I always liked what Negraneau brought to poker. But I could not appreciate him more for voicing himself about, "the Lederer family" now. Never mind that he's right, he had the fucking balls to say what everyone else thinks, but is too concerned about political correctness to do. He puts it out there. I'm buying the first round when I see him. As far as I'm concerned, he's a new favorite player of mine for telling it the way he sees it - DUDE, THAT'S HUGE!!

Serves them right IMO. I've heard that the international players are most likely going to be left out in the cold from all this. Shame really...I had 500 dollars on there. Not much but you still don't see that kind of money laying around on the streets ya know? I play Rakefree poker now and surprisngly enjoy it. It's a nice change from the regular rackback rooms. It's a nice feeling to know you aren't wasting money on rake. Anyway, there may be less people in those rooms but it's worth it to me....enough fish anyway

Hey Matt, where is it that you play rakefree poker? Are you a U.S. citizen?

Also, Percival, agreed, I think Negraneau has always had a lot of integrity: good, affable, everyday kind of guy mentality and behavior despite his obvious wealth and success. He's also one of the pros from the old school (particularly in tournaments) along with Ivey, Seidel, obviously some others, who have kept up with the evolution of the game that's taken place since the poker boom and the contributions of so many different minds and styles. I would like to give my vote of confidence for Ivey, Gus Hansen, Antonius, Dwan, Juanda, etc. that they had no idea this was the way the company was being managed. Were they too complacent in kind of just accepting these massive payouts consistently, perhaps, but getting staked is nothing new in the poker community and they probably just saw it as their company sponsoring them. They, and many of us, thought that Full Tilt was a profitable company, had no idea about the payment processor trouble, otherwise how could they have such a robust marketing campaign, etc. Perhaps they were naive to buy up pieces of a company they hadn't done thorough enough research into the managerial interworkings of, and we don't know the whole story, but I'd be surprised if most of these guys had any knowledge of what was going on with the board at the time. I thought Dan O'Brien's statement: "When you create a black market for a high demand item through an absurd set of laws, these things happen" sums up the whole issue here very nicely. Regardless of moralistic critiques of Lederer, Ferguson, etc. this clarifies the need for nation wide legalization and regulation of online poker, it's such a joke that the average U.S. citizen still isn't aware of the distinction between poker and other forms of gambling, and it's about time law makers got themselves informed and made the right decision on this issue. Either that or ban the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, the stock market, etc. it's the same thing: a competitive medium through which certain individuals thrive and succeed and others come up short.

Mixirox brings up a good point. With Goldman Sachs, BofA, Freddie/Fannie and all the other banks and shady Wall Street activities going on, why is the DOJ after online poker? I mean this just seems like one BIG distraction from the real criminals in this country. This all smells fishy.

Going along with what Mixirox and mookgnar were saying, Steven Levitt, the guy who wrote Freakonomics, published an awesome study which evinced that poker, if you know what you're doing, is actually a healthier, more consistently ROI +EV investment than the stock market: http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/WSOP2011.pdf, it's worth checking out.

I still say that FTP, Stars and ALL Online Poker sites software is RIGGED to benefit their RAKE and reward their BEST CUSTOMERS!!!
MIRACLE SUCKOUTS are far too normal online and don't tell me it's because of the increased number of hands a player sees, that's BS!!!