Winners and Losers: When Full Tilt’s Fate is on the Line, Everyone Loses

Topics: Epic Poker League, Winners and Losers, WSOP, Daniel Negreanu, Full Tilt Poker, Politics [+]

This…was not the best week for news coming out of the poker world. Sure, the WSOP released their schedule, but other than that almost none of the news that was reported was very good. The frontrunner in the Republican nomination race has made a not-too-popular stance on online gambling (within our circles anyway), and there was a small matter of Full Tilt’s fate hanging in the balance after months of being assured a deal would take place. Cap it off with a pro getting his account hacked and you have a pretty rotten week for poker news. Let’s see just what happened:

Winners

WSOP – Aside from the not-in-November November Nine (October Nine?), there wasn’t anything earth shattering about the schedule that came out from the WSOP this past week. And honestly, that’s fine. The annual pilgrimage to the biggest tournament series in the world will continue to attract tens of thousands of players to Las Vegas, and with a few twists in the schedule, will continue to bring excitement the whole way through. New to the series this year is a $3,000 heads up No-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha tournament that is sure to draw a sizeable internet crowd, the reappearance of a Doubles Hold’em event (albeit it being a non-bracelet event), and the $1 million One Drop event that has been hyped since the last World Series. Couple that with the introduction of 100 more tables, 3 starting days instead of 4 for the Main Event, and daily tournaments running around the clock, and the WSOP is proving once again that the place to be for a poker player in June and July is Las Vegas.

On the Bubble

Daniel Negreanu – This past week was just a rotten week for Daniel. The week before Daniel bubbled the $250k Super High Roller, which is quite the swing to your bankroll. Then, on the way back, Daniel allegedly had his account hacked on PokerStars, causing $61,000 to go down the toilet. As if that wasn’t enough, he then gave an interview to Poker Player Magazine that he said didn’t really represent him very well. That’s pretty much as bad of a week as you can get for someone that I can’t really say deserved the negative karma onslaught. The thing that keeps him off the loser category is, well, he got hacked and lost a significant sum of money, and honestly, I would rather make the guy that hacked the account the loser, not the victim himself. At least now Daniel will be using an RSA key in the future (you should too, if you play online poker and your site supports it).

Losers

Mitt Romney ­– This should come as no surprise to be perfectly honest, but Mitt Romney has come out against online gaming in an interview just before the Nevada caucuses. Romney, currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, used a similar line to other gambling opponents, showing concern for the social costs of gambling, including enforcing some people’s addictive behaviors. It is unfortunate that out of all the nominees, only one, Ron Paul, expressly supports online gaming, and he doesn’t seem to be on the inside track for the nomination. We can take solace in the fact that laws are drafted in Congress, not via the President, and it’s a long road yet to see who will be in the White House in 2013.

Professionals That Owe Money to Full Tilt Poker – The big story of the week came from a GBT lawyer that stated that $16.5 million was owed to Full Tilt by various pros, and as a result of this, the deal may fall through if the players do not pay the money back. Some of the players, whether publicly or not, were not too pleased with being called out by GBT, and, similar to what happened with Chris Ferguson last week, the community was up in arms over yet another potential block to the Full Tilt deal going through. One of the players, Barry Greenstein, actually went on 2+2 to address his debt in particular, expressing concerns about where the money is going, plus the fact that, for now, the debt is not GBT’s to collect. Which brings me to the other half of the equation…

Groupe Bernard Tapie – …because let’s just face it, this all looks a little fishy. I had a milder critique of this decision to out the players, but other news outlets have been far harsher in how they feel about these recent events. GBT’s counter to any “we worry how the players will be paid argument” with “if you don’t pay, we scrap the deal, and it will be your fault”. It seems that, over the course of the group’s investigation into Full Tilt’s finances, they have been less than impressed with the outcome, and now they are looking for ways to get some guaranteed money to sweeten the deal. Laurent Tapie has actually gotten so far as to say that the deal may be terminated on this issue alone, and it isn’t clear whether any DOJ-backed repayment deal would be good enough for the GBT. As such, when GBT and the players are fighting and $300 million in player funds hangs in the balance, no one wins.