News of the Day

Sort of an interesting confluence of online poker news here lately with announcements coming from both Full Tilt Poker regarding the process by which U.S. players may finally get to file a petition in an effort to recover their erstwhile balances as well as breaking news regarding the launch of WSOP’s online poker site in Nevada. You might say both announcements come under the “long-time-coming” category.

U.S. Full Tilters have been waiting nearly two-and-a-half years for their funds, with the new Full Tilt Poker Claims website having been launched by the Garden City Group way back in March. No time frame was suggested then, and I guess six months later seems about right for something finally to happen on that front.

Meanwhile the WSOP.com real money online poker site was first announced in a conference call in mid-May with a lot of indirect suggestion at the time that it could possibly go live at some point during this year’s Series. That didn’t happen, but today came another conference call with the news that the launch will occur this Thursday.

I’ll admit to feeling a little bit detached from both of these stories, for different reasons.

The FTP news comes a few days after that report of a leaked GCG email containing of list of persons ineligible for payment from the fund they have been charged with administering. That list includes folks like FTP affiliates, FTP pros and other employees of the old site and its myriad shell companies, and “a past or present vendor of FTP that received compensation through FTP players’ accounts.”

That last item has been taken by some perhaps to cover anyone who ever received any sort of transfer into their FTP account as payment such as often would happen back in the day for various purposes, including payment for writing gigs.

I personally don’t remember ever having been paid in this way for an assignment -- not via FTP, anyway. But I know many who have. I also never got into the affiliate game, and so think I might actually be okay as far as being eligible to petition to get back my tiny roll of just under three hundy is concerned. It has been so long, though, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by skepticism when finally being introduced to some process (of yet-to-be-determined length) by which to get back my cabbage.

My detached feeling from the other news of the WSOP.com real money launch is more obviously caused by it only pertaining to folks within the state of Nevada which is more than a couple thousands miles away from where I’m scribblin’. That said, my sense is this is a development that will eventually have some significance beyond the borders of the Silver State, and perhaps sooner than later.

I’ll be very curious to see how the new site fares in comparison with Ultimate Poker and whether or not UP’s four-and-a-half-month head start will really matter that much once the WSOP machine gets cranking in earnest.

For now, though, it’s as though I’m today reading stories about a distant past (the old, corrupt, doomed Full Tilt Poker) and a distant future (the new, full-of-potential, promise-filled WSOP.com site), both of which are far away from my current time and place.