A Different “Chris Ferguson Challenge”

When I started this blog in 2006, blogs were much more of a “thing.” Heck, so was poker, especially online poker.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was still a few months away from slithering into our lives in the dead of night as a surreptitious supplement to another, unrelated bill. And it would still be nearly five years before Black Friday came along to raze the online game down to the felt (here in the United States, that is).

I’d been playing online for some time before I started the blog. I was also eagerly consuming other blogs, books, magazines, podcasts, forums, and everything else related to the game. Like some (or most) of you, I’d guess.

For a number of years I probably played at least some poker practically every single day. I also spent nearly every spare moment reading about poker -- studying strategy, learning about the game’s long and colorful history, and reading news about players and tournaments.

I was as fascinated as anyone by all of those “poker celebrities” of that “boom” era, too, and early on got a kick out of the idea I was playing the same game they were. Full Tilt Poker’s long-running “Learn, Chat and Play with the Pros” campaign was a good one, encouraging many to get involved and even believe they, too, could improve their games and move up to bigger and better things -- not unlike the pros with whom they learned, chatted, and played.

One of the many, many promotions Full Tilt Poker ran way back around 2009 or so was called “The Chris Ferguson Challenge.” If you played the micros back then you surely recall it. It involved Ferguson, one of the site’s founders (and one of the core “red pros” representing FTP), embarking on a nifty “challenge” in which he tried to build a bankroll of $10,000 from nothing at all.

He started out with freerolls and won entries into small buy-in events, then by following strict bankroll management guidelines (and continuing to win, of course) he did after busting a time or two manage to built that $10K roll which he then donated to charity.

In 2011, the whole idea of “The Chris Ferguson Challenge” took on a different connotation following Black Friday, and especially after the later amendment to the civil complaint that added Ferguson (among others) to the list of those accused of wrongdoing.

Allegations against Ferguson were ultimately dismissed several months after PokerStars bought out the site, paid the DOJ an enormous settlement, and also managed to get funds back to FTP players after years of uncertainty regarding whether or not the money in those accounts might be lost forever.

The dismissal swept away the issue of legal culpability for Ferguson and others, but the ironic juxtaposition remained. “The Chris Ferguson Challenge” provided a lesson in how to turn a little (nothing, in fact) into a lot. Full Tilt Poker meanwhile provided a lesson in how to turn a lot into a little (into a lot less than nothing, in fact).

After the last of the FTP-related settlements were finally completed in 2016, both Ferguson and Lederer turned back up at the World Series of Poker after a six-year absence. Most with any memory of the Full Tilt debacle were less than delighted.

The pair then came back again this summer, even boldly playing a tag-team event together. While Lederer has yet to cash once since returning to the tables, Ferguson has thrived, cashing 10 times at the 2016 WSOP, then a record 17 times at the 2017 WSOP. (John Racener also cashed 17 times in Las Vegas at this year’s WSOP.)

That success inspired Ferguson to continue a quest for WSOP Player of the Year in the recently completed WSOP Europe series in Rozvadov. There he managed to collect six more cashes including a bracelet win to clinch the award.

Back in 2016, Ferguson responded to questions about his return with a curt non-response: “I’m just here to play poker.” After winning his bracelet last week and clinching Player of the Year, he noted how the prospect of winning POY presented a kind of challenge he wished to attempt: “I was just trying to sneak in... just advance a little bit; trying to get a couple more [POY] points. And it’s just kind of happened. It’s the best way,” he said.

Ferguson’s new challenge -- and his meeting it with success -- managed to be the central story of the WSOPE, stealing attention and headlines away from others like Niall Farrell and Dominik Nitsche (who each won high rollers) and Main Event champion Marti Roca.

Again, many were less than enthused by such a turn of events. Indeed, while the original “Chris Ferguson Challenge” was genuinely inspiring, this new one kind of has the opposite effect.

Photo (adapted): PokerNews

Absolute Anticlimax

There was an item of news in the poker world last week, the sort of thing about which I might have written several blog posts had it occurred five or six years ago. After all, it was about an online poker site -- two sites, actually -- and cheating and scandal and illegality and all sorts of things your humble scribbler used to spend lots of time and energy opining about back in the day.

It has taken me a whole week even to acknowledge the story, though. Probably because it doesn’t affect me directly at all, and for those it does affect it has come so late as to make it seem we are in a place almost entirely distinct from where we all were when the story began.

It’s like one of those way, way, way late sequels. Or when a band who after shining brightly when young get back together many years later to try to reignite things with new material.

One of my faves, Robyn Hitchcock, actually has a new album out today (and the tracks I’ve heard are terrific). His old band, the Soft Boys, did one of those reunion records in the early 2000s about two decades after they’d split, and in an interview once he referred to it as “a bit of reactivating the undead by bringing back” and reanimating the band for that one-off.

That’s kind of how it feels writing about Absolute Poker and UltimateBet again, this time to report that almost six years after “Black Friday” -- the anniversary for which just passed -- players who had funds on Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and never were able to withdraw them are finally getting a chance to get that money back.

This has to be the slowest of any slow play in poker history.

For those keeping score, there were three sites named in the indictment and civil complaint unsealed on April 15, 2011 by the Department of Justice -- PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker -- with a fourth site, UltimateBet, then part of the “Cereus Network” along with Absolute, similarly affected by the DOJ’s action.

All four sites were subsequently prohibited from allowing players from the United States to continue playing on them. PokerStars shut us off right away. It took Full Tilt Poker an extra couple of days, but soon we got the stop-you-can’t-go-any-further pop-ups over there, too.

Both of those sites also made agreements with the feds right away to get back their domains (after they were momentarily seized). Those agreements involved ensuring funds went to the Americans, something PokerStars did immediately, but Full Tilt Poker never did, having shamefully squandered everyone’s money.

Eventually that led to the DOJ amending the civil complaint in September 2011 with further charges against Full Tilt Poker and new names added, and branding the site a “ponzi scheme” in an accompanying presser.

It took AP and UB a couple of extra weeks to make a similar agreement with the DOJ. Meanwhile, the sites blithely continued to allow U.S. players to play more than a month later (without their having any means of withdrawing). Finally both sites totally shut down -- not just to U.S. players, but the “ROW”-ers, too (rest of world) -- and as was the case with FTP no one was able to cash out a cent.

During the summer of 2012 PokerStars managed another deal with the DOJ, paying a big settlement that included acquiring Full Tilt Poker’s assets and making available outstanding FTP balances to U.S. players. Stars then reopened Full Tilt in November 2012 (outside the U.S., natch). Last year the two sites’ player pools were merged as one.

The reimbursement process was lengthy. I took part in it, finally getting my Full Tilt Poker funds in June 2014, more than three years after being shut out of the site.

(Incidentally, I’m convinced that by going through the withdrawal process which required me to submit bank account information to the DOJ in order to receive my funds, Fifth Third bank chose to close my account without warning and with zero explanation, very likely encouraged to do so by a DOJ initiative called “Operation Choke Point.”)

Anyhow, to get back to those rogue Cereus sites, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet, up until last week it appeared as though anyone with funds on those two sites at the time they went offline were never going to see that money again. Suddenly, though, came an announcement that a process similar to the one by which Full Tilt Poker players were able to recover their funds had begun for those who had money in accounts when Absolute Poker and UltimateBet closed up their respective scam-sites.

Am glad for those affected, although truthfully I can’t say I’ve had a lot of empathy for them during their six-year-long plight. That’s because not only did I not have any money on either AP or UB, I’d withdrawn from both at the first whiff of the insider cheating scandal on one of them (Absolute) in October 2007.

For those coming to all of this well after the fact, you can search this blog for “Absolute Poker” or “UltimateBet” and find plenty. This post from February 2008 links to a lot of other articles about the Absolute scandal, while this one from May 2008 is an early one among many relating details of the even bigger scandal that erupted on UB.

Also, if all of this is only vaguely familiar to you or if you aren’t up at all on the story of “Black Friday” and its aftermath, I wrote an article a year ago for PokerNews describing a lot of it in detail: “Black Friday: Reliving Poker’s Darkest Day Five Years Later.”

Just prior to Black Friday, UltimateBet in particular had somehow crept its way back into the limelight by signing a lot of “team pros” some of whom did work to rehabilitate the site’s post-scandal image. As it soon turned out, whatever the spokespersons’ intentions might have been at the time, it was all incredibly damaging to the poker community and, truthfully, to the subsequently dim prospects for online poker in the U.S.

This news regarding Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and the unveiling of the website where claims can be made by players (through June 9, 2017) took many by surprise, and I noticed a couple of articles describing it having come from “out of nowhere.”

I also saw some attempts to connect the DOJ’s decision to start the process with Preet Bharara’s headline-grabbing dismissal along with a number of other U.S. Attorneys by the Trump administration last month. Bharara, for those who don’t know, was the one who brought the charges against the founders of the implicated sites (and others) that were unsealed on Black Friday. He was also the one who called Full Tilt Poker a “ponzi scheme.”

Truthfully, it seems more likely that the news is more directly connected to Absolute Poker founder Scott Tom -- one of those named in the indictment and civil complaint -- having finally returned to the U.S. in February to face the charges against him. (Tom pleaded not guilty.)

Whatever prompted it, I’m sure the players are glad about it. To me it’s all the faintest hint of a whisper of an echo of a story finally lumbering, zombie-like, toward a much-belated anticlimax. And like Robyn Hitchcock was saying, it feels a bit like reactivating the undead to write about it.

The UIGEA: 10 Years Ago Today

Ten years? Ten? Hmm... can we even remember that far back?

A couple of weeks’ worth of dread preceded the president signing the bill into law. There’d been a few months of less specific fretting, too, as I recall, although few seemed genuinely concerned.

In July 2006 this blog was only three months old. A lot of my posts to that point had been about playing poker -- online poker, that is. Not unlike many of the other hundreds of poker blogs at the time. Occasionally I’d write about other things -- hard-boiled novels, for instance -- as well as other poker-related topics emanating from “the rumble.”

I did notice that month the passage of a bill in the U.S. House, something called the “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act,” and wrote a post here at the time about it titled “Raising a Glass to the Return of Prohibition.” I can’t honestly say that when writing that post I was all that concerned about my ability to play online poker being curbed at all, though.

One reason why I wasn’t so worried was the fact that the bill the House had passed wasn’t the much harsher seeming “Internet Gambling Prohibition Act,” the one certain legislators had been working over for the previous decade or so. Rather the “UIGEA” -- the acronym some of us would become very familiar with (and others consistently screw up) -- was only focused on credit card companies and financial transaction providers, meaning playing online poker wasn’t a problem. And, well, getting money to and from the sites didn’t seem like it would be a problem, either, or at least all that seemed too abstract at the time to bother us.

Besides, the sucker still had be passed by the Senate, then signed by the president. And pretty much everyone in the poker world who’d actually been following these attempts at legislating online gambling were predicting that wouldn’t happen.

We made it to the end of September 2006, then woke up one Saturday morning to realize the unthinkable had happened. The UIGEA had been snuck onto another piece of legislation and passed through the Senate with hardly any resistance at all. I wrote a post that morning titled “Deals in the Dead of Night” remarking on the event, still naively occupying a position of only moderate concern.

I noted at the time how it was already a given that then-president George W. Bush would sign the bill into law, but could only muster the opinion that “then things should get more interesting” once he did.

I’m remembering the following two weeks. It was that Monday, October 2nd, that PartyPoker (now styled “partypoker”) announced it would be cutting off the Americans. Somewhere mid-week I remember having a phone conversation with Party support and having it confirmed that yes, indeed, I would have to withdraw my funds as I wouldn’t be able to play on the site once the bill became law.

Like everyone else I began to wonder if all the other sites would follow suit, but both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were quick to confirm they wouldn’t be pulling out of the U.S. It all seemed a lot more uncertain, then, as we got the news that week that the UIGEA would be signed by Bush the following Friday the 13th, a suitably ominous-seeming day for the event.

We got to October 13, 2006, and while sitting at a desk with a banner reading “Securing the Homeland” Bush indeed signed the “SAFE Port Act” into law. In his comments Bush spoke of how the law “will make this nation more prepared, more prosperous, and more secure.” He went on to thank various legislators, reiterate the importance of protecting Americans from terrorism and making our borders and seaports secure, and winning the “war on terror.”

In his comments Bush didn’t mention the internet at all, nor the UIGEA which had been sneakily appended to the bill before its passage. It seemed almost like he might not even be aware of it.

Some of us were aware of it, though. And gradually more and more of us would become aware of it, especially four-and-a-half years later when Black Friday suddenly occurred as a kind of a belated next step in the UIGEA’s “long game.”

And now, exactly one decade after the UIGEA was signed into law, all of us here in the United States who’d like to play poker online (as they do in much of the rest of the world) are necessarily aware of its consequences -- even if we don’t know the reason why.

Photo: georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov

That Time I Learned That Jesus Didn’t Love Me

I think any of us who work long enough “in poker” -- as players, staff or tournament organizers, agents, promoters, reporters and “media,” or in other capacities -- end up collecting quite a few stories that we can’t really share, for a variety of reasons.

Some of the stories can’t be told because they involve “sensitive” information never intended to be publicized. Others have to remain hidden because they might endanger a person’s current employment. Still more are kept quiet because they reflect badly on either the one telling the story or others who for whatever reason are judged not to deserve such treatment.

I know over the ten-plus years of this blog I’ve “self-censored” a number of times, although to be honest I wouldn’t suggest any the stories I’ve suppressed were all that scandalous. One of the stories I consciously chose not to tell before I’m gonna share today, as it seems both a little timely and at this far remove fairly innocuous.

My first time covering the World Series of Poker was for PokerNews back in 2008, and as I’ve written about here many times before during those first couple of summers everything seemed especially interesting and exciting thanks largely to the novelty of it all. The interest remained even by the fifth or sixth summer I was there, even if the excitement had waned a bit by then.

Chris Ferguson -- a.k.a. “Jesus” (a nickname I tend not to employ anymore) -- was of course one of the more recognizable “poker celebs” back then. One of the early events I helped cover in 2009 was a $2,500 buy-in pot-limit hold’em/pot-limit Omaha event, and Ferguson played. While at the table he had out his phone and was playing Chinese poker, and I remember writing a live update in which I mentioned this fact.

It was kind of a novel thing back then to see someone on a device playing a different poker game while at the table -- not nearly as ubiquitous as it would soon become -- making for a bit of color worth mentioning amid an otherwise not-so-exciting Day 1. Kind of thing wouldn’t deserve being pointed out even a year later, I’d say, but at that time it was curious enough to include. I seem to recall making a joke in the update about two games not being enough, since the tourney featured PLH and PLO and Ferguson was playing a third game on his phone.

Anyhow, in my next “travel report” post here on the blog, I retold that story and a few others from the day. When referencing Ferguson, I said something about peeking over his shoulder to see him playing Chinese poker, taking a bit of poetic license in the way I described the scene (as though I had captured a little “inside dope”). Truthfully, there was no reason to look all that closely to see what he was playing. In fact, he was talking about the game with Andy Bloch who asked him about it.

In that post I also mentioned an “Approved Electronic Device Rule” the WSOP had in place that year which was not being enforced at all. I explicitly said I didn’t care one way or the other about players being on phones or other devices while playing, but I did note it seemed inconsistent to have a rule that no one heeded and that no one seemed interested in requiring anyone to heed.

There was a short sequel to the story -- this is the part I haven’t told before.

The next day I was back at the Rio where I first heard from a fellow reporter, then from the head of the team something about Ferguson not being happy with my posting about his Chinese poker playing. It was never 100% clear to me whether the objection concerned the live update or my HBP post (it seems like it was the latter, actually), but apparently “Jesus” was concerned enough to have spoken to then-WSOP Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack about it.

This is all very vague in my memory, I’m afraid, but I have a fleeting recollection of Ferguson having said something about how the WSOP shouldn’t allow the reporters to nose around in private business, with there even being some suggestion about credentials being revoked. However severe his objection really was, Ferguson was eventually told whatever he needed to be told, and the matter went no further. Meanwhile I was assured I’d done nothing wrong -- either in the live updates or on my blog -- and not to worry about it.

I also remember being told how Ferguson and I would probably get along quite well -- that we have similar personalities and interests, and seemed like we’d hit it off. Needless to say, I never sought out meeting him to find out if that were true.

I didn’t tell the story at the time partly because I was a little embarrassed by it, even if I shouldn’t have been. As a reporter, I didn’t like being noticed at all, never mind in a negative way. And if given the choice, I would have much rather reported that Ferguson liked me than that he had been made upset by anything I’d done.

I thought about the story again after Ferguson made his inglorious return to the WSOP earlier this month. When asked by PokerNews if he had anything to say regarding his absence since 2010 and/or his feelings regarding what had happened with Full Tilt Poker, he repeatedly responded “I’m just here to play poker.” It was a little like back in ’09, when he didn’t like anyone reporting on his doing anything other than playing in an event.

Ferguson has cashed seven times already this summer, including finishing fourth in an event over the weekend. His appearance at that final table created a bit of a stir, as PokerListings described in detail. He was asked again about whether or not he planned to apologize to the poker community, he responded “What are you talking about? No comment” before walking away.

Howard Lederer has also returned to the WSOP, the prospect of which I wrote about here back in May following his apology (which seemed at the time an unsubtle prelude to his returning). I mentioned in that post how his playing in any events would be a bit like men playing in the ladies event, necessarily producing a lot of unpleasantness and ill will, especially should he be successful. The same obviously goes for Ferguson, and it sounds a lot like that final table scene over the weekend confirmed that prediction.

Of course, while Lederer’s apology caused us to wonder about his sincerity, Ferguson seems unequivocally sincere in his non-avowal of responsibility for what happened at Full Tilt Poker.

No, people aren’t really loving Ferguson very much these days, and his success in WSOP events only seems to be adding still more negativity to a poker community he and others damaged so greatly already. Can’t say I’m that bothered, though, given how I found out long ago “Jesus” didn’t love me.

Image: “Jesus eyes the next table,” Matt Waldron. CC BY 2.0.

Lederer’s Mea Culpa

So Howard Lederer today -- today (!) -- issued an “apology” for the whole Full Tilt Poker 1.0 fiasco shared via Daniel Negreanu’s blog over on Full Contact Poker.

As it happens, earlier this week the player pool at Full Tilt Poker 2.0 was at last combined with that of PokerStars, both sites being currently owned by Amaya Gaming. That’s actually coincidental, though, as Lederer has no connection to the new Full Tilt other than having been among those who named the site long ago.

No, the timing of the apology rather has to do with the World Series of Poker beginning in just a week-and-a-half, or at least that seems the most likely explanation for it. Lederer is now admitting both to having made mistakes pre-Black Friday and not owning up to his culpability afterwards in what appears to be an attempt to pave the way for his return to the WSOP, something Negreanu alludes to as well in his contextual commentary on the statement.

You can read the statement yourself and decide how genuine the apology seems. You might also note how it mostly avoids any sort of particulars with regard to the mismanagement of player funds, Lederer’s own prominant role with FTP right up until and after Black Friday, and the way he still weirdly seems to portray himself as a victim of sorts while nominally accepting blame.

As far as Lederer’s playing at the Rio this summer goes, the WSOP reserves the right to refuse anyone the ability to participate in their events, and so it is technically up to them. I don’t necessarily see any legitimate argument for not allowing Lederer to play, but perhaps others might.

That said, I can’t imagine most are going to be all that enthusiastic about Lederer playing. He himself notes in his statement, “Players were not able to get their money back for a minimum of a year and a half, and, for many, it has been much longer. I’ve been a poker player my entire adult life. I know the importance of having access to one’s bankroll.”

In other words, thanks to Lederer’s own mismanagement and lack of oversight, he (and others) significantly damaged the careers of thousands of poker players -- indeed, in many cases, ended those careers altogether. Who could possibly be eager now to compete with such a person at the poker table -- i.e., to have such a person (again) do what he can to try to keep others from winning money at poker?

That’s what I think about here -- not just Lederer playing in WSOP events, but winning in them by cashing. Who could possibly be enthused by that prospect? (I even wonder how much Lederer himself would enjoy it.) Reminds me a little of what happens when men who choose to play in ladies events make the money, and the unpleasant feeling that results. What has been won, exactly?

If Lederer is not angling for a WSOP return, then, well, the gesture perhaps has some, small meaning. If he is, though, that only makes the much-delayed apology seem more empty and without significance than it already is -- another mostly self-serving act, following a long, long sequence of them.

Photo: “Sorry,” Timothy Brown. CC BY 2.0.

PS Gets the OK from NJ

My first thought last night upon hearing the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement had authorized Amaya to begin operating both PokerStars and Full Tilt in the Garden State was “finally.”

That such an announcement would be coming is something we began hearing not that long after New Jersey governor Chris Christie signed the state’s online gambling bill in late February 2013. Since then the likelihood of PokerStars’ return to the U.S. via Jersey has swung back and forth between just-around-the-corner to not-bloody-likely a few times before several hints over the summer punctuated by the phrase “end of the 3Q” made late September seem a real possibility again.

My second thought was that when news finally did arrive it coincidentally did so on the anniversary of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 being passed by the House and Senate (as noted in yesterday’s post). Something oddly symmetrical there, I suppose, given how the UIGEA’s history and that of PokerStars (and Full Tilt) have been intertwined over the last nine years.

After that I found myself less specifically thinking in generally positive terms about the news, not necessarily because of what will immediately come of it but rather how longer term the story of “U.S. Online Poker 2.0” will surely be a lot more interesting than it would have been otherwise. Felt like there was very little to look forward to before; now, perhaps, there are at least more possibilities, including more good ones for U.S. players wanting to play online.

That said, it’s been so long since U.S. Online Poker 1.0 -- an era that ended mid-April 2011 -- it is hard to think all that concretely about how last night’s news might conceivably lead to the reintroduction of the game online in more than just a few states here and there.

But it does feel a little like after enduring several orbits of garbage cards while sitting behind a dwindling stack, a hand with some potential has finally arrived. The attention is newly engaged, but the hand still has to be played skillfully. And luck still matters, too, going forward.

The Battle of Hastings

This past Sunday, poker pro Brian Hastings jumped on Twitter to allege an instance of angle shooting perpetrated by an opponent of his during a World Series of Poker event. Hastings has won two WSOP events this summer, and this incident occured at the final table of one of them, the $1,500 10-game mix.

“PSA,” tweeted Hastings. “Alexey Makarov aka Lucky Gump (I think) tried to angle shoot at 10 game FT. Floor ruled against him tho. Beware.”

Several sprang to Makarov’s defense as Hastings described a hand in which Makarov had asked for a misdeal following the awkward delivery of the first three cards in stud. Hastings believed Makarov only made the request after seeing everyone’s upcards, including the deuce Makarov had been dealt.

Before long Hastings was reporting that he “may have overreacted” and that “Alexey and I made up and are friends again.” In other words, it appeared a very minor episode and if it weren’t the WSOP where every little dust-up gets extra scrutiny, few would have noticed it.

Discussion about it, though, prompted David “Bakes” Baker -- one of those who has brought to the fore game integrity issues with the Modiano cards being used at the WSOP -- to complain that Hastings himself had been involved in some shenanigans during the weeks leading up to the series, having played high-stakes mixed games (including SCOOP events) on PokerStars under another person’s account.

“So after I FT’d the SCOOP 2k a bunch of well known pros messaged me telling me @brianchastings was behind the NoelHayes account on Stars,” tweeted Baker.

Hastings normally plays as “$tinger 88” on PokerStars, and indeed, a player registered in Ireland named “NoelHayes” had made one of the $2,100 NLHE final tables during SCOOP, finishing fourth and in fact knocking out Baker (a.k.a. “WhooooKidd”) in fifth.

Playing on a second account is of course against Stars’ Terms of Service which explicitly limits players to just one. “In the event that PokerStars becomes aware of additional accounts opened by a User,” says the applicable item in the TOC, “PokerStars may close such additional accounts without notice and may confiscate funds held in such additional accounts.”

Much noise ensued over Twitter as well as on Two Plus Two where a thread to discuss Baker’s allegation was swiftly begun. As some in the thread have noted, the story evokes a much older one involving Hastings and his huge $4.2 million winning session versus Viktor Blom on Full Tilt Poker in December 2009.

Blom -- that is, “Isildur1” (whose identity was unknown at the time) -- lost those millions versus Hastings, then the latter revealed in an interview how he had been supplied hand histories involving Blom compiled by his then CardRunners pro colleagues (something that also skirted close to crossing a line in FTP’s terms, although the site determined Hastings was not guilty of any violations). Here’s a post from then introducing that controversy, if you’re curious.

The 2+2 thread raged onward for a couple of days and more than 240 posts. One side issue brought up by some concerns the highly-publicized bracelet bets Hastings made prior to the start of the WSOP and the idea that some making those bets didn’t realize he’d been playing high-stakes mixed games online during the spring.

Early this morning -- just before 5 a.m. Vegas time -- Hastings chimed in with a fuel-on-the-fire contribution to the thread in which he pointedly avoids addressing the whole “NoelHayes” question.

After making clear “I have nothing to add to the conversation publicly” and dismissing “what strangers on the internet” have to say about him, Hastings laments “something like this being a major story in the poker world at a time in which the WSOP is in full force and we should be trying to promote and grow the game of poker, rather than drag it through the mud.”

He brings up the state of online poker in the U.S. and efforts to bring the game back, calling it “unfortunate that certain people have been on bad runs and choose to take their frustrations out outwardly” -- i.e., by criticizing his apparent multi-accounting. He adds “this will be my last post in this thread,” although he already has come back a couple of times to further the theme that efforts to uncover his misdeeds are hurtful to the game as a whole.

Needless to say, such a post was not received well at 2+2. Indeed it makes little sense as an argument, which for me comes off like Nixon in his 1974 State of the Union stressing the need to put an end to the Watergate investigations (“One year of Watergate is enough”) in order to allow the the nation and its government to start “devoting our full energies” to other important issues.

Certainly yet another story of high-stakes multi-accounting reflects somewhat badly on the game, but not acknowledging it or considering it worth looking into would obviously be much worse for poker. Compare the cheating allegation in the $10K Heads-Up event a few weeks ago (still apparently being investigated). Sure, even an accusation reflects badly on the game in general and the WSOP in particular, but the damage caused by a reputation hit hardly compares to harm caused by actual cheating.

Hard to tell, to be honest, amid all the back-and-forthing what exactly to think about what has been alleged, including whether or not some “may have overreacted” here as Hastings might have done with Makarov. Even so, it will be curious to follow where this battle proceeds next.

(EDIT [added 6/25/15, 6 p.m.]: The thread and story takes another turn, with Baker sharing a direct message from Hastings in which the latter admits to having played on Stars on the “NoelHayes” account [which some have pointed out would have to have been done from the U.S. via VPN, another big no-no]. If curious, click here.)

The Professionals Leave the Table

Today Full Tilt Poker announced they aren’t renewing sponsorship contracts with Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Gus Hansen, thereby jettisoning the last two sponsored pros from the site. Also gone (apparently) is the name originally given to the site’s “power trio” of sponsored pros -- Blom, Hansen, and Tom Dwan -- shortly after the launch of FTP 2.0 in November 2012: “The Professionals.”

Dwan left the band in December 2013. I wrote here then how the occasion inspired “thoughts of how the whole idea of poker celebs -- that different class of poker ‘professionals’ -- once such a very effective construct of online sites and abetted ably by the TV shows the sites sponsored, seems like something from an earlier era.”

Today’s news moves the needle even less. Hansen has long remained a figure of interest to many thanks to his win in the very first televised World Poker Tour event way back in 2002, his high-level involvement with FTP as a member of Team Full Tilt, and his continued participation in the “nosebleed” stakes games on the site where he’s reportedly lost over $20 million, including more than $17 million on the site during the last two years (according to High Stakes DB).

Blom, too, has fascinated many ever since the mysterious “Isildur1” showed up to challenge all of those Team Full Tilters and the rest of the world in late 2009. I’ve written here many times about Blom, including how intriguing it was to report on him at the WSOP. High Stakes DB shows Blom sitting around break-even during his almost two years playing on FTP 2.0, having been up nearly $6 million during the first six or seven months before falling back down to where he was on the site back in November 2012 (down a few milly).

The last post I wrote here about Hansen was in January 2013 when just a couple of months after FTP 2.0 went live he fired off some tone-deaf tweets in defense of Howard Lederer that were dismissive of just about the entire online poker community. The title of that post, “Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High,” suggests how his thoughts were received here. The last one I wrote about Blom was right about the same time, the title of which was a response to enthusiastic tweets from the FTP account reporting his presence at the high-stakes tables on the site: “Blasé About Blom.” Again, the title is an indicator of the attitude expressed in the post.

Today the dissolution of “The Professionals” altogether brings a different thought to mind about the significance of sponsored pros to online sites. I actually think they can serve a great purpose, even today, not just in helping attract players and building sites’ presence, but in helping to advocate for poker, generally speaking. The Team PokerStars Pros are an obviously well managed example of this, with players all over the world doing a lot to help explain and promote poker to wider audiences in their respective countries.

I’m realizing today, though, that FTP’s “Professionals” idea -- a dim echo of Team Full Tilt from the start -- had very little to do with establishing and strengthening connections among members of an online poker community. Rather, its whole ethos was to emphasize the impassable distance between Hansen, Blom, and Dwan and the unwashed masses.

The spectacle of watching “The Professionals” play for high stakes was mildly diverting for some, but hardly inspiring for most, particularly given the seeming apathy -- or even antipathy (in Hansen’s case) -- they appeared to have for the poker community as a whole.

In fact, the news of the end of the “The Professionals” makes me think of what a table full of amateurs might say to each other after a pro player finally gets up to leave after having made things difficult for them for the previous several hours.

“Glad he’s gone.”

The Reunited States: Amaya To Bring PokerStars Back?

Found it a little uncanny that on the very day I finally got my Full Tilt Poker money back -- three years and almost two months after Black Friday came along and the games ended both there and at PokerStars for United States players -- news broke that PokerStars (and the new FTP) may actually be coming back to the U.S. sooner than later.

You’ve no doubt heard about this mammoth deal struck between the Canadian-based Amaya Gaming Group and the Oldford Group Limited, parent company of the Rational Group which in turn owns PokerStars and Full Tilt 2.0. After six months’ worth of negotiations between the two entities, Amaya will be purchasing the online sites, the live poker tours and events, and other associated assets belonging to Rational for a hefty $4.9 billion. Seems hefty, anyway, although some are noting the price tag could have been a lot higher.

A few final steps have to be taken before the deal is finalized (e.g., Amaya shareholders have to okay it, some other approvals have to come), but it sounds like everything is in place for all that to happen.

Amaya already has one online poker platform -- Ongame -- and thus will soon have three. And most notably Amaya is also already licensed to as a service provider for online casinos in New Jersey. Amaya is a “B2B” provider while Rational is a “B2C”; thus, as Amaya says in its presser, “the Transaction combines complementary businesses with minimal overlap.”

The Rational Group had to this point failed to get licensed in the state thanks to its relationship with Isai Scheinberg and his being named in the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint. I believe it was late last year that New Jersey said they’d be waiting another two years before considering Rational’s application again. The change up top thus helps Amaya potentially introduce the Stars platform into NJ much sooner.

Chris Grove over at the Online Poker Report does well to explain both the deal and some of the other possible implications, including what it might mean with regard to PokerStars finding its way into other states (including those yet to pass online gambling legislation). Grove even speculates about the potential for Caesars and Stars somehow to get together down the road with Amaya now in charge.

Among the “Key Transaction Highlights” also listed in the Amaya presser, it is mentioned that “Rational Group’s executive management team will be retained and online poker services provided by PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker will be unaffected by the Transaction, with players continuing to enjoy uninterrupted access to their gaming experience.”

While Stars, FTP, the tours, and everything else will be left to the Rational Group guys to continue to manage, it sounds like Amaya has visions of adding what it already has to help “expand the nascent Full Tilt Poker casino platform” while also planning to “support Rational Group’s growth initiatives in new gaming verticals, including casino, sportsbook and social gaming, and new geographies.”

Everything remains “wait and see,” especially until the deal is finalized once and for all, but prospects shift immediately, particularly here in the U.S., when it comes to online poker.

And here we are on Friday the 13th, too, which also recalls another landmark day in the twisty history of online poker in the U.S. Uncanny.

Finally, Full Tilt Funds

Did a double-take earlier today while making a cursory check of my banking account online. Wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but rather needed to conduct a little business when I noticed something new coming through -- one of those “Pending Transactions” indicating that a credit was coming through.

I had to look again, just because I wasn’t quite sure what I was reading the first time. I slowly eyed the line of all caps to the right of the figure.

“DOJ POKER STARS POKERPAY01 ******* 061214.”

No. Really? I guess it’s true. At long last, I have cashed out from Full Tilt Poker.

My first thought was to compare the three years and almost two months it took to recover those funds to the couple of weeks it took to get what I had over at PokerStars. (I had jumped ship from both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet way, way, way before in late 2007 when the first insider cheating scandal at AP broke.)

That wasn’t too revealing of a comparison, though. One event was more or less a pleasant surprise. The other was delayed to such unreasonable lengths and buried under so many inconsequential subplots, false leads, long-smoldering outrage, and abject resignation that it hardly seemed like they belonged to the same category. Besides, it took too much mental work even to remember the earlier one, let alone view it in terms of the latter one.

So I thought further about it. Was it more like getting some kind of surprise discount after having already paid for something? Receiving unexpected tax refund for overpayment? Winning a raffle when I hadn’t realized someone else had dropped my name in the hat?

Or how about being pushed a pot unexpectedly after getting my river bluff called, then finding out I had the best hand after all?

Nah, I thought. More like the faintest of echoes, like a letter reminding you of something you used to do -- a camp you once visited, a vacation from long ago -- something meaningful once upon a time, but that you haven’t thought about for a long, long time.

Then I just stopped thinking about it altogether. Just like I’d gradually stopped thinking about the old Full Tilt Poker, too.

Good luck to everyone else getting theirs.

Click to Confirm: Finally, Those FTP Funds

Because I just came from the Full Tilt Poker Claims Administration website being managed by the Garden City Group and the pursuit of my long lost FTP balance is foremost in my thoughts at the moment, I thought I’d share a quick update regarding that quest today.

I mentioned less than a week ago -- on “Green Friday” -- how I hadn’t been part of that first wave of U.S. players getting their funds back, but I did feel fairly confident I’d be among the second group. My confidence stemmed from another cordial and what seemed to me productive exchange over the phone with a GCG representative, with that conversation ending with a promise of an email follow-up.

Indeed that email arrived today with my correct petition and control numbers and an invitation to log in over at the site and see if the balance they had listed for me was what I had left in my account back in mid-April 2011.

I followed the instructions, corrected some contact info, then clicked through to the page showing what they believed to be my balance. And it was... correct! I actually did a faint little fist pump at the laptop, kind of a dim, gestural reprise of all those years of playing on Full Tilt.

Had to click through a few more screens, including one on which I had to give information to facilitate repayment, and I was done. No idea how long it will take, but the prospects seem better than ever that I will finally be cashing out from Full Tilt Poker.

Last night I was listening to Todd Witteles’s weekly show on Poker Fraud Alert where I heard that Chris “Jesus” Ferguson is apparently planning to return to the poker world in the near future, perhaps at this summer’s WSOP. Witteles was relating news shared by Diamond Flush in a Two Plus Two thread a few days ago.

I enjoy Witteles’s show and have found myself either listening live or seeking out the podcast practically every week lately. His take on the Ferguson news was appropriately negative -- this is a “second coming... we don’t want,” says Witteles -- and I can’t really disagree with his view.

Thinking back at the absurd spiral FTP had entered into at the time, if it weren’t for Black Friday coming when it did, we’d all have lost our FTP funds permanently. And of course if it weren’t for PokerStars striking its deal with the DOJ later, we would’ve have been SOL, too.

Assuming there isn’t a coincidence that news of Jesus’s plan to resurrect his poker career -- the puns are all so dangerously close here -- comes just as U.S. players are starting to get their funds back. We’ll see what happens with that. Meanwhile, keeping eyes peeled for another, long belated return in my bank account.

Green Friday

Well, today was the day. Nearly three years after Black Friday -- and the subsequent discovery by all of us in the U.S. who played on Full Tilt Poker that not only could we not withdraw the funds from our accounts but there were no funds at all -- some American players have finally had their money returned to them.

If I’m following the story correctly, during this first wave around 30,000 players are getting around $82 million back. I believe that represents a little over half of the total U.S. players had in their accounts.

News that the Garden City Group was about to start shipping these payments came not too long ago, and indeed it sounds like from forum posts and tweets that many have already seen the “pending” notice of the wire transfers coming in, apparently designated as coming from “DOJ Poker Stars.”

A friend sent me a note a few days back letting me know he was one of these first 30,000. He’d gotten an email from the GCG telling him he was about to see the payment come in the next seven business days. “This payment represents the full amount of your Full Tilt Poker Account Balance, which you confirmed on the Full Tilt Poker administration online filing site,” he was told. I assume he’s seeing the pending transaction notice now or perhaps has already gotten his cabbage.

I filed my petition back in early October 2013. I wrote about doing so here, explaining how I had not received any email and thus had to create a new petition, then having seen my balance reading as “$0.00” I had to try to provide some supporting documentation to show that I indeed had a few hundy in there.

Anyhow, not to rehearse the whole process again, I had again failed to receive any emails from the GCG as this first round of payments was approaching, so my friend’s email prompted me to give them a call to check on the status of my petition.

Have to say I’ve been pleased the two or three times I’ve called the GCG, with the support being very friendly and communicative in every instance. We found my petition, then I was told that since I was designated an affiliate I wouldn’t be included in this initial wave of folks getting repaid but would be later on. I actually wasn’t an affiliate at FTP (i.e., I never made a dime there except by playing poker), but it’s possible I might have been designated one at some point -- I honestly can’t remember.

I also apparently am being given a new petition number (I’m not sure why), but I’m told I’ll be contacted soon regarding my status. I updated my contact info, including my mailing address and phone, and now sit tight hoping that indeed things start to move forward for me.

I’m not too worried about it all, both because of what I’m perceiving to be a process that appears to be functioning as it is supposed to and because of the relative small amount of funds I’m seeking. Am glad for others today, and like others feel good about PokerStars having stepped in here John Wayne-like to help make things happen for FTP players. I understand how doing so has served their own interests, too, but still it’s so easy to imagine a different, much less sanguine outcome here.

Can’t really see “Green Friday” sticking as a name for this particular day, nor people really remembering years from now when exactly U.S. players finally started getting their money back off the site. There’s some anticlimax, too, of course, but three years of waiting around will do that.

I’d hope people getting their money back won’t cause them to forget how egregious and fraudulent those who ran Full Tilt Poker 1.0 really were, although that may well be a side effect. After all, as much as we talk about not being “results oriented,” most of us are.

The Durrrration of the Poker Spotlight

Was thinking a little about that news this week of Tom “durrrr” Dwan parting ways with Full Tilt Poker 2.0. Dwan is no longer one of the site’s three sponsored “Professionals,” leaving Gus Hansen and Viktor Blom to carry forward as the site’s primary player-reps.

PokerListings got the word from an FTP spokesperson a few days ago, noting how Dwan hadn’t been part of some FTP-related recent events alongside his fellow “Professionals.”

Another story on PL referred to the long-in-limbo “Durrrr Challenge” between Dwan and Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates and what appears little likelihood of its continuance. That article included an interview with Cates who seems like he is more or less shrugging his shoulders and saying “wtf” over and again in response to questions about the status of the pair’s competition.

Like both Hansen (long ago) and Blom (more recently), Dwan had his moment of being the focus of much of the poker’s world attention for a short period just a few years back.

Dwan first got on the radar for most of us around 2008, particularly after ousting Phil Hellmuth in the first round of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, luckily cracking the Poker Brat’s pocket aces with a pair of tens, then watching Hellmuth predictably crack up himself afterwards.

Then the “Dwan era” dawned in earnest right around early 2009 with the launching of the first Challenge (versus Patrik Antonius), followed shortly thereafter by a celebrated appearance on High Stakes Poker a month later that included one hand in particular that seemingly had everyone buzzing for months.

I wrote a post here about the hand then titled “Tom’s Adventures in Wondurrrrland” (creating the graphic to the left for the occasion). Those who saw it remember it well -- a crazy eight-way hand that saw Dwan, Barry Greenstein, and Peter Eastgate make it to the turn with Dwan holding the worst hand of the three (behind Eastgate’s trips and Greenstein’s pocket aces), yet somehow getting the other two to fold after his fourth-street bet.

It was later that year Blom emerged -- or rather, his alter ego “Isildur1” did -- to take over the poker spotlight from Dwan, but not after the then-23-year-old had somehow gotten himself nominated for the Poker Hall of Fame by some zealous visitors to the WSOP’s website.

Right around that time -- late 2009 -- Dwan became a Team Full Tilter, a designation that lasted until April 2011 and Black Friday. A relative newcomer to FTP’s shameful circle of owners and mismanagers, Dwan was more or less on the outside with the rest of us (or appeared so) in the months following Black Friday, and particularly after the amended indictment and civil complaint came in September 2011 that more specifically damned FTP Version 1.0, Dwan’s association with the site faded quickly only to be revived a year later with the FTP’s second incarnation and the “Professionals” signing.

It’s all sort of felt like an extended anticlimax after that blockbuster beginning for Dwan. All of those forces that helped create a poker celebrity of him so quickly -- the online game and televised poker, especially -- have now waned considerably when it comes to influence and image-shaping. Now we’re more or less in an era when conspicuous tourney successes seem to be the primary means to poker stardom (be it brief or lasting), with live wins much more capable of creating “stars” than online ones.

Dwan is still winning online. And he’s playing live, too, although it sounds like much of it has been at the high-stakes cash games in Macau, more or less out of the purview of those who might be curious to make him the subject of forum threads and other “railbird reports.”

I was as fascinated as everyone else by Dwan for those few months a few years ago, and am still somewhat curious about what he might do next. But his departure from FTP 2.0 and its team of “Professionals” inspires thoughts of how the whole idea of poker celebs -- that different class of poker “professionals” -- once such a very effective construct of online sites and abetted ably by the TV shows the sites sponsored, seems like something from an earlier era.

Two-and-a-Half Years Later (Withdrawing from Full Tilt Poker)

This week I submitted my petition to the Garden City Group, the Ohio-based claims administrator charged with facilitating U.S. players’ claims for the return of their funds from Full Tilt Poker. Finally, two-and-a-half years later, I’ve begun the process of withdrawing the funds I had left on the site back in April 2011 when “Black Friday” came along.

Submitting my petition wasn’t too hard, although there were a couple of “WTF” moments along the way.

The GCG has reported that it has delivered 1.4 million email notifications to FTP account holders in the U.S. I did receive such an email in mid-September, the generic one announcing that the Full Tilt Poker Claims website was finally ready to begin accepting petitions. I did not receive a notice containing a “Petition Number” and a “Control Number,” however, as some have (and many have not).

Getting that second email apparently would have saved me a step as I could have then entered those two special numbers and gotten started right away with filing my petition. Without those, I had to create a new petition associated with my FTP account, which wasn’t that hard to figure out how to do.

Once clearing that hurdle, I then had to enter some more information (including my Full Tilt Poker username) and soon was presented with a screen listing my current FTP balance -- $0.00.

Oof. I’d heard many others have discovered something similar when reaching this page, and so after clicking around a little further realized I could enter what I thought was the correct balance on that page and proceed with my petition. I also figured out that in order to support my claim for a different balance than “$0.00,” I had to provide some supporting documentation. Here’s how that step is described on the GCG’s “FAQ” page:

“If you agree with the FTP Account Balance displayed through the online filing process, you are not required to submit documentation. However, if you dispute the balance, you are required to submit supporting documentation, such as complete unaltered copies of cancelled checks, wire transfers records, bank or credit statements or similar official transaction records. This supporting documentation must show the account holder’s name, date, transaction descriptions, amount, and financial institution information.”

Again, oof. Obviously I have no cancelled checks laying about, and while I could possibly go back into my bank records to find information about deposits I’d made after withdrawing from FTP, none of that really has anything at all to do with my current balance.

However, I did find a solution (I hope). I searched around online a little further and realized that one can in fact request transaction records within the Full Tilt Poker client. And it turns out that while the process takes a few steps to complete, it is surprisingly easy (and quick).

I actually found it necessary to download the FTP client again because the version I had on my laptop -- unopened for several months -- seemed to get stuck during the updating process. Once I did I was able to log in without a problem, then clicked the “Requests” tab up top and then “Account History (Web).” That opened a browser to an “Account History” page.

Once there I was able to click a date range as well as whether I wanted to see just real money transactions or also tourney dollars/tickets. I went back in my own records and found the exact date I opened my Full Tilt Poker account (in 2006) and made that the start date, then made 4/15/11 the end date, and submitted my request.

Doing that triggered an email to be sent to me which told me my account history was ready to be downloaded. To get to it I had to retrace my steps back through the FTP client -- i.e., hit the “Requests” tab, select “Account History (Web)” again, and be sent back to the web page. (I had to close the browser first, by the way, and let the page be reopened again.) This time there was a new “Download” tab which I clicked to get to a .zip file containing an Excel spreadsheet with my transaction history.

I downloaded that file, unzipped it, and gave it a looksee. Was kind of interesting to see every single transaction for almost five years listed in full detail, ending with 4/15/11 and my final balance listed to the right.

Now I had some supporting documentation to submit to go along with my claim that $0.00 isn’t in fact my balance. I am hopeful that this transaction history will be sufficient given how Full Tilt Poker was its source. Obviously I could doctor the Excel file, but such could be easily cross-referenced and I assume that will be done in every case as part of the petition-checking process. I uploaded the Excel file, went through a couple more steps including one last “are you sure?”-type page, then submitted my petition.

Afterwards I realized I might have added my personal information to the Excel file, or perhaps done something further to associate myself more obviously with the username. So I called the toll-free number at GCG and spoke with a representative who explained to me that as part of the process to review every petition, each petitioner will be contacted to provide any additional, needed info or to update their claim in any way.

I don’t know if my petition is sufficient as is or not, but I’m somewhat assured to know that I’ll have a chance to update it if there’s anything lacking. For those thinking about submitting their own petitions, know that it has to be done by November 16. Also be aware that once you submit a petition you cannot go back and add to it or revise any of your information, so it’s worth triple-checking things before you actually hit the button to submit (even though there will be that opportunity later on to submit further info or update anything).

Am I confident that I’ll get my money back? Not so much, but a two-and-a-half-year waiting period to withdraw is probably a reasonable cause to make a person skeptical.

Still, there’s obviously a better chance today that I will get my money than had been the case from April 2011 to late July 2012 when there was no clear solution to the problem of getting back money the jokers then running FTP had already squandered, or even during the year-plus since after PokerStars’ acquisition of FTP and the agreement was forged to help settle these debts.

And at least I’m not trying to withdraw money from Lock Poker.

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.

Our Turn to Make Full Tilt Poker Claims

Amid all of the Pope-related tweets in my timeline yesterday afternoon came a number folks suddenly sending out messages that the process for U.S. players to get back their funds from Full Tilt Poker had finally begun to move ahead.

As the rest of world focused on a pillar of white smoke and the introduction of Francis I, poker people’s attention was being redirected by the news that the Department of Justice had finally found a claims administrator to handle the reimbursement of U.S. players still owed money by FTP, a.k.a. the “Victims of Full Tilt Poker Fraud.” A new website has been launched -- FullTiltPokerClaims.com -- where players are being invited to register to begin receiving email notifications. Kind of like another variety of smoke signal going up, you might say.

After reading those tweets about the new FTP Claims site, I knee-jerkily fired back: “Reading the phrase ‘Full Tilt Poker Claims,’ I can't help but mentally continue with ‘your funds are safe and secure.’”

Hard not to be skeptical after nearly two years of waiting. At least now we will be the ones making the claims.

Getting money back should temper the bitterness somewhat... eventually. But it will be hard ever to think well of FTP. Hell, I just filled out the form to register for the notifications, and I found myself unable to resist feeling just a tad apprehensive as I did.

You know, wondering if perhaps I was being set up somehow. Again.

The site is about as bare bones as it gets. I saw Chris Grove joking yesterday that its old-school design suggests players should expect to be paid back by 1997. The Garden City Group (GCG) of Ohio has been given the task of handling the claims and facilitating the reimbursements. As F-Train points out over on Flushdraw, they have handled a number of other bankruptcy cases and class action settlements over the last quarter-century.

There is a toll-free number to call, an email addy, and a snail mail address, too, via which further questions can be asked. I believe at some point we’ll be getting messages suggesting some kind of timeline (nothing is indicated on the new website), then eventually will be given instructions for filing a petition for remission with GCG. They will check what we send them against what the DOJ says about each petition and only then will a determination be made whether or not the petition will be granted.

This development comes as a consequence of the settlement agreement back in July that saw PokerStars acquiring FTP’s assets while also paying the U.S. government $547 million and handling paying back $184 million to non-U.S. Full Tilt players. That latter settling of accounts with the non-U.S. folks was completed late last year when Full Tilt Poker 2.0 was relaunched.

I imagine it won’t be too long before we get a clearer picture of how much time this will all take, as well as ideas about any additional concerns any of us might have over still possibly not receiving our funds or any other associated hassles that might come with receiving them. From there, though, it might still take a while. Gonna be a long damn line, I know.

The juxtaposition of the Pope-related tweets and the FTP-claims ones -- both coming with plenty of jokes and one-liners mixed in -- almost tempts me to draw some sort of comparison. That is to say, to explore and share the cynical feeling I have toward both subjects.

But I’ll resist out of respect for those whose faith is genuine and for whom the Catholic Church imparts much that is constructive, including providing needed meaning to their lives.

Can’t say the same for us poor saps who ever put any faith in the original FTP, though.

When Momentum Takes Over (Armstrong and FTP)

Like many, I clicked over last night to watch a little of Lance Armstrong’s tell-all with Oprah Winfrey, the first part of which aired on her network, OWN. (And like many, I had to do a little bit of searching up and down the menu of channels to see if I received OWN.)

At some point early in the evening I saw Matthew Parvis of PokerNews had sent out a funny tweet alluding to his interview last September with Howard Lederer, the circumstances and dynamic of which did kind of resemble the Armstrong-Winfrey convo:

“Lance, were you doping during the Tour de France? ‘I remember one time at a party...’ #TheArmstrongFiles.”

I lol’d. And as the interview continued, I found myself involuntarily thinking further about how one might compare the motives of the two interviewees, with the idea of performing some kind of reputation repair perhaps foremost for both.

That said, I don’t really want to perform such close analysis of either of these two characters beyond simply noting that both were frauds, both were living a lie (so to speak), and both acted in ways that proved highly destructive and hurtful to others. Both also had others abetting their causes significantly, helping them to perpetrate their respective “schemes” further and further, and thus dig their respective holes deeper and deeper.

There was one moment in the Armstrong interview, however, that I did want to point to as having resonated especially strongly with the whole Full Tilt Poker fiasco, a fiasco which (I should point out) was obviously not just one man’s fault but the result of a kind of communal dysfunction (among the FTP BOD, owners, and marketers/PR people) and as well as a consequence made possible by an industry (online poker in the U.S.) that had evolved in such a way as to encourage exploitation by those willing to take advantage.

“Listen, all the fault and all the blame here falls on me,” Armstrong tells Winfrey. “But behind that picture and behind that story is momentum. Whether it’s fans or whether it’s the media or whether it’s... it just gets going. And I lost myself in all of that. I'm sure there would be other people that couldn’t handle it, but I certainly couldn’t handle it....”

When Armstrong talks about “momentum” taking over, it’s hard to avoid thinking about a riding a bicycle. Anyone who has done so has experienced that moment when the bike kind of feels as though it has “taken over,” giving the impression of moving on its own. Whether by the force of your pedaling or having found yourself on a downward incline (or both), enough impetus has been given to the bike for it to continue moving forward without any further action required of you. And as a rider, your task then shifts over to steering (and, if necessary, braking) rather than making the sucker go.

Perhaps because of Parvis’s tweet, when hearing this talk of “momentum” I couldn’t help but think of Lederer and FTP. Specifically I thought about Lederer speaking of having lost control of the “company culture” and how “something weird happened” and “clearly things got out of hand.” Sort of like the FTP bike could no longer be stopped and was recklessly hurtling down a steep incline toward an unavoidable crash. And that crash would be taking down others, too.

Like I say, I’m not too inspired to scrutinize this comparison too deeply. It does seem, though, that when Armstrong evokes that idea of momentum he isn’t primarily trying to deflect blame as much as to explain his own thinking and what might have been additionally influencing him to continue to cheat and lie (although that motive could be intermingled in there, too). However when Lederer evokes the same idea of momentum taking over, it’s pretty clear he’s mostly hoping to direct our attention to others’ culpability for the FTP situation getting “out of hand.”

Blasé About Blom

Had one eye on that PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event playing out to its conclusion this weekend, with Dimitar Danchev of Bulgaria ultimately triumphing to land the $1.859 million first prize. I’ll admit, though, to having been more distracted by the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. Three of the four games were above-average entertaining, and even the fourth (between New England and Houston) had enough drama attached to it to keep the majority of my attention.

It’s become something of a habit for me when watching sports to keep Tweetdeck open on my laptop and follow folks’ comments as the game goes by. Both poker and football work well for that sort of thing, actually, as the pause between hands/plays allows people enough time to compose and fire off reactions to what is happening. Was suggesting on Friday how Twitter isn’t so great for more involved carving out of positions and argumentation, but I do like sometimes to learn others’ immediate response to a live event we’re all watching together.

From @hardboiledpoker I follow both poker people and sports fans, and thus there was a lot of talk in my feed regarding both the PCA and the football games intertwining throughout the weekend. (I’d sign off just as the Golden Globes got going in earnest later on Sunday, thereby taking over Twitter.) Amid those conversations, though, I kept seeing the @BluffEurope feed butting in with references to an article about Viktor “Isildur1” Blom.

The tweets had begun on Saturday and continued into Sunday. After a while, I had to check back to confirm that I wasn’t just imagining seeing the same tweet over and again.

I suppose, technically, it wasn’t exactly the same:

I finally had to poke fun with a responding tweet of my own. “Hey, @BluffEurope,” I began. “Has Blom’s 2013 start been phenomenal, amazing, or fantastic?”

The short article -- yes, I finally did succumb to the unsubtle strategy being employed and clicked through to read -- noted how Blom was up $4.6 million so far in 2013 on Full Tilt Poker, and more than $5 million overall since the FTP relaunch in early November. For a more thorough report on Blom’s success, I then tripped over to the High Stakes Database website and read all about it, including how Blom recently took more than $600K off of Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky in a three-hour session.

It was almost exactly a year ago that Blom -- then a PokerStars Team Pro -- achieved his first major live score at the PCA by winning the $100K Super High Roller and earning a $1,254,400 million payday. But this time around the games on FTP were too good for Blom to be bothered by a return to the Bahamas. Responding last week via his @RealIsildur1 Twitter account to someone asking about how he was doing at this year’s PCA, Blom explained “I don't participate in this years PCA. I have already made over 3 times as much money as I made last year playing in PCA.”

When I think about Blom’s phenomenalamazingfantastic run, I can’t help but follow a certain, cynical chain of associative thought.

I think about how Gus Hansen’s start on Full Tilt Poker 2.0 has also been remarkable, although there the story concerns how big he has been losing -- more than $3.5 million on the site since early November.

I also think about Blom’s sudden rise and precipitous fall on Full Tilt Poker back when we first started hearing about him in late 2009. Remember that swift saga that ended with Blom losing $4 million-plus to Brian Hastings, then talking about filing a formal complaint regarding allegations of of data mining? (Blom never did file such a complaint.)

Finally, even though I trust the new PokerStars-managed FTP to be above board, I can’t help but think about how those millions passed back and forth on the previous iteration of the site were in many ways bogus, and indeed during the latter stages of the site could have been said to represent non-existent funds.

I can’t put my finger on exactly how it all adds up, but there’s something about the combination of Hansen’s slide, the Blom-FTP backstory, and the formerly fraudulent machinations of the old Full Tilt that significantly mutes my response to Blom’s fast start as a newly-sponsored FTP pro. I don’t mean at all to suggest anything untoward, but am rather just pointing out that it’s hard for me to respond to the swingy Swede’s current adventures with anything close to the same sort of astonishment as I did three years ago.

There was another tweet in my feed last week that came from the @FullTiltPoker account, sent the same day as Blom’s response regarding his non-participation in this year’s PCA.

My first instinct was to think the tweet might have been a joke, but it fact it was not. I took a look, confirming that Blom really was playing at a table named “Yawn.” And then I yawned and logged off.

No, after what has happened over the last few years, it’s harder than ever to get too excited about Viktor earning the spoils. Heck, this morning I am seeing yet another report that Blom apparently managed to drop a milly to Phil Galfond yesterday. Ho hum.

On the other hand, that Baltimore-Denver double-overtime game Saturday night... now that was phenomenal. And amazing. And fantastic. (Unless you’re a Broncos fan, that is.)

Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High

A little over a week ago, Gus Hansen fired off three tweets from his Twitter account.*

The first came on Christmas evening. “Never underestimate stupid people in large groups,” wrote Hansen, cryptically adding that an “explanation will follow.” Without any context -- and given the date of posting -- it initially came off like some sort of complaint about Christmas shoppers or perhaps some weird, unflattering reference to religion.

But Hansen wasn’t talking about either, as he made clear with a second tweet about 20 minutes later, then a third the following morning:



Talk about Christmas spirit! In less than 280 characters, one of the new Full Tilt Poker’s ambassadors -- or “Professionals,” as they’ve dubbed them -- offered a sweeping condemnation of pretty much the entire poker community, characterizing those who are critical of Howard Lederer and his involvement in the Full Tilt Poker fiasco as “stupid,” needing to “get a fu**ing grip,” and perhaps so deeply under the spell of a couple of other poker pros that they are unable to form opinions of their own.

It’s a strange, highly off-putting message Hansen has sent the poker community. My first thought when reading the tweets was to think how utterly far removed Hansen’s world is from the one I inhabit, and I’m not just talking about the way he routinely wins and loses millions within the space of mere days or even hours. No, it’s a complete disconnect, a huge divide over which something resembling “sympathy” has little chance of crossing.

Seriously, how could Hansen sympathize with anyone whose bankroll of a few hundred -- or a few thousand, or even tens of thousands -- has been inaccessible for what is now going on two years (as is the case for us American players)?

Among the responses to Hansen’s tweet was a predictably diffuse 2+2 thread, a thoughtful commentary by Haley Hintze for Flushdraw, and an expression of justifiable bafflement from Dan Katz over at PokerNews Daily. There was also some back-and-forthing on Twitter, too -- mostly anti-Gus, though not entirely.

Meanwhile, Daniel Negreanu posted his most recent YouTube “rant” yesterday, and when I dialed it up I half-expected to hear some sort of rejoinder to Hansen’s suggestion that Negreanu’s influence in Lederer-related matters is suspect. In fact, Negreanu doesn’t even mention Hansen in his video, and instead begins by listing as a “number one goal” for the new year “to do everything I can to help the poker community be shed in a much better light than it was in 2012 and 2011... and also the people in it.”

Negreanu goes on to explain his meaning, that really he’s thinking primarily of certain individuals who have gotten “off track” somehow and become destructive to themselves or to others in the poker community. Even so, it’s hard not to hear an extreme contrast between the messages of Negreanu (to engage and unite) and Hansen (to divide and estrange).

When I think of this disconnect between the great majority of us -- we “amateurs” or recreational players who love poker yet do not experience the game in the way “Professionals” like Hansen do -- I think back to how things were five or six years ago, during the height of the “boom” in online poker. Even though it was all mostly illusory, there was nonetheless a real sense felt by most of us pushing quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies back and forth online that we really did have something in common with players like Hansen and others we saw on television or railed online.

In truth, this idea of a connection between the pros and the rest of the poker community was part of FTP’s marketing strategy as it helped to concoct the Frankenstein monster known as the “poker celebrity.” Sure, in retrospect it is easier to see how such a ploy was probably driven more by ad-exec-inspired, promotional phony baloney than by genuine community building, but it nonetheless worked. We heeded the call to “learn, chat, and play with the pros.” Even if the connection was more perceived than actual, the sense that we were all playing the same game improved the experience for many.

When Full Tilt Poker 2.0 launched, reports soon followed that Hansen was losing hundreds of thousands within the first few days. According to HighStakes Database (from which that graphic to the left comes), Hansen lost $1.84 million on Full Tilt Poker in November, then about $1.4 million more in December. Hansen additionally lost over $1 million on PokerStars during 2012 (as “broksi”). And he has dropped another $100K during the first two days of 2013 on FTP, too.

As a Team Full Tilter, Hansen earned big time dividends throughout FTP’s rise and fall. Haley points out how “Hansen should clearly know by now that a good chunk of what he was paid -- from late 2010 until Black Friday -- came during a period when Howard Lederer knew that Full Tilt Poker was underwater, with hundreds of millions in unpaid debt and uncollected deposits.”

In other words, while there’s no emotional connection left between Gus Hansen and most of us (the “stupid people in large groups” who played on Full Tilt Poker), there is still one other way we might connect ourselves with the “Great Dane.”

It has to do with the $159 million or so U.S. players thought they had in their accounts on the morning of April 15, 2011. (You’re welcome, Gus.)

*At the time this post was written, Hansen’s verified Twitter account had been under the “@RealGusHansen” handle. Soon after it was changed to simply “@GusHansen,” where one can still read the three tweets discussed above here, here, and here.