POKER: A NEW HOPE FEATURE
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More than one year has passed since the United States government indicted the principals of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, but many rightfully feel we are no closer to a resolution, at least as far as the future of the poker companies involved is concerned. Some expected a clearer idea of the background to what has so far been a mysterious chain of events, which have led to banker John Campos and payment processor Chad Elie being charged with helping to disguise pokerrelated transactions. The pair were due to stand trial in Manhattan on 9 April, but eleventh-hour plea-deals reached by the duo riled many intent on the case progressing transparently, not least prosecuting federal judge Lewis Kaplan who demanded to know why the government was “walking away from the case” by allowing Campos to agree to a single misdemeanour charge and minimal custodial sentence. The activity of Full Tilt in particular was shrouded in mystery even to those closely monitoring the operator’s activity before its demise, with Alderney Gambling Control Commission executive
director André Wilsenach admitting the day after revoking the company’s licences that the operator had been kept in the dark about “material events”, including US authorities seizing payment processors used by Full Tilt as long ago as 2007.
STA
ANDREW FELDMAN
F O R M E R F U L L T I LT P O K E R SPONSORED PRO
Filling the void
The departure of Full Tilt Poker (and ultimately the Cereus network) from the US and Rest-of-World markets left a sizeable gap, which operators sought to ?ll in the immediate aftermath of Black Friday through the launch of spur-of-themoment promotions. However, a number of the remaining sites and networks, including Ongame and Party Poker, have actually experienced declines in the intervening period. Figures from tracking site Pokerscout show Party Poker’s cash game traffic as having declined 4% yearon-year while Ongame’s is down 24% based on the corresponding period in 2011, despite the former seeing traffic climb 23% in the week after Full Tilt’s Alderney licences were suspended. PokerStars’ 16% decline is perhaps misleading if compared directly to the year-on-year ?uctuations of non-USfacing operators. The company’s European and Rest-of-World business partially plugged the losses from its US exit as a signi?cant number of former Full Tilt players moved over to PokerStars in the second half of 2011. The other success story of the last 12 months has without doubt been 888, which continued to gain players while the remainder of the online poker industry was moving in the opposite direction. Figures provided by the Gibraltar-licensed operator show it had already opened up a 119% gap on the industry [in terms of
BLACK FRIDAY:ONE YEAR ON ON
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I didn’t expect to hear much from Full Tilt once I hadn’t heard anything for the ?rst few weeks, and every day after the site went down I was hearing bad stories. The fact you had Phil Ivey trying to sue the ?rm says it all really – I’m not holding my breath about getting a deal with Full Tilt again and if anyone gets their money back I’d see it as a big bonus. Some of the other red pros have moved on and got deals with other sites and forgotten about it, and the mood doesn’t seem very optimistic. Unless you can add value to the ?rm by offering something different commercially, your poker talent is no longer enough – it seems it’s so tough to get deals and the poker world is really tough now. Away from all that you look at something like Epic Poker, which is going bankrupt, and think what can you trust nowadays? Epic Poker and the Onyx Cup were meant to be seen as the way forward in live poker and both of these have already been scrapped. For now, I’ve been happy to take a bit of a break from poker and do my own thing.
2011
PokerStars enters into partnership with Wynn Resorts ahead of potential federal regulation in the US
2011
Full Tilt Poker announces similar tie-up with Fertitta Interactive, also aimed at a regulated US market
2011
Federal indictment unsealed against 11 people including founders of Full Tilt, PokerStars & Absolute Poker
2011
Payment processor Bradley Franzen ?rst indictee to enter a not guilty plea after appearing in New York court
20 April
2011
Department of Justice reaches deal with PokerStars and Full Tilt to return both operators’ dot.com domains
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