FEATURE POKER:
22 August
2011
Pocket Kings CMO Lothar Rentschler resigns; several FTP pros ?le for dismissal from RICO suit
23 August
30 August
2011
FTP issues statement apologising for lack of communication. Says talks are ongoing with more than one party
2011
Full Tilt admits it was unprepared for “farreaching, US government enforcement effort of Black Friday”
19 Sept
20 Sept
2011
The Alderney Gambling Control Commission/Full Tilt hearing resumes in London, in private
2011
A NEW HOPE
Civil complaint amended, alleges Tiltware board members paid selves hundreds of millions using player funds
CO-STARS
CHRIS WELCH
D I R E C T O R O F P O K E R , B W I N . PA R T Y
“Like poker players going all-in on a risky hand, PokerStars and Full Tilt were stopped in their tracks in the US – the impact of Black Friday is still being felt across the industry, but the full legacy is yet to be seen. For players holding balances on Tilt and other sites, the saga
continues with millions of dollars in limbo with no announced repayment plans. This led to a number of players giving up on poker or certainly reducing the balances they held on sites to more conservative levels. Heavy charge sheets still hang over former US-facing sites, so the game is not over yet. The industry and regulators have moved to reassure players that their money is safe, and indeed our own tracking shows that PartyPoker is the most trusted poker site. Being a stock market listed company certainly helps in this regard, as our ?nancials are transparent.
With increasing regulation and compliance across the globe, companies now more than ever have to ensure they do things properly and are transparent. The result of this increasing but necessary protection of consumers will most likely see the big become bigger and a ?ght for survival by the smaller operators. The game of poker has been around for a couple of centuries and will go on. While Black Friday cost some and bene?tted others, it probably helped to reinforce the case for regulation on the political agenda.”
MARCO VALERIO
H O S T, Q U A D J A C K S R A D I O
QuadJacks, at the time, had a small yet dedicated following. We were not able to compete with the other poker news outlets that day but we observed and studied the developments and decided that the least we could do was put together a late night podcast with a few select guests and re?ect on what we had experienced that day. So we went live, at around 9pm, with the expectation that we’d be on for maybe a few hours and try to talk to as many people as we could. I had no idea that, as inadequate as we had been earlier throughout the day, we would go on to become the fundamental Black Friday news source. We began with about a hundred listeners, I think.
We were just starting. Since everybody was still sitting around waiting for new information anyway, it took very little time for them to ?nd out who we were and what we were doing, so more and more people tuned in. It got to be pretty late, three in the morning, four in the morning, but we had more people listening than when we started, and there was no shortage of guests. People were not going to sleep that night. None of us went to sleep, and we were still there in the morning. By that time, we had thousands of listeners. That’s when we realised that this thing would go on. It needed to. Everybody wanted to talk about this, and we let them. We had the big name pros, industry experts, legal minds, everyone else short of Howard and the gang. It was a very human and empowering
period of the community coming together at a time of unprecedented tragedy. Most people don’t realise, or have forgotten, how scared and vulnerable the poker community was that day. The rest of the world was moving on but the people affected by this could not so easily get this crisis out of their minds. Getting to hear and interact with everyone else in the country who was coping with the same fears and concerns was a precious sedative for so many. Given how everything else was gone, all we had left was ourselves. We were still there, and we are still here today.
‘GETTING TO HEAR AND INTERACT WIT H EVERYONE ELSE IN THE COUNTRY WHO WAS COPING WITH THE SAME FEARS AND CONCERNS WAS A PRECIOUS SEDATIVE FOR SO MANY'
Marco Valerio, Quadjacks Radio
www.egrmagazine.com
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