More Full Tilt Disgust

Man I could ruminate on this full tilt business forever. This morning I have two quick thoughts I've been focusing on.

For starters, take a spin around the poker blogs you read these days, and you will still see a ton of people defending full tilt against the allegations that they were a ponzi scheme. I mean, I've seen or heard like five or six well known voices in the poker blogiverse saying that exact thing over the past 36 hours or so. Never mind the fact that, during the last year of its existence, full tilt operated at a massive shortfall in actual cash of some $130 million below the amount of funds in player accounts on their site, because the site was unable to find payment processors willing and able to transfer them the cash from depositors' accounts. They never told anyone this -- went out of their way to hide it in fact -- and spent the better part of their last year as an online poker site with again a 9-figure amount of "phantom funds" that were in play on full tilt's site, but which full tilt was never able to actually collect from its players' bank accounts. As a result, the last year consisted of full tilt funding player withdrawal requests out of other players' deposits (actually, out of what was left out of other players' deposits after the 19 owners and board members took their $5-10 million a month in distributions, that is), while only maintaining a small fraction of the total player poker funds available on the site in actual cash, resulting in the figures announced from Black Friday when full tilt had $390 million of player fund obligations, but only $60 million on hand with which to pay them. The whole thing was not designed as a ponzi scheme, no -- and the system has nothing to do with the traditional pyramid-style scheme that often many ponzi schemes take the form of -- but over the past year when funding player deposits became a huge challenge for tilt, the owners and those in control simply let those funding discrepancies linger, unnoticed and unannounced, and kept their business running in the hopes that no more than 15% or so of their players would make cashout requests at once which is all it would have taken for tilt not to be able to cover the withdrawals given the Black Friday figures. By June 2011 it would have taken just 2% of players to request withdrawals of their funds on full tilt for the company not to have had the money -- anywhere -- to pay their players out. This, my friends, is basically the textbook definition of a ponzi scheme, as asserted by US district attorney Preet Bharara in the amended complain filed earlier this week. And yet, I've read in several places in the poker media this week how it was wrong to use the term "ponzi scheme" to describe the site, that full tilt was just poorly-managed but not at all a ponzi scheme, that the district attorney is just trying to use the well-known and sensationalistic term in the media to gain the upper hand against the poor site being depicted falsely, etc.

Face it guys. Full tilt quickly became a way for the owners and founders to loot their players of our cash and live their extravagant lifestyles basically for free. But when things got out of control, the powers that be knowingly and willingly turned the site into a ginormous ponzi scheme scam, and when the events of April 15, 2011 caused massive withdrawal requests from U.S. players, the proverbial shit hit the fan and the jig was up, just like when Bernie Madoff could no longer meet his own fund's withdrawal requests and was forced to turn himself in. Pay withdrawals out of other people's deposits, and never actually have close to enough money to return everyone's investment near the end -- this is how ponzi schemes almost always end, and it's the essential nature of what makes them a ponzi scheme in the first place. But my question is: Is it seriously not time yet to stop defending these pieces of shit thieves just because you like to think of some of them as your friends? Stop posting that they're being mischaracterized (they aren't), stop posting that the district attorney is lying to get the media and the public on his side (he isn't), and stop saying that this was all just an innocent business enterprise gone wrong (it wasn't).

The other thing I just can't help thinking about these past several hours is the BBT. To be honest -- and frankly I wrote about this here a few times so this is no surprise to anybody -- but after those first couple of BBT series, I never really could understand how full tilt could willingly continue forking over 30 or 40 grand a pop for these BBT series, only to see the winners repeatedly pocketing the cash and not even playing in the WSOP with the winnings, or better yet, people taking the money and going out and playing, but then never blogging one whit about the experience in the first place. Several people commented on this over time on their blogs actually -- it just seemed odd that tilt would keep coming back and offering up more and more free prizes to us, when the BBT participants as a rule pretty much consistently fucked tilt off when tilt looked to get the benefit of their bargain by someone posting publicly about the experience that full tilt enabled them to win.

Well now we know how Full Tilt "had" the money to keep "spending" on "free" stuff for us in the various BBT tournament series, don't we? Full tilt "gave" us all this "free" stuff for the BBT series, over and over again, because in the end it was our money all along that they were just giving us back a small fraction of! I mean, when you're paying yourselves $443 million over a few years out of accounts into which players have deposited $390 million but which have only $60 million left as of Black Friday, what's $150,000 spread over four BBT series to help get a bunch of poker writers to write posts that are sure to bring at least some new players to the site, thereby generating more funds which the founders could pilfer for themselves? Why not give us the money and see how much we can generate in deposits? Since it was the deposits themselves that the full tilt owners were stealing -- and just not the rake from all the participants as we had all believed when the BBT series were going on -- what on earth would possibly make these people hesitate for a second in spending $150,000 of our money -- not theirs in any sense of the word -- on prizes for us, to try to generate more deposits to allow the company to keep its fraud going for just a little while longer. That $150,000 sure seemed like a huge amount of "free" "prizes" to be giving to little old us back in the day....Doesn't seem quite so large an amount anymore these days, does it?

Full Tilt Fully Sinking In

Wow. With a day to really absorb all the latest news from Wednesday's amended complaint by the New York attorney general in the online poker ban case that, among other things, adds Howard Lederer, Jesus Ferguson, Rafe Furst and Ray Bitar to the charges, it already feels like just an amazing revelation, one that is far and away the story in the history of online poker as we know it thus far.

Long story short, yknow that bunch of the biggest poker pros we all know and (used to) love from tv -- "the Professor", "Jesus", Phil Ivey and several others -- who started full tilt poker several years ago now? Well, guess what? Turns out they were actually literally stealing money out of your and my accounts -- yes, your and my money -- and paying it mostly to themselves over a several year period, while simultaneously running the entire poker site as a massive ponzi scheme. For real. I've seen some other bloggers arguing that ponzi is not really a fair description of what happened here, but I have to differ with that view, as I'll get to.

To provide some summary details for those not inclined to read all the various press reports about the amended complaint, or the new complaint itself (which you can read in full directly from the source right here, if you're interested), here's the basic gist, with quotes directly out of CNN.com's front page coverage of this story on Tuesday, with the emphasis and brackets mine:

"The prosecutor said that, as of March 31 [2011], Full Tilt Poker owed about $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S. players. But the company only had $60 million in bank accounts to pay them back.

Full Tilt paid more than $443 million in player funds to the board of directors and other owners, with $41 million going to Bitar, $42 million going to Lederer, and nearly $12 million going to another board member, Rafael Furst.

The company paid $25 million to Ferguson, and said that it owed him another $62 million, according to the prosecutor's office, noting that much of the money was transferred to Swiss and overseas accounts."

So that's the basic gist of what happened. Over the past few years, full tilt paid 19 owners and board members more than $443 million, including 42M to the Professor, 41M to Ray Bitar, 12M to Rafe Furst, and owing over $87 million to Jesus Ferguson, having only paid out some 25M of that amount thus far. Forbes also reported that "another owner, described by the feds as a professional poker player, received at least $40 million in distributions, as well as millions of dollars more characterized as loans from Full Tilt that have only been partially repaid." This statement obviously refers to Phil Ivey, so that's another 40M+ guy to add to the list of beneficiaries of cash payouts from full tilt over the past few years.

And I'd like to call attention to the two passages above that I highlighted in bold. First is the statement directly out of the amended complaint itself that much of the money from these full tilt owners and board members was transferred to Swiss and overseas accounts. Not that this surprises me per se, but there it is pretty much right there in black and white -- these guys knew on some level what they were doing was illegal, or at least that the funds might be subject so seizure and return at some point in the future. While "blithely" (to use Preet Bharara's excellent choice of words) and repeatedly assuring players in the U.S. and around the world that our funds were "totally safe and secure" on their site, the owners of the site were busy shipping their money the fuck out of the country, to Swiss bank accounts and other countries where they felt the U.S. would have the most difficulty recovering the funds when the shit inevitably hit the fan like it turns out these guys pretty much all knew it would.

And secondly, I just want to note that the Forbes coverage refers to the $4 million in loans we've all heard about to Phil Ivey not as loans but as amounts "characterized as loans", suggesting that there is some question as to whether even that was a fair description or whether what we're really looking at is just another example of someone stealing funds to support I'm sure an excessive and certainly excessively gamblerific lifestyle, with no intention of ever actually repaying that money.

I also wanted to take a minute to discuss what really turned this from your typical run-of-the-mill corporate raiding story and into a true life poker ponzi scheme, as the US attorney alleges in the amended complaint. Read this passage, also from the CNN coverage, describing full tilt's response when over the past year or so it became increasingly difficult for full tilt to actually find payment processors willing and able to withdraw the funds from its depositors' bank accounts:

"In order to maintain its false image of financial security, Full Tilt continued to credit player accounts without disclosing its inability to fund those credits," the prosecutor said. "When players gambled with these phantom funds and lost to other players, a massive shortfall developed."

So there you have it. This happened to me multiple times by the way, where I made a small deposit onto full tilt during the final year or so it was in operation, played with those funds for several days, and then at some point a week, two weeks, even a month or so later I was informed that my deposit was never deducted from my account (which I confirmed, of course) and thus my balance was deducted for the amount I never really deposited into the site. But what if I had already lost all of that money? Where did it go? Answer: (1) into other players' accounts, and (2) into the owners' and board members' pockets. Plain and simple, that's what happened. For the better part of a year, full tilt was having massive trouble actually getting the cash from players' bank accounts, and yet it still allowed those players to deposit "phantom funds" onto the sites, play with it, and either win (and presumably withdraw it into real cash) or lose (and thus transfer their losses to other players' accounts, who then presumably would look to withdraw it and turn it into real cash). I mean, you could not make this stuff up. Every time you saw Howard Lederer or Jesus Ferguson or Phil Ivey on tv over the past several months before the U.S. online poker ban in April of this year, they knew behind that face that they were literally operating at a shortfall in their own players' funds available on the site, allowing gambling of fake funds.

Note as well that the complaint alleges that "this scheme continued even after the original complaint was filed and the criminal indictment unsealed in April." Recall that the complaint alleges that, as of March 31 [2011], Full Tilt Poker owed about $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S. players. But the company only had $60 million in bank accounts to pay them back. As also reported by CNN, "As time went on, the poker site had even less money to pay its customers. By June [so this is less than three months later], Full Tilt owed $300 million to players around the world but only had $6 million to pay them, according to the prosecutor's office." So even after the online poker ban went down on April 15, the company continued to draw down on its meager cash available for depositors, owners, for everyone, raiding the company's last remaining cash that could have conceivably been used to return at least some fraction of player funds, from $60 million down to a mere $6 million, while player fund liabilities dropped only from $390 million to still $300 million owed. What a fucking disaster.

The Forbes coverage also has some good tidbits to help elucidate some of the details of this amazing, eye-opening story (again, emphasis mine):

"Federal prosecutors claim that Full Tilt’s board members got rich because the company used player funds to pay them massive amounts of money that largely was transferred to their accounts in Switzerland and other overseas locations. Specifically, the feds allege that Bitar pocketed $41 million and Lederer got $42 million. Jesus Ferguson allegedly was allocated $87 million in distributions and received at least $25 million, federal prosecutors claim. Another owner [Ivey obv], described by the feds as a professional poker player, received at least $40 million in distributions, as well as millions of dollars more characterized as loans from Full Tilt that have only been partially repaid. The government claims Full Tilt continued to make payments to its owners of up to $10 million per month even after the company was insolvent."

[Note that Tuesday's Wall Street Journal coverage pegged this number at $5 million per month paid to the full tilt owners starting as far back as April 2007.]

And later in the Forbes article:

U.S. government lawyers believe that Full Tilt Poker started to face a growing cash crunch in 2010 because it could not collect funds from U.S. players due to the federal government’s efforts to disrupt the payment processors that facilitate the flow of funds in the online poker industry. Indeed, Bharara’s office says that by August 2010 Full Tilt’s payment processing network had been severely disrupted and that the company could no longer withdraw money from U.S. players’ bank accounts. So instead, the feds claim, Full Tilt continued to credit player accounts without disclosing its inability to fund those credits, letting players make online poker bets with $130 million of “phantom funds” that resulted in a massive shortfall when other players won the bogus money in poker games.

The management of Full Tilt Poker, the feds say, “operated Full Tilt Poker with the hope that only a small number of players would try to withdraw funds at any one time, and that Full Tilt Poker would regularly receive additional deposits in amounts greater than any withdrawal requests.”,

Now if that last paragraph right up there ain't ponzi, then I don't know what is. For a period of several months, the owners and operators of full tilt poker intentionally, knowingly and willingly ran their company as a ponzi scheme, paying out those who withdrew funds from the site with the deposits of others, knowing all too well that the company was facing a potentially 9-figure shortfall in amounts deposited and in action on its site but which it could not collect and had no plan to be able to collect at any point in the future. And just like any good ponzi scheme, it was all premised on never more than a small percent of the site's users actually demanding their own money back at any given time. As long as those withdrawl requests were tiny in relative terms, having $60 million of cash on hand while supposedly "holding" $390 million of your customers' money worked out just fine. But when the shizzle hit the fizzle over the past year, there was never close to enough money to make the players whole. Oh, and meanwhile, the owners and directors paid themselves some $440 million out of those exact same corporate accounts that by April of this year contained only $60 million, and just $6 million by June.

Look, these guys raided your funds. My funds. Our money. It's like the CEOs of Tyco, Adelphia, and any other number of large company executives who have been busted over the past several years for using their company's funds to support a life of personal excess in almost every conceivable way. Only, this is much, much worse even than those examples. When the Tyco CEO took corporate funds to spend on expensive New York City call girls on business trips, at least he was taking funds that belonged to his company, and that were generated as revenues in exchange for his company's goods and services provided to customers. In this case, the full tilt guys took our money, not theirs and not full tilt's. This was not revenue in any sense of the word for full tilt. They were like a bank, merely holding on to our funds so that we could use them as we saw fit on their internet site. That's it. So while Dennis Koslowski and others in corporate America diverted money from their companies to fund ridiculous, extravagant lifestyles, in this case, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Jesus Ferguson et al stole cash directly from their customers to fund similar endeavors. There's just no other way to spin it.

Oh, and by the way. I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but there seems to me to be a good chance that some of the crew of Lederer / Ferguson / Bitar / Ivey end up doing some jail time from all this, given the recent revelations. The corporate CEO's go to jail, and trust me when I say what they did is not close to as bad as what the full tilt owners are alleged by name to have done in this case. Why shouldn't these fucking pigs go to jail for a long time? Because they play a game as their professional jobs that's been frought with lying, cheating and dishonesty for the past couple hundred years? Because Howard Lederer came and blew smoke up the poker bloggers' asses at Caesars' poker room in Las Vegas at the summer WPBT gathering back in 2006, all the while he was literally stealing our very cash right out of our bank accounts and living high off the hog off of it? Seven or eight years ago, I most definitely idolized each one of Ivey, Lederer and Ferguson to some degree, without a doubt. Right now, make no mistake, I would bang the gavel myself and order them each to serve 30 years in the mutha fuckin slammer. And I probably wouldn't hesitate to cast them down with the sodomites either.

Unbelievable Full Tilt

Some of the details of the amended complaint are truly amazing, even given everything that has happened so far.

From Wicked Chops Poker (with my editorial commentary in blue font):

The Southern District of New York (SDNY) has amended its civil complaint against Full Tilt Poker, expanding the scope to include distribution payments to ownership totaling $443,860,529.89 and specifically naming Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara went as far as to call Full Tilt Poker’s operations “…a massive Ponzi scheme against its own players.”

Bharara continued:

“Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme. Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited.” This pretty much says it all in a nutshell.

Key highlights from the complaint include:

■As of March 31, 2011, Tilt owed players from around the world over approximately $390,695,788 but had only approximately $59,579,413 in its bank accounts. (page 72)Yikes!
■Howard Lederer received approximately $37M in distributions as well as another $4M in profit sharing (page 72). What an asshole.
■Chris Ferguson received approximately $25M in distributions. (page 72)Asshole.
■Rafe Furst received approximately $11.7M. (page 73)Ass Hole!
■In all, it claims there are 19 owners of Full Tilt Poker. (page 73)
■An owner, named as “Player owner 1″ but clearly Phil Ivey, is alleged to have received at least $40M in distributions, “as well millions of dollars characterized as loans,” of which $4.4 million have not been repaid. (page 73)Perhaps the biggest asshole of the entire group, given how things have gone down.
■On that note, interestingly no other Full Tilt Poker owners where named in the amendment.
■Owners continued to receive approximately $10M/month even though beginning in the summer of 2010, management/the board of directors were aware of issues in collecting funds from U.S. players. (page 73) Assholes!
■Approximately $130M in U.S. player funds were never collected due to payment processing issues. (page 74)This is one of the most unbelievable statistics of the entire sordid full tilt affair, showing just how ineffectively run the company was. They had just $59 million in their accounts, and $395 million of players' funds, but failed to actually collect a staggering $130 million of that moneys. Unreal these clowns.
■The amendment claims that Tilt was “extremely insolvent” by March 2010, however owner distribution payments continued as late as April 1, 2011. (page 74)
■After 4/15, Tilt continued to accept funds although it had worldwide liabilities of over $300M. (page 75)Assholes.
■In an internal e-mail on June 12, 2011, Ray Bitar expressed concern that a company announcement regarding lay-offs and the Board (including himself) being replaced would be seen as bad news (which we find unbelievable–as most would’ve considered it great news), which in turn would cause a “new run on the bank,” adding that “it could be a huge run” and that “at this point we can’t even take a five million run.” (page 75)
■Any property, including money, used in [an illegal gambling business] may be
seized and forfeited to the United States–or better put–the accounts assets of Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Ray Bitar, and Rafe Furst would be gonzo. (page 77)

We can only hope these pigs all go to jail for a long, long time. Which sounds to me like a very distinct and realistic possibility given the above.

Poker Media Still Sitting Quietly While Full Tilt Embarrasses Us All

Wow, what a bunch of masochists we all are. Seriously guys. Hasn't even one of you out there reading this wondered why exactly Phil Ivey -- the world's greatest poker player and perhaps greatest gambler -- "owes" full tilt $4 million? This is being widely reported by every major poker media outlet in the world, and has been for a good few months now as Ivey's alleged "White Knight" deal (which not coincidentally also involves the forgiving of Ivey's personal $4 million debt) is still said to be under negotiation to save the company in some form and -- hopefully -- to secure U.S. players the return of their funds that had been commingled into full tilt's own accounts. And yet, I keep waiting and waiting and waiting, and not one single person I can think of in the poker media has even questioned why, or how this could be. Pretty much all of them have lost their own money even on full tilt's site, and yet still, complete and total radio silence. The relationships, the history, and ultimately the downright adulation that these people still feel for all those poker pros you see on tv has blinded the media to providing any real coverage whatsoever of probably easily the worst scandal in the history of online poker. Sorry folks, but superuser doesn't even come close to stealing our money for their own and living high off the hog off of it. It's just not close.

Think about this. Phil Ivey is quite simply the single greatest poker player in the world today, I don't think many people would really dispute that fact at this point. The guy is a huge action junkie, he takes prop bets left and right, and he wins millions live and millions more online every year from this game. So, for starters, why does Ivey even need a $4 million loan from full tilt? And why did full tilt give him $4 million of their money, even assuming he did need it for something? Or, let me correct myself there -- why did full tilt give Phil Ivey $4 million of our money? And make no mistake -- that's exactly what commingling of players funds with full tilt funds means. They took the money we deposited with them, and then they just mixed our deposited funds in with all their money, using it for their own corporate purposes. Such as, apparently, "loaning" Phil Ivey $4 million.

Do you think Humberto Brenes ever owed pokerstars millions of dollars? What about Daniel Negreanu? How about UB, those scoundrels...d'ya think Phil Hellmuth owes UB $7 million or something? You think they lent Annie Duke a couple hundy large to complete an addition on to her house? Me thinks not.

And yet somehow, this that you are reading right here is the very first place to ever question or even mention the ludicrity of this $4 million debt from Ivey to full tilt. Somehow, I loaned Phil Ivey 4 million bucks even though I don't remember being asked about that decision, and I certainly know I didn't get to review any of his financial information or to sign off on his intended use of my funds. Last time I checked, I don't loan money to professional gamblers to throw on roshambo bouts, 18-foot puts on the greens, weight loss contests and WSOP bracelet bets against the rest of the best players in the world.

Or do I?

Along those same lines, I sat in silence for a good three weeks on this story as well, hoping against hope that at least one of these poker media outlets or bloggers would jump on this story with even a small fraction of the tenacity that was used to investigate and resolve the UB superuser scandal, but I simply cannot leave this post in "draft" mode any longer since it's obvious that, once again, the poker media is perfectly happy letting full tilt walk all over everyone, themselves included, because I guess they're just too busy staring agog like little schoolchildren at the very people who have stolen the cash right out of their pockets. But did anybody see the story a few weeks back when Todd Brunson tweeted that he had run into Howard Lederer in Las Vegas and that after telling Lederer how short he (Brunson) was on cash, Howard offered to pay Brunson what Brunson had locked up on Full Tilt at the time of the U.S. online poker ban? You're telling me the major poker media outlets never heard this story? Yeah right. Well, apparently it's true. Here are Todd Brunson's tweets of the events, which again happened just a few weeks ago on July 19 in Las Vegas:

"Look who I just ran into.. I told him the wsop killed me and I was cash short...... http://lockerz.com/s/121600156"
ToddBrunson

"He asked how much I had on tilt and I told him 150k.. He said come with me. We went to his car and he opened his trunk and paid me!!!!!!"

At first I figured this had to be a joke, especially given the complete dearth of coverage (let alone uproar) about it among the big poker sites. But nope, apparently it is all true -- the poker media is still just too busy planning how to blow the full tilt pros to spend any time letting you know that this happened. Brunson ran into Lederer in Vegas, took a picture to prove it, and when Brunson complained about being short on cash, Lederer apparently paid Brunson the $150,000 he had locked up on full tilt, right in cash out of the trunk of Lederer's car.

Now, putting aside the obvious questions on why on god's green earth Howard Lederer is driving around with more than 150 grand in his trunk (will somebody please carjack this asshole, PLEASE?!), wouldn't you think it would bother someone at wicked chops, at poker news, one of the big poker bloggers, anybody enough to mention that while little old you and me sit around waiting (forever?) to get (all? some of?) our money back that has been locked up at full tilt since April 15, the big dogs who know the founders of the site personally -- yes, those same founders who commingled your funds with their own -- are getting paid out by their friends the site's founders, in hundred-large chunks?

Wouldn't you think that it would have occurred to somebody in the media -- anybody at all -- to stop to think for a minute that maybe, if Lederer has $150k of full tilt funds sitting in his fucking car trunk that maybe, just maybe, that money could be disbursed to everyone whose money full tilt has stolen, and not just to the personal friends of the founders? Might one even suggest that this type of behavior by Lederer is more or less the exact same thing that got him into trouble in the first place, taking our poker deposit funds -- yours and mine -- and treating them like his own personal fucking ATM? I mean, can you imagine how many of us little people could have been paid out in full with just that $150,000 of my money and your money that Todd Brunson gratuitously got from Howard Lederer, just for happening to bump into him in a restaurant in Vegas?

I say again. Can you imagine if the posters on 2+2 were actually running with story like they did the UB mess a few years ago? Can you imagine if Haley was out there reporting on this complete and utter pile of bullshit every single day like she was back then with UB? Don't you wish Amy and Tim were glomming on to this story as surely as they did the WSOP missing chips scandal a couple of years back? And why aren't they? Why isn't anyone?

Seriously guys. WTF. It's getting very close to where we actually deserve what we get from full tilt here.

Is it me?

Is it me, or does it seem like the full tilt red pros really did not come up with many gold bracelets at the WSOP this year? I mean, how often have you heard Lederer Ferguson's name at a WSOP final table this summer, or even Cunningham or Seidel, or Ivey? Juanda bested Hellmuth for one red pro bracelet, but otherwise at least it looks like these guys have far too much on their mind right now to play their best.

Tilt and the Poker Media

With the news today that full tilt has been shut down globally after losing its license to run its online gaming operations, I find myself thinking, as I have often as I've read the increasing number of anti full-tilt posts out in the blogiverse over the past month or so, about the free pass that a great many bloggers and other members of the poker media gave full tilt for the first several weeks following the U.S. online poker ban, and even in many cases that is still happening today. As the full tilt saga continues to take affirmative steps that seem headed for the site collapsing under its own weight and not ever being able to find sufficient funds to pay back the full deposits of at least its American players, I can't help but think how funny it is that basically everyone we know in the poker media, among our blogger crew and everybody else in between out there is now taking credit for having been right all along in their predictions regarding full tilt poker ever since the events shortly after April 15. When meanwhile, in actual reality, six weeks ago, it was just me, one or two other bloggers, and a small handful of posters on 2+2 decrying full tilt (they deserved it), stating that the site had commingled funds and did not have sufficient money on hand to pay out their players (they did not), and predicting that things would get a lot worse for our chances of ever seeing our money before they get better (they most certainly have).

Go check it out. Over the past few weeks, I have read no fewer than five poker writers, bloggers or other posters trying to take credit for having been right all along and seeing this coming with the full tilt situation, when in reality you can very easily look and verify that they were there back in late April, swimming right along with the masses of fish all proclaiming that hey, this is full tilt, owned by the poker pros themselves, they won't screw everyone over, especially not with the WSOP coming up. What a joke. Even when the shit is right there to be proven false, linked right there on these people's own blogs, just inches of screen space away from their lies, they all still want to take credit now for having seen this avalanche coming. Right.

Everybody has to claim to be an insider, in the poker media more than anywhere else. Where six weeks ago it was "I know the full tilt guys, full tilt will come through, full tilt would never commingle our funds with their own, of course full tilt has the money", now with the very same people it's all "I always knew something was up, I could smell a rat from the beginning." Nice try, but no. I smelled a rat right from the beginning. You blindly backed your "friends" in the industry, while day by day, chess move by chess move, your rosy expectations and over-trusting naivete showed themselves more and more clearly for just that. You put your faith in a collection of some of the least trustworthy, most shady people out there, and boy did you ever get burned.

It's one thing to be getting screwed by full tilt here. We're all getting screwed, every minute of every day while we do not get our funds back. I wrote here in black and white a good eight weeks ago now that we all already had been screwed, from the moment it became clear to the unbiased and open-eyed among us that full tilt had in fact commingled our poker funds with their own, to such an extent that they could not now come up with enough money to pay all the U.S. players back our own money. So it's one thing to recognize and admit that you've gotten screwed. But to try to take credit for being out in front of this whole full tilt mess now that your "friends" involved with the company have shown their true colors -- when it was so painfully few of us who actually got it early on -- really adds insult to injury. Just own the fact that you got duped like 99% of the country, and maybe try to learn to be a little more open-minded and objective next time.

It was tough for a while back in May, being one of the only people I could find out there suggesting that full tilt might never pay us back our poker funds from their coffers. That our funds might not even exist. People have a lot of money tied up on full tilt, and many make their very livelihood from the availability of full tilt, so I took quite a lot of shit a couple of months back from the bitterest among the blogging community. Many said I was being needlessly pessimistic. A few attacked my lack of knowledge, or my lack of written substantiation for any concerns I was voicing (as if anyone supporting full tilt back then had any such "evidence", obviously). And many simply insulted and attacked me, without any real reason, for having a view that did not jibe with what they desperately wanted to be the truth, even though their view of the truth never sat well with me or seemed all that likely to happen.

For what it's worth, I don't only chuckle at all those people now who should have seen the truth coming like I did a couple of months ago but whose own world view could not allow them to see the forest for the trees so they are now vainly trying to take credit for having seen this all along when in fact they were major contributors to the lack of seeing this problem for what it really was. I actually think the poker media, bloggers, etc. contributed in a small way to the current state of full tilt's business. Most of the major poker media sites, the bigger poker bloggers and other poker outlets on the Internets basically gave full tilt a pass for the entire first month or more after April 15 of this year, and that I think gave the powers that be at tilt the idea that they could maybe actually get away with screwing everyone and live to tell the tale. When you've got some of the biggest and most widely-read writers about poker, many of whom have written or otherwise worked for full tilt or their largest competitors over the past few years, either remaining more or less silent while one of the biggest heists in online poker history was playing out its first act, or outright coming out in blind support of full tilt with obviously no actual reason to do so, it sent a terrible message to the founders of the site, one that I think has stuck with those people right up to now, as we near the seeming bitter end for what was once everyone's favorite site to play at. Of course nobody out there will own up to having done that now, but that's exactly what mostly everyone out there in the poker media in fact did, and I'm telling you, that collective pass and the rush to trust for everything full tilt was doing for 4-6 weeks after Black Friday contributed to where we're at today.

Just imagine if all the same people who have, say, devoted countless hours, day and weeks of their lives to investigating, reporting on, and just generally telling the world the truth about the UltimateBet / Absolute scandal, had spent the first three or four weeks after Black Friday working just as hard to look into the financial situation at full tilt and to make the truth known to the world, with the same fervor and devotion that they accorded to the UB cheating matter. Or, remember when a couple chips went missing during the WSOP Main Event a few years back? We had two or three professional poker bloggers and writers out there covering almost nothing but that story for days and days on end. And you know what? The shit works! If enough people jump on an issue or a story early enough, if they dig deep enough, and if they stay at it long enough, we've seen cold, hard proof that they can really make a difference. Not just in uncovering the truth when they do, but in actually helping to frame the issues and ultimately contributing in some way to the eventual resolution of the problem.

With full tilt, the poker media in general dropped the ball in my view. Not to blame the media in any way for what ultimately is 100% full tilt's own doing here, but the poker media has done a better job in the past on other issues, and should have followed the lead of the very few such as myself who publicly never thought full tilt's story smelled exactly kosher, and done a similar job here right from the getgo in digging to the bottom of the issues and starting to suggest ways to influence full tilt management to do the right thing. Instead, while all your favorite bloggers publicly came to full tilt's defense and told you over and over again for several weeks that of course full tilt will return everyone's funds, attacking all the while those few voices out there suggesting that maybe all was not roses for the former second-largest U.S. online poker site, management at full tilt saw an opportunity to do things clearly against the U.S. players' interests like turning down Phil Ivey's "White Knight" deal and a few other deals that were offered that would have secured the return of player funds in exchange for giving up control of the full tilt asset, and they jumped on that opportunity with the understanding that the poker media was simply not out for bear from them like they clearly have been for AP/UB, the WSOP and others when other similar controversies have arisen in the past. And I can't help but notice the correlation between that unbelievable (to me) level of trust right off the bat for full tilt, and the fact that now it appears more and more almost daily that full tilt could have gotten us back our own money, but now they probably cannot.

This is one story where I can honestly say, it hurts to have been right all along.

Foxwoods Keys to Success

Just one more day of workin for the man and I will be off to Foxwoods for Event #1 of the Spring Into Summer Mega Madness tournament series. As I have mentioned here over the past week or two, this is a $600 buyin no-limit holdem tournament with a $125k guaranteed prize pool. Based on what I've seen and heard, I would guess this event will end up pulling in a good 300, 350 runners on a weekend (hopefully more, of course) and that 125k guarantee will be easily exceeded, but I guess I won't know until a couple hours after Saturday's 11am ET start time. It would be so great to finally make just the second Day Two of my poker playing career, but in order to do that, I'm going to have to play a heck of a lot better poker than I played in my two recent practice tournaments I detailed in yesterday's post. I wanted to take today's post to write down and cram into my brain once again the lessons I learned from playing this week that I had grown quite rusty about over my three-month poker hiatus.

First and foremost, I have to do better at not betting too aggressively and/or play too loose right off the bat in the hopes of hitting that miracle flop. This is simply not advice I have ever needed to focus on before -- I think playing 100 mtt's a month thanks to the wonder of online poker helps from making any one tournament seem too important or too boring to sit on the sidelines for -- but it is clear from my recent tournament experiences that it's where I am at now. I resolve on Saturday not to drop more than 10% below my starting stack during the first two rounds of play unless I pick up a big hand and am forced to make a major laydown. In general, making laydowns has never been and continued not to be my problem over the past week -- I laid TT and AQs preflop, I folded a slow-played TPTK to a big river raise from a guy who made too many deliberate faces at me while I was pondering my move on the river to have anything other than a big, strong hand, and I even laid down two pairs twice on the river to big action, one of which was still a multi-way pot. But unless something like happens, I flop a set and then the river four-flushes or something and I face a huge bet, I will not play too aggro early on, I will not call preflop raises or reraises with garbage, and I will absolutely not allow my desire to mix it up with the clear fish at the table to back me into a corner where I am in against a strong player with a weak hand late into a pot.

Secondly, assuming I last through the first, say, three or four hours of this tournament, I resolve to resteal more. Shit, I resolve to resteal at all, given my timidness in several a propos situations over the past 9 or 10 hours of tournament play I put in this week. I have simply got to take advantage of stealing from the stealers, because each time you do it, it is worth a good couple of orbits of sitting out and just ceaselessly contributing your blinds and antes. And the big problem is, everyone steals nowadays. The blind steal has become such a part of the nlh tournament game nowadays -- in particular among the young types that will likely predominate the scene at Foxwoods this weekend -- that if you do not take advantage of the stealers from time to time, not only do your own blinds get eaten up when you are in the first two seats left of the dealer, but your ability to steal any pots diminishes over time since someone else is always in there ahead of you opening the action. I have to tell myself over and over again: there is no way these guys are that strong, all the time. This was always something that I used to take for granted as it came naturally to me to play with this type of attitude over the years, but as I mentioned yesterday, if there's one thing I take away from my tournament play this week, my lack of balls when it comes to restealing from the preflop stealers is That Thing. Of course, restealing with total air will eventually run me into a monster and end my tournament run prematurely, but all I can say is, I've honestly never had a deep, deep tournament run where I never restole from someone who I thought was trying to pick up the blinds and antes with a weakish hand preflop. Never. Some of that of course is the cards I get, some of it is situational of course, but the bottom line is, if someone is on a medium stack and we're getting down near the money, a well-time allin against a guy giving off a weak vibe pays dividends, not only directly in terms of the amount of chips in my stack, but also in the meta game, as you keep everyone thinking every time they consider putting in a raise before the flop with less than a premium holding.

My game has always relied as a major cornerstone on preflop aggression. Even when I can feel the bubble near, as I could twice over the past week, I need to keep up the pressure against the people I believe can fold and who have demonstrated a willingness to mix it up with beatable hands.

The last thing I want to make sure I remember -- and this, too, is something that needn't even be said back when I was playing with regular consistency -- is to preserve my chips. In that first tournament this week, I know why I pushed allin on the flop on a stone bluff with 9-high in the hand where I got eliminated. I know what went into the decision, and taking everything into account, I still think there was a good chance when I made that move that I was right in that spot and could have chipped up nicely in that hand. But did I need to make that move just then? I was 5th in chips with less than two full tables remaining, and the top 8 slated to receive payouts. Was there a good reason for me to risk my entire stack on a guess -- and that's all it was, an educated guess -- that the biggest stack left in the tournament was weak, when I couldn't even beat a bluff and had barely any outs to draw to even if I got called? No, of course, there was not. So I probably shouldn't have been doing it. Or at the least, I should have thought about my play in the exact terms that I just described it before making the decision to push everything allin and risk elimination just short of the money by one of the few stacks left in the tournament that could wipe me out in one hand. And I can tell you, I did not think about it at all like that at the time. At the time it was just like "Well, there's no way that clown has a hand again. If he leads out on the flop, I'm pushing no matter what." I didn't look at his stack, my stack, the other stacks at the table, and I did not consider that I had literally just managed to climb my stack out of the doldrums for several hours back up well above average as we were fixing for a run to the final table. To go and throw away all of that patience, all of that hard work, all of that deserving success, running a stone bluff with 9-high against a guy with a monster stack who'd been hitting hands all day and who raised me preflop and led out on the flop? Not smart.

Play tight early. Loosen up preflop late, especially against the middle stacks who already have an inclination towards folding. And protect my chips from needless, thoughtless risks. These are the keys to my having a successful tournament at Foxwoods on Saturday. I will try to update here how I am doing, in particular if I last a little while and might be making a run. Have a great weekend everybody and wish me luck at the indian reservation in Connecticut.

Two Live Tournaments

I am such a dork. I mean, here I am, a couple of days away from heading out to Foxwoods for my first live casino poker tournament in several months, and I find myself spending time preparing myself mentally for the game, walking through the steps, basically all the stuff I would probably be doing if I were sitting in Las Vegas right now about to head down to the Amazon room at the Rio. Which is one thing if you're about to sit down to the World Series of Poker in world-famous Las Vegas, but it's a whole other thing to be making any kind of a big deal about a regular tournament series event at a big casino on the other side of the country from Sin City. But it's a $600 buyin event -- this will make it I believe the highest-buyin poker tournament I have ever played in any live play, other than the three WSOPs in which I have partaken over the past four years -- and with a $125k guaranteed prize pool, there is a lot to play for, even if it isn't a gold bracelet.

So, in advance of Foxwoods on Saturday, I attended a live poker tournament this week (two, actually) run by a friend of mine in New York City, each tournament sporting around 60-70 entrants, in the hopes of reconnecting with those nlh tournament skills I had honed so finely over five or six years of near-daily practice, or at the least of figuring out just how off my game is likely to be after three months of absolute cold turkey with online poker. In each tournament, I managed to run pretty deep, but in both of them I ended up never really amassing the big stack I needed to really make a run at the final table. And, more than that, I think I can tell you pretty easily just why that is.

In the first tournament I played, I went down right off the bat and was not really able to recover. Six levels in, I had been bumping along at less than half the tournament average for the past couple of hours, and suddenly I found pocket Kings -- in the big blind no less -- and long story short, two guys got allin against me and I more than tripled up. This gave me new life, and within the next hour or so, I took A♣K♣ for a reraise preflop against a short-stacked player who made a blatant mistake in calling my preflop reraise when it was for half of his remaining stack. The flop came all rags, but with two clubs -- giving me a good 15 outs if not the lead already, and seeing that my opponent had around 50% of his chips in the pot already, I knew I wanted to get the rest. I had the feeling he had called with a spec hand -- not a big pocket pair, helped of course by the fact that I held one Ace and one King in my own hand -- and a nagging part of me thought he might fold and try to push a different hand preflop if I really put him to the test here. So instead, I stared for a couple of seconds at the raggy flop and put on my best "I missed" face, followed by a very slow and weak-looking check with my right hand barely touching the table. My opponent instantly took the bait, insta-pushing allin for the rest of his stack, which I obviously called, and the look on this guy's face when he saw my cards was just priceless, as he flipped up J9s in the wrong suit, for a big fat nothing. A total bagel. A couple of "nice check"s from the other players around the table to me, and I had doubled up again, sitting on a pile about twice the tournament average, as we got down to the final 2 tables with me in 5th place out of 18 or 19 runners remaining.

Unfortunately, my stint at the final two tables would be fairly short-lived, as the chipleader was this uberdonkey to my right who had made so many bad plays with bad cards over the preceding couple of hours at my table that nobody observant could possibly ever put him on a hand early in a pot. Well, he open-raises with his ginormous stack from the button -- my read of which is that he literally has any two cards -- and I look down in the small blind to find 9♠7♠, one of my favorite hands to play. I thought about reraising, but did not want to take my 5th-place stack against the 1st place stack with just two tables remaining, so I just called. When the flop came down a thoroughly un-scary J53 rainbow, the chip leader did what he had done about 50,000 other times since amassing his big stack, leading out for nearly the full size of the pot with a c-bet. I figured I didn't have him on a hand to begin with, and I certainly wasn't putting him on a hand that nailed a J53 rainbow flop, so I looked at his 12k bet into the 14k pot, and I looked at the roughly 45 or 50k in chips I had remaining in my stack (as compared to about 300k for him), and I pushed all-in, confident that he would not call with two garbage cards. He thought briefly, and then announced "I call" before flipping up pocket Kings. I looked and felt like the real donkey as I was essentially drawing dead right from the getgo, and I pushed him my chips and got out of dodge. Thus ended practice tourmament #1.

Practice tournament #2 took place a day later, and this time I once again went down early with a combination of c-bets gone wrong and a couple of loose calls preflop given that we started with 200 big blinds in our 10k starting stacks. From there, just as in the first tournament a couple of days earlier, I struggled along, playing tighter than I would like to help preserve my stack, and hoping to find a great spot or a big pair to chip up in a hurry. Eventually, after again getting down below half the average chipstack, I did manage to double up, once again when I picked up pocket Kings and got called allin preflop by a monster stack a couple of seats to my right who got in there with A9s. Finally with some chip utility working in my favor to enable me to play some poker, I was able to slowly chip up over the next couple of hours, once again making it down to the final two tables with me just under average but in fine position to make a run. I was unable to get over average, however, because I simply wasn't getting any playable cards and the rest of the table was being very aggressive, and whenever a resteal situation presented itself, something just didn't feel right about it to me so I opted to wait for a better spot that never really came.

Eventually, down to 16 players remaining and with me dwindling once again to about 2/3 of the average stack with around 40k in chips, I forced myself to open-raise preflop from middle position to 7000 chips with K7s in diamonds, and got one caller in late position from across the table, which told me pretty much nothing specific about his hand other than that he wanted to play with me and had the chips to see something cheap and see what happens. The flop came down K84, with the 8 and the 4 of diamonds, giving me top pair plus a King-high flush draw. I led out into the roughly 15k pot for 11k, wanting this to look like a regular c-bet where I would leave myself room to fold if I were in fact bluffing, and after just a few seconds, my fairly aggressive opponent announced that he was allin. I thought it over for a couple of seconds, figured this guy was probably on a higher King since I didn't think he'd played his hand like pocket Aces but I didn't really think he would be trying to bluff me either with how little I had been playing at the table. Still, as I computed the pot odds, I saw that there was about 50k effective in the pot, and I needed to call my last 22k or so to get there. Not even being sure this guy had top pair in the first placem, and with 9 redraw outs to a flush even if he did, there was basically no way I could fold this hand in this spot, even though it didn't exactly feel great as I made the crying call. My opponent flipped up pocket 4s for the flopped set, I did not improve to my flush, and IGH in 16th place.

So, it was two tournaments, two nice runs, but two finishes just short of the money. And what can I make of all this? What conclusions can I draw about the effect of a three-month layoff on my nlh tournament play?

Well, for starters, I played too aggressively early in both tournaments, causing me to lose precious chips early on on both days and seriously hampering my ability to chip up early, or even play good, wide-open poker early due to the loss of chip utility from my short stack. One of the killers on this point was that I knew I had dropped too early too fast in the first tournament, I had specifically noted this to myself as I reviewed the play in my mind, and I told myself -- ordered myself, really -- not to do that again in the second tournament, and then I went right out and did it again. It's not that I was playing totally recklessly, but even though I know this is totally wrong, for super cheap I called that preflop reraise with my sooted King-rag because I knew three other players had already entered the pot for that reraise. I called a preflop raise into a multiway pot with T9o. I even c-bet at a pot with four players after a late-position open-raise that I'm sure screamed to everyone that I was weak. Both days I did this stuff, and both days saw my 10k starting stack shrunk down to 6k or so within the first hour of play. That is no way to succeed in any poker tournament, and I know this. But on Saturday at Foxwoods, I will need to get myself psyched into the right frame of mind to protect my chips early if I expect to last to Day Two out at the Mashantucket Pequot indian reservation. And I don't just mean to say that I'll protect my chips like I did before my second practice tournament this week -- I mean to actually protect the goddam chips.

Another thing I have to say -- and this is not the least bit of a surprise -- but my reads were not as accurate as they usually are. Not by a longshot. Essentially, in both tournaments I busted by betting out into a better hand, so I missed those reads entirely. In the first tournament, I decided before the flop that the big stack must have no hand just because I knew he was a blind-stealing donkey. Of the highest order. As if uberdonkeys don't get dealt pocket Kings just as often as the rest of us, even in the blinds. Then when he led out on the flop, to be honest with myself I never even considered that he might actually have a hand. I knew I had nothing but two rags in the hole, so I knew I had to bet big to have a chance at winning the hand, and I basically fell into the beginning poker player's trap of not being willing to reconsider my read after locking on to something before seeing any of the cards or the action on the flop. That was just a horrible play, and not an hour after duping some other unsuspecting sap into bluffing off his entire stack into me, I was the shithead with the dumb grin on his face, picking up his stuff and leaving the room as I had just done exactly the same thing.

My elimination story in the second tournament is a little different. Now, if I had correctly read my opponent for extreme strength on the flop, no way I would have called allin there with just the top pair and flush draw combination. With a higher King and the flush draw, you could maybe see doing that. But at the time I figured I was behind and felt from the math that I simply had to call anyways. And any one of the hundred or so poker books I've read can tell you (and has told me) that you should always think through your bets to make sure you know before you bet what you're going to go if you get raised. I think it was Sklansky's no-limit book that explained it best, that basically if you bet or raise and get raised or reraised, and you are at a loss about what to do, then you probably made a bad bet or raise to begin with. In other words, if I had led out smaller on the flop, then I might have had an easier fold when my opponent raised me big with his flopset. Or if I had pushed allin, then once again I would not have left myself with the agonizing decision that I forced myself to make as to whether or not to call my opponent's allin. Those of you who have played live poker tournaments know how frustrating and how bad-ending it is to have to call off your remaining chips when you know you're behind. Even if the pot odds dictate your calling, as was the case in my second tournament elimination this week, to have to call off your stack in a tournament and need to catch something less than 50% likely is never, ever a good thing. Could I have avoided this if I had played the hand better, or if I was more in tune with the game than I am at this point? Maybe. Probably, even.

The last thing I should mention is that -- and this is a real shock for me to say of all people -- but I was an absolute pussy when it came to restealing from people. I mean, I basically invented the resteal. I've written numerous posts about it, and I have wielded the resteal from loose, mid- and big-stacked preflop stealers as a weapon about as often and as effectively as anyone out there. I've restolen and shown you all the hammer more times than anyone can count out there. And yet, here I was, sitting at a poker table and repeatedly not pulling the trigger even when I felt strongly that a raising opponent was weak and just trying to steal the blinds. I can't tell you how many excuses I made to myself in both practice tournaments for why now wasn't the right time: "My opponent looked too obviously weak on his face when he raised", "I don't have enough chips to resteal",, "My cards aren't good enough" (as if that ever stopped me before), and my favorite that kept occurring to me over and over again this week when I knew I should be restealing but didn't: "What if I lose? I'll be crippled. My whole tournament run is over."

I still can't believe that was me thinking all those things, but it was. Three months away from the poker tournament fray, and I have straight-up lost my edge for restealing. And I got news for you -- I dare anyone who's ever run truly deep in a live nlh tournament to tell me you didn't resteal quite a bit from the aggrodonks. You have to. You just can't avoid it. The blinds increase so fast at the upper levels, and the aggressive players are increasingly likely to be the only ones left as an nlh tournament wears down near the money, that there is just no way to survive and thrive without a few well-timed resteals. All I know is, I played deep into two different nlh tournaments this week -- probably a good 9 or 10 hours of play overall -- and I did not even attempt a resteal. Not once.

Pathetic, isn't it? I know. Well, that's what I'm up against as I prepare to head to Foxwoods for Event #1 of the Spring Into Summer Mega Madness series. Three months of no poker whatsoever, and the result is a guy who almost jumps out of his pants playing too many hands too strongly up front, who can't rely on his reads, and who ultimately is too chicken to pull of a resteal move that he knows he'll need to survive and that he used to be the undisputed king of. In a sad way, my performance this week kind of validates my skipping the trip out to Vegas this summer, because to be perfectly honest with myself, I played just about as bad as I expected to play. I still had my moments, and I don't think I'll ever lose the ability to determine just the action that will dupe an opponent into thinking I'm weak and pushing allin on me right when I want him to, but in the end, I played more or less just like I thought. Worse, even.

Here's hoping I get the chance to pull some re-steals at Foxwoods on Saturday afternoon. Otherwise, little return to live poker tournaments this week is likely to come to an early and arbupt ending somewhere in southeastern Connecticut.

Gettin' My Live Poker On

Yes, that's right...I'm actually going to be playing some poker this weekend!

No, it won't be in Las Vegas. As most of you have probably surmised following my earlier post and then lack of mention of a trip to the desert this summer, I have decided not to head out to Las Vegas. It's a decision that pains me greatly on the one hand, but then on the other hand it's also one about which I have zero doubt about being the right answer, even less so today than a couple of weeks ago. Without rehashing all the reasons here, suffice it to say that playing nlh poker tournaments -- especially ones for a reasonably high buyin and against people who generally have at least some modicum of experience playing as well -- is just such a game of "feel" for me, and there are just so many nuances, in particular in late-stage play, of when to push, when to go for the stop-and-go, when you can raise the limpers and blast everyone out of a big pot or when you need to just lay 'em down and wait for a better spot. And I just know I am nowhere near my best on any of those areas anymore. Period. End of discussion. While I think most truly good tournament poker players could probably still walk into a room like the Amazon room and perform at a level better than 50-75% of the participants in that day's tournament, 25th to 50th percentile is just not sufficient for me, in particular in a game like no-limit holdem where any one mistake can, and -- again, in particular in late-stage tournament play -- probably will be the undoing of your entire tournament. The odds of me being able to play well enough over a few days at the WSOP this year after not sniffing a single hand of poker in any form with anyone older than seven years old for a good three full months preceding the tournament, is just naive and silly. So, after much consternation and a good deal of effort trying to drum up a way that I think makes sense for me to play in the Series this year, it's going to be no Las Vegas for me this summer.

All that said, that does not mean that I won't be able to play any poker tournaments this summer. Quite the contrary -- Hammer Wife is down with me taking the time I would have spent in Las Vegas this summer and instead trying my hand at a couple of smaller tournaments -- yet hopefully still big enough to be worth my while and get my juices flowing a little bit. This week is not likely to work for me to make it down for the Borgata Summer Poker Open which is still going for another few days this week down in Atlantic City, but then, enter Foxwoods and their "Spring Into Summer Mega Madness" series running from June 25 through July 4. Even though I recently moved a lot further away from Foxwoods than I lived for the past couple of years, I am willing to make the trek out to the middle of nowheresville to play in Event #1 of the summer Mega Madness series at Foxwoods, which is this Saturday, June 25 at 11am ET. It is a $600 buyin no-limit holdem tournament, with "mega stacks" whatever exactly that means, and the other thing I love about this event is that it carries a $125k guaranteed prize pool. This makes Event #1 the largest event of the entire tournament series at Foxwoods other than the Main Event, which for only 25k more guaranteed in the prize pool, costs twice as much at $1200 to enter, so I like Event #1 a heck of a lot more than that.

So that'll be me, heading down to Foxwoods very early on Saturday morning for Event #1 of the Spring Into Summer Mega Madness tournament series. If anyone is in the area and wants to check me out, let me know and I can get you my cell phone number. Otherwise, it should be interesting to see how exactly the layoff affects me -- I know for certain that my play will be off and worse than my best, but I am specifically curious as to exactly how my lack of recent play affects my game. Will I play too tight or too lose with starting hands to compensate? Will I fail to c-bet the flop as much as usual? Or will I flame out a nice stack with an ill-timed bluff against a guy I should have read for more strength than I do based on the complete lack of recent practice to draw upon? Only time will tell.

Woe Woe Woe is Full Tilt

For anyone who hasn't heard yet, Phil Ivey released a statement via facebook yesterday that is now right on his homepage for all to read, about the current situation going on at full tilt, a company in which Ivey is an investor. Without bothering to summarize everything (you can read the whole thing it at the link above, it is pretty short), suffice it to say that Ivey is disappointed and embarrassed that -- due to the "inactivity and indecision of others" -- full tilt has not yet paid out its U.S. players, which Ivey calls unacceptable and something for which he has filed suit against tiltware, the maker of the full tilt software, and that Ivey is not going to play the WSOP this year when others cannot due to failure of full tilt to return their funds. The most interesting part of the release to me is the last paragraph, where Ivey says, "I sincerely hope this statement will ignite those capable of resolving the problems into immediate action and would like to clarify that until a solution is reached that cements the security of all players, both US and International, I will, as I have for the last six weeks, dedicate the entirety of my time and efforts to finding a solution for those who have been wronged by the painfully slow process of repayment. It certainly sounds to me like Ivey is of the opinion that it is somehow someone's decision who is involved with the management of full tilt not to pay out the players. While I doubt that that is expressly true just as I wrote it there, something tells me that Ivey -- a clear insider with mostly everyone involved with full tilt management among the professional players' circuit -- knows a lot more than he is leading on here, and that he is directly and deliberately trying to send a strong message to one or more of his poker "friends" via this public announcement, since his private urgings do not seem to be working.

But the thing that has me much more pissed is the stone cold confirmation -- unfortunate though it is -- of literally every single thing I've said here about full tilt over the past month or so since it became obvious that player cashouts were not forthcoming from the U.S.'s formerly second-largest online poker site, coming out of ftpdoug on the 2+2 boards. For those who don't know (and I am no kind of 2+2 hound, but I've spent enough time there to know doug from various full tilt issues in the past, he is confirmed legit), ftpdoug works for full tilt and has appeared countless times in the forums -- and I think even here at my blog way back in the day after I ranted about full tilt intentionally pulling the plug on the servers on a night when they were going to have to pay out massive overlay across the board in their nighttime mtts -- to explain full tilt's position, give updates on status of corrections and problems, and just to generally disseminate information from full tilt to the masses.

Well, ftpdoug posted the following the other day on the 2+2 forums, and I'll just repost the whole thing here for those who have not yet seen it:

To our customers:

We acknowledge that our lack of communication reflects poorly on us, and rightfully so. We have been too optimistic in estimating how long it would take to sort through the issues we have faced since Black Friday. And as frustrating as the delays have been for us, we recognize that it cannot compare to the frustration you have been feeling.

We further recognize that our lack of communication has led to much speculation and many unsubstantiated rumors, which have often been contradictory. With this message, we hope to clear up as much confusion as we can, while at the same time keeping in mind the constraints imposed on us as a result of the cases brought in the Southern District of New York.

The most pressing questions:

1. When will the US players be paid?

We still do not have a specific timeframe for this. There has been, and remains, no bigger priority than getting US players paid as soon as possible, and we have been working around the clock to get this done.

2. Is FTP bankrupt?

No. FTP's worldwide business is healthy and, although we've had some short-term challenges, it is operating as normal.

From: http://www.gamblingcontrol.org/userf...2020110516.pdf

"The AGCC’s investigation into the affairs of it licensee Vantage Limited, trading as Full Tilt.com, is ongoing; initial investigations indicate no reason to believe that player fund transactions are fundamentally threatened by any consequence of the US authorities' actions. Delays caused by these actions are in the process of resolution, with normal service now being restored for non-US players. We understand that progress in respect of US player fund repatriation is anticipated and will be the subject of a separate statement from Full Tilt in due course. The Commission will remain engaged in this process."

3. What is the company doing to speed up payouts to the US players?

We are raising capital to ensure that the US players are paid out in full as quickly as possible.

It is important to remember that Full Tilt Poker has always paid out our players, even in the face of previous legal obstacles or factors not in our control, such as payment processor defaults and prior actions by the US government which resulted in US player funds being seized.

In all of these previous instances, Full Tilt Poker has covered these losses and intends to do the same again.

4. Why are the Full Tilt Pros remaining silent?

It is not their choice. But they are constrained by the pending legal actions.

As a final note, we understand -- and have always understood -- the effect that our brief statements have had not only on our customers, but also on our reputation. It has not been easy to stay silent and watch the damage being done to our company brand and personal reputations, but we need to be mindful of the complicated and serious legal issues raised in the pending cases.

The emphasis in blue is mine, not ftpdoug's, but it is those two highlighted portions which just smack me in the face most. So, for starters, for anyone who actually doubted that full tilt did not have the cash on hand to pay out the U.S. players, ftpdoug has now confirmed it. They have to raise capital in order to pay out the U.S. players. That's it, plain and simple. If you don't know, "raise capital" is a fancy way for saying "get money from someone". Period. They don't have sufficient funds on hand to pay out their U.S. fan base. I've said it for weeks, people have commented that I am overreacting, etc. Well, now you can't say that anymore.

And by the way, let's be clear about one thing. "We're raising capital" is exactly what Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld said over and over and over for the month or two immediately prior to Lehman's declaration of bankruptcy. "We're raising capital" unfortunately means the same thing in this case as "We're hoping to raise capital", because full tilt does not yet have a deal in place, and again it is obvious at this point that they will not have the funds to pay out the U.S. players unless they do in fact raise that capital, by some accounts (admittedly this is pure rumor I believe) estimated to be as much as $150 million. Dick Fuld just needed 4 or 5 billion invested and said for weeks that he had several options to choose from. But then his U.S. competitors turned him down. Then Citi and Bank of America said no thanks. Eventually it was down to the Korean Investment Bank, who was apparently very close to agreeing to a deal but walked away at the 11th hour over issues over who would have control over the company after the investment. It's amazing, really, how quickly "We're raising capital" can become "We couldn't raise the necessary capital", especially when your underlying business model may be suspect to a lot of potential investors out there.

Will someone invest $150 million in full tilt, to give them enough money to pay their U.S. players, on the hopes that they can survive and provide a good return on that $150 million investment with the site's flagging presence outside the United States, and dim prospects of ever re-entering the lucrative U.S. market? Would you invest $150 million in that business? Maybe. They do have Rush Poker as others have pointed out, they do seem to have the majority of the biggest worldwide poker pros as sponsors (for now), and they have those multi-entry tournaments that no one else seems to have yet. So there is probably some intellectual property assets there worth a pretty penny. But if you think I think that them "raising capital" sufficient enough to pay out their U.S. players is a done deal, then you crazy.

And moreover, the way I see it, full tilt doesn't really think it's a done deal either, despite a lot of the rhetoric you see from the company to the contrary. I can't help but think that ftpdoug's use of the word "intend" where I highlighted it above instead of saying instead something like "and full tilt will do so in this case as well" I think says it all. Even in writing his comments, ftpdoug in my mind has some inside knowledge that the capital-raising talks are far from any actual commitments of funds, and to me his use of the word "intend" there stands out like a sore thumb. And I should mention as well that the company's recent response to Ivey -- essentially positioning Ivey as the reason why full tilt may be unable to secure new financing -- sounds exactly like what the beginning of the end would sound like to me, if that proves to be what this is.

I'm taking a stand here guys: I have officially flipped from the side of believing we would eventually get paid out by full tilt -- where I've been ever since the moment I read about the indictments and arrests of Black Friday -- and now I think it is probably slightly more likely than not that we do not get full payouts from the company. I referred to this a couple of weeks back, but something about a bunch of professional poker players being in charge of the company ultimately does not at all give me the sense that my best financial interests will be in the forefront at all times. Sure, Lederer's house may be for sale for $30 million right now, but like I said last week here, I guarantee you he wont' go through with it if (1) it's not enough to pay the U.S. players and save the company anyways, and (2) he's the only poker pro putting up his own money like that. And I'm not hearing anything else out of anyone affiliated with the site, or any poker pro for that matter, or now ftpdoug or the full tilt press releases, that lead me to believe they are any closer than I am right now to raising $150 million of fresh cash for their business.

Thinking of Vegas

So as the summer draws closer, and with the few poker bloggers left who still have major poker media outlets to write for beginning to write about departing for the desert, my thoughts have continued to swirl about this year's World Series of Poker. And although I would never have thought this could happen, the shutdown of online poker in the U.S. actually has me re-thinking whether or not to even head out to Las Vegas this year.

It's weird because, just a few weeks ago, shortly after the April 15 online poker shutdowns in the U.S., I posted here about how Vegas was only a couple of months away, I couldn't wait, etc. But since then a few things have happened. My normal crew that has come out to Vegas with me each of the past few years is leaning towards a camping trip instead this summer, in Jackson Hole or some other appropriately well-known outdoor site where I, frankly, have zero desire to be, whether in the middle of June or any other time of the year. I work too hard every day all day to spend my leisure time pretending I am homeless and at one with nature. But rather than try to convince them to hit up Vegas this summer, I am fine with them not going, I've been to Vegas before by myself, and in a lot of ways a solo trip can provide the kind of focus and clarity of thought that only isolation can bring and which might actually be a benefit in a poker tournament context. It's kind of exciting to me, in fact, when I really sit and think about the possibilities. Plus, I know a lot of people who will be in town when I'm there, and it's not like I will really be "alone" in any event, right? Right.

But then I started thinking about the poker. And about how I would be looking to plunk down $1500 or $2000 on a no-limit holdem tournament, when I literally will not have played no-limit holdem even one time -- not even for play money, not even with my daughters on the family room floor -- in nearly three months. I have always maintained right here on the blog that being even a minimally-successful nlh tournament grinder requires excellent timing and impeccable reads, both of which are much more based on instincts, instincts that unfortunately can only really be developed and maintained through practice. I mean, sure we're all degenerate junkies here, but it's more than addiction that led me to play some form of mtt's most nights of the week when my game was on and I had the time to do so -- it's my survival instinct. Because I know I don't play anywhere approaching my best nlh tournament poker unless I'm out there on the (real or virtual) felt practicing it, living it, every single day. Sure I could take off a day here and a day there and see no retracement whatsoever in my skills -- I did that all the time -- but it would be sheer folly for me to even suggest that I could stop playing poker for 11 or 12 weeks heading up to the WSOP, and then just waltz in to the Amazon Room at the Rio, plunk down a couple large, and play my best.

Quite the opposite -- I would probably play terrible, in relative terms. Relative to my "A game", anwyays. And that's what is really giving me pause here as my expected trip to Vegas marches ever closer and closer, all without me still having any plane reservations, any room selected, anything at all really. Do I really want to fly 6 hours each way, waste my precious little vacation time away from Hammer Wife and my awesome young kids, just to do what essentially amounts to throwing away a couple grand? You won't find anyone with more confidence in their poker tournament abilities than I, but even I have to admit that me not having slung a chip or even seen a playing card in nearly three months is not going to be a good matchup for the skill of the players at the WSOP, this year moreso than in past years as I would expect far fewer donkeys with online poker now no longer possible for U.S. asshats to play.

So what's the thought here? Do I suck it up and head out to the desert anyways, maybe shorten my trip, just stay a night or two, and take a chance at the WSOP? And if my plan would just be to stick to the Venetian DSE and other tournaments with smaller buyins -- ones where I would have an equally small chance of success in, given this forced poker layoff -- then why not instead consider just a trip down to Atlantic City for the Borgata Summer Poker Open which is also in mid-June, and maybe a trip to Foxwoods for their big tournament series that run throughout the summer months? That would enable me to get some poker on, play for smaller buyins which is more befitting of my forced-poker-layoff self, but still to be with my family and not waste a lot of vacation time that I could otherwise be spending with the people I love the most. Throw in a family trip maybe later in the summer with that extra vacation time, and now it starts to become really tempting.

So what is a poker blogger to do?

Woe is Full Tilt

What the fruck is going on with Full Tilt and cashouts to U.S. players? And why aren't more people making more of a stink about it? Among our group anyways, it seems like it's basically TBA, a little bit of Josie, and then about a hundred quivering blobs of protoplasm too afraid (of something) to speak out against the site that has given us poker bloggers so much opportunity over the years to beef up our prize pools, let our group play rake-free, and even the (largely untaken) opportunity to play in the WSOP (yeah right).

Do any of you people really think that giving away a bunch of stuff to us over the years -- stuff which, believe you me, full tilt thought they were getting fair value for when they "gave it away" to us to begin with -- gives an online poker site the right to, or in any way absolves them from, commingle our U.S. player funds with the site's own funds, and now the consequent problems in giving us back our money? Can anyone really think that way? I've seen a few bloggers out there voicing that opinion, but as this cashout saga draws on and on and more and more details emerge about what is and is not happening at full tilt, is it possible that people really continue to just throw up their arms and give this site a pass?

Here's all I know: Pokerstars took what, ten days to get us our money? Less, even? They saw that they could no longer offer real-money play to U.S. players, and they basically immediately entered into a deal that would ensure the return in full of all U.S. players' funds, in conjunction with the U.S. government. This could only be done because pokerstars looked at their accounts and knew right away that they had segregated somewhere all the money they needed to cover all U.S. players' deposits somewhere in their coffers.

Now UB / Absolute, we like to think they are a different story. They're probably never returning any U.S. players' funds, and ultimately I think anyone who played at that site who expects them to do different now, simply is not in tune with the history of fraud and abuse at this company. Those funds are probably gone, and hopefully those of you who did play there anyways (like me) hedged against that risk by never leaving anything more than a few hundy on that site at any time. But guess what, guys? Full Tilt might be in that same boat as UB when it comes to returning your funds.

Yeah, I said it. And how much "free" stuff they "gave away" to bloggers over the past several years has precisely zero to do with it. What would that possibly have to do with whether or not full tilt is going to give players back their money? It doesn't. In fact, why should all the blogger "giveaways" over the years mean that we even give full tilt the benefit of the doubt at this point? Pokerstars got it done right away, because obviously they did not have player funds commingled with pokerstars funds. Full tilt, on the other hand, obviously did. And can anyone really feel secure when a bunch of professional poker players control an online poker site, and those players have just had the incredible cash cow that online poker is for most of their rolls, totally revoked, possibly forever but at least for a decently long, undetermined time to come, and when it turns out that that site now also had its own funds commingled with U.S. players' funds? Throw in what, tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars that now needs to be returned and cashed out to U.S. players, and someone thinks I should give these funds-commingling scumbags the benefit of the doubt?

I have news for you rose-colored glass, all humanity is good, etc. people out there. Commingling our funds with the company's own funds -- that is, not actually having our cash separated on hand to pay us each back if and when we ever requested a cashout -- that already is the crime, as far as I'm concerned. Whether U.S. players end up getting all or most of their money back eventually, is almost secondary in my mind. The fact is that it turns out that the people who run full tilt have been running a kind of a modified ponzi scheme -- as long as people keep depositing, there are enough funds to go around for everyone to do what they want to do, but when they have to cash out all U.S. players in one fell swoop, guess what? They can't find the money for it all. And of course this is why the communications from full tilt have been so horrible (and so scarce) over the past couple of weeks, because they don't know how to explain this situation without admitting obvious guilt / fraud / etc. Think about it -- Pokerstars had the money, they knew they were going to be ok as a continuing business offering online poker only outside of the U.S., and they got their U.S. players their money back as quickly as humanly possible, and were very clear in their communications with respect to the situation. Full tilt, on the other hand, does not necessarily have the money to return to their U.S. players, and the long-term viability of their business is much more in doubt as full tilt was primarily focused on the U.S. market, and thus far it is just lie after lie, story after story, and excuse after excuse.

For any institution with access to individuals' finances to commingle its participants' funds with its own funds is punishable in almost any context and almost every circumstance. So no matter how this story ends up, Full tilt is already guilty in my mind. I am still proceeding on the assumption that I will one day see my $265 and change left on the site at the time of Black Friday, but I'm sure as hell not counting on it at this point. And with every passing day, the odds that we ever see that money dwindle further and further IMO.

How Can it Be?

Seriously. Who are these people still playing poker at any online site that still allows play for U.S. players? I mean, I am certainly no stranger to addictions, and I understand how that all works, and I guess that is a lot of what is at work here. But I mean, I've probably spent as much time playing online poker as anyone reading this over the past five years, and if anyone was going to be feeling the itch to find a way to play after the sudden and final actions of Black Friday a few weeks ago, it would probably have been me. And in fact, I've spent a good deal of time thinking about my summer plans, and other opportunities I might be able to make for myself to play some live poker, be it in New Jersey, Connecticut or otherwise. But nowhere along the way have I even spent more than a few seconds debating playing at UB or Bodog at this point -- even though they are theoretically permitting U.S.-based players to still access their servers -- nor downloading one of these smaller skins like Carbon, Cake, Titan, etc. who are still apparently open for U.S. players. And I am realllly struggling to understand what goes in to anyone out there making that decision.

Let me put it this way. Bodog has always been run by known scumbags in Calvin Ayre and friends, and with how hard it has pretty much always been to deposit into and withdraw from Bodog, playing there at this point seems like a complete waste of time. And UB is even crazier, as they are apparently allowing U.S. players to play, but will not process any withdrawals to any U.S. players, and what's more, UB continues to fail to enter into a domain name agreement with the U.S. government as have full tilt and pokerstars, so there seems to me to be a good chance that UB has no intention whatsoever of returning any of the funds in anyone's accounts on that client. And with the smaller sites, how can anybody feel any comfort whatsoever that they will ever be able to get money in to, and in particular out of, those sites, given what has happened to online poker regulation in the U.S. over the past few weeks?

I mean, I'm all for playing poker for low stakes if that's what you like, but I'll say again now what I've said since the very first time anyone ever asked me about playing poker for play money -- poker is simply not actually poker if there is absolutely nothing at stake. There's just no way to get people to play the game with 100% the same care, attention and simultaneously the same measure of caution if the player ultimately stands to lose (or gain) no real money from his or her moves and decisions. And, a corollary of this is that, if you can't actually ever get your hands on the money, then what the hell are you really playing for? The "sport"? The "fun of it"? What's the best that can happen? You win some big tournament, say it's even your biggest all-time online poker score, and then what? You already know you can't ever get that money!! So I ask again, how the hell can you be playing for "real money" at that site to begin with?

Face it, guys. I know there is a lot of desire out there, in particular among those reading this blog, to get back on the virtual felt and play some online poker. And I know a lot of you never really played for particularly high stakes to begin with. But playing at the remaining sites that still offer access to U.S.-based players in this environment is more or less the same exact thing as playing for play-money on stars or full tilt, in terms of what cash you could ever actually get out of the site. The only difference is, by playing on a place like Cake or Carbon at this point, you're putting up real money to do so in terms of deposits, while in terms of withdrawals you're still basically dealing with play money as you'll never actually see a dime. Not to mention that you're playing on a site that is subject to being shut down and taken over by the U.S. government at any time on no notice.

Given this, I think only a chump would put actual money into online poker at this point if you're coming from the United States. Is there any other reasonable conclusion?

The Question Nobody Wants to Ask

So with all the fallout from last Friday's online poker ban in the U.S. still working its way through the collective psyche of poker players and enthusiasts everywhere, one question seems to be looming out there, growing ever larger by the day as online poker players in America get further and further away from the days when we could toil away at our pc's accumulating valuable hand experience at a rate several times faster than any live grinder could ever hope to achieve. And yet, for some reason, I haven't seen anyone writing about this question, or what its ramifications are in the longer-term for this game we all know and love, or for live, televised poker in general:

What's going to happen to the WSOP Main Event this summer in Las Vegas?

With online poker firmly cemented into the offices, studies, living rooms, dens and bedrooms of Americans, the question hasn't needed to be asked for years, not since 2006 when the specter of the UIGEA first reared its ugly head and threatened to stop the long-term growth cycle in the largest televised poker tournaments around. Despite that UIGEA-inspired dropoff in 2007, the Main Event resumed it climb in attendance in 2008, and it has grown in each of the years since then, vaulting back over 7300 entrants in 2010 as the field in the massive 10k-buyin tournament last summer in Las Vegas proved to be the second-largest ever in WSOP history, second only to the 2006 Main Event just before the UIGEA was passed in the United States. I recall a few short years ago that pokerstars alone had sent over 3000 online qualifiers to the Main Event, and lord knows full tilt, UB and the other major poker sites out there all chipped in with solid contributions of their own to these swelling fields in the biggest buyin nlh tournaments around the world.

But with pokerstars, full tilt and UB now all blocked from serving U.S. players, and with anyone who plays on any other site having to be an damn fool to put anything more than a trifling amount into that site (and knowing it may be next to impossible to get anything out of the site even if one does win), it's a safe bet that WSOP attendance in general is going to take a huge hit this year. Just how big is anyone's guess, but 2010 saw total WSOP attendance jump nearly 17% just from 2009, and over 22% over just the past two years. With more or less no U.S. players able to qualify for the WSOP Main Event via online satellite tournaments, and with U.S. players' poker bankrolls in general under attack, unable to grow from online poker play between now and the WSOP, and in many cases stuck in limbo in the cashier somewhere of full tilt, UB or otherwise, one can only assume that we will be looking at a much smaller number than 2009's 7,310 runners in the ME.

How much smaller is anyone's guess. Personally, I'm thinking we're probably looking at closer to 3000 runners than 7000. Maybe less. But then, I bet the satellite room in the back of the Rio is gonna be rockin, pretty much dawn to duskdawn for the next couple of months.