Full Tilt Poker: From Robusto to Busto

It wasn’t very long ago that the Cereus Poker network was the online poker world’s whipping boy when it came to “how NOT to run an online poker site”, but in the aftermath of Black Friday a new, and highly unexpected, foil has taken the place of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker as the main recipient of the online poker world’s ire: Full Tilt Poker.

At the outset of Black Friday most of us in the poker community never questioned whether we would receive our funds from Full Tilt Poker and the once prominent site was given the benefit of the doubt for over a month as it employed stalling tactic after stalling tactic. However all of that changed when PokerStars quickly repaid their US players, and Full Tilt Poker continued to remain tight-lipped and obtuse as to when payments would be made.

As the weeks dragged on a series of lawsuits followed, the first of which was filed first by Team Full Tilt Poker Pro Phil Ivey, and then the ‘fit really hit the shan’ when the AGCC decided to suspend the site’s license forcing the total shutdown of Full Tilt Poker on June 29^th.

Between Black Friday and now many developments have come to light regarding the way Full Tilt Poker was doing business, and the more details that emerged, the more Full Tilt Poker started to look like Absolute Poker than PokerStars. The principle players involved with Full Tilt Poker, who once walked the poker world with their heads held high, have gone into hiding, with nary of whisper of their whereabouts coming to light. Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, once looked upon as pillars of the poker community have been seen their reputations reduced to Joe Sebok levels amongst their peers.

Just some of the rumors/evidence that has come to light includes: The co-mingling of player and operational funds; the internal selling of rake-free accounts; a $160 million loss after the site made the decision to process E-Checks without a payment processor, figuring they could collect the money months later; and processing millions of dollars in loans to Phil Ivey.

The scary thing is that this is WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT! There could be even more nefarious behavior lurking below the surface!

So while Full Tilt Poker, along with PokerStars, was once considered a model for the online poker industry to emulate; it turns out that Full Tilt Poker was more akin to the dreaded Cereus Poker Network than to PokerStars -PokerStars of course proved that their reputation was for good reason with the way they handled the Black Friday start to finish.