Owner Post Archives About Poker in USA – Sept/Oct 2012
– The PPA is predicting that Senate Marjority Leader Harry Reid will attach the federal poker legislation to the Cyber Security Bill during the lame duck session. This bill would drive Federally run poker instead of State within State. It would also strengthen the law against sports betting and casinos online.
– All current payout timeframes have been updated for the major brands to service the United States in our “Featured” poker rooms + 1 casino information at the top of the page. All of the sites have gotten slightly better, with Betonline staying at 1-14 days.
- In case thou are interested, quadjacks did a review of a report that recently came out about the Reid/Kyl “Federal” poker bill. Here is the 1 page summary, instead of 73.
- South Point Poker, the first expected internet poker site to open in the USA (Nevada Only) has delayed its release date. They were expected to open in October citing non-approval by third party testing. The COO still plans to launch the site by the end of 2012 but no exact date was given.
- Pokerstars has announced they will not pay previous partners of Full Tilt Poker funds that were owed (affiliates). What this means for players is that there will not be a huge surge in new players to Full Tilt and it will have to survive on its former ‘rest of world’ players. I, of course as an affiliate, believe this is a terrible mistake as this will certainly taint any possible relationship with advertisers going forth, many of which drive upwards of 90% of poker players to online poker rooms. Pokerstars/FTP has also decided to re-neg on any balances held within the advertisers player account.
Things have been mighty slow for any news regarding poker in the US. Unfortunately, the DOJ still has not announced any sort of plan or percentage of funds to be released back to US players. We are coming up on the 2 months of waiting for this ‘plan’.
- The US DOJ is now the official owners of Absolute Poker and software. The site (not just domain name) was seized this week. The software will likely end up in the hands of a US facing licensed casino under sale by the DOJ. One would assume any funds received from the sale would go back to US clients, but you’re better off playing the lottery if you want that money back.
- If you watched the “Lederer Files” you’ll get a kick out of this youtube clip, “Howard – I don’t know“.
-3:53am – Cake Poker which is on the Revolution Network will be renamed and merged with Juicy States Poker. The last of the “Cake Poker” name will cease to exist.
- In the 6th & 7th episode of “Lederer Files” by Pokernews.com, Howard explains that the majority of the “Poker Pros” such as Phil Ivey, Erik Lindgren, Tom Dwan etc whom owed millions to the company would not honor their debt. At one point $4 million was sent to Lindgren on accident, $2million more than he should have been and he dodged every attempt by Howard Lederer to get the money back, according to him. In this whole thing it is interesting more so to see how all the poker pros aka owners that lived so lavishly off of Full Tilt over the years, turned a blind eye on the players when things went south. Apparently only Chris Ferguson and Howard sent in $15 million to the company (a couple other owners did as well, but they were much smaller amounts). This is of course coming from a guy who doesn’t recall much, but knew the exact date and the exact dollar amount he sent in. He “does not remember” much else that may make him look bad…
- Anyway to close this I just want to say that however pissed off you are at this complete mess remember who started it. It was not Ray Bitar, it was not Howard Lederer, it was not any poker pro. It was our US government seizing funds that was not theirs and causing a successful billion dollar company into a completely dismantled asset. The US government is the only one who knowingly benefited from this on a large scale. Howard ends the series with he “hopes” everyone gets paid in whole. It would have been nice to hear a tad bit more than that from him about re-distribution of US funds in the 3 1/2 hour show.
- Lederer seems to be turning against many of the owners/poker pros such as Phil Ivey saying many were not looking after player interests. In Pokernews.com’s 4th and 5th edition he goes in depth about Phil Ivey and how he feels lead to the original no-sale of Full Tilt because of his greed and lawsuit. Oh course there are always two sides to the story. Next, the Ivey files? Seems all the original FTP poker pros turned against each other when the money ran out.
- So far, the “Lederrer Files” are falling short. He basically says, “I don’t know”, “I would be speculating”, “I don’t remember” after the majority of questions. For someone so involved in the company he comes off as either playing dumb, or a complete idiot. You choose. That was for the first hour at least, nothing new or shocking was said by Lederrer. The third one was released a few hours ago, I was half way through it and he had the balls to try and spin things saying, people actually benefited from this, “100,000 people didn’t get charged for their deposits, but I guess people didn’t care when they’re not getting charged” is what he said with a smirk on his face. Howard, in case it didn’t occur to you since it wasn’t real money they were depositing and playing with, they actually didn’t benefit anything. When he was “told” Full Tilt Poker was majorly in the red, and that it was 9 figures deep he “didn’t think it was an emergency”, “but he knew it couldn’t be good”. This was the guy partly in charge of a billion dollar company. Nice.
- Pokernews.com just finished a 7 segment interview with Howard Lederrer. One of the main Poker Pro / Part Owner that’s basically at blame for the crash of Full Tilt and the loss of player funds… if you haven’t been paying attention to the poker news. “During my initial conversation with Lederer, I made it clear that if he was looking for an outlet to make this easy on him in return for the opportunity to run a story, then we were not interested.” Hopefully he’s coming clean, it’s been 2 years already since he’s said anything. Another important note, they’ll be talking about Phil Ivey and other pros “interest” in the site. Supposed to be released later today.
- Full Tilt Poker owners are being attacked by the DOJ again according to recent filings. The government is seeking 42.5 million, 42million, 41million and about 12 million from Howard Lederrer, Chris Fergusson, Ray Bitar, and Rafael Furst respectively. In total, about 130 million being sought in cash and asset seizures from these guys from ‘illegal’ proceeds. Ouch. More FTP in the news, Stars/Tilt are highering new employees for a Full Tilt relaunch on Nov. 6. Still not a word about US customers and repayment plans.
Also, Haley Hintze wrote an article about the latest regarding Absolute Poker. Appears the lawyer for AP is trying to claim he was the ‘true’ owner of Absolute Poker and is trying to get the software and player database back from the government. Right, good luck with that. That software and database is going straight to political friends gearing up for intrastate poker most likely.
- I was pretty bored so I emailed the guy listed in my previous update below about the sale of the seized domain name bookmaker.com. Not that I had any intention on buying I was just curious as to what kind of response I’d get. Here it is…
“The Ten Domain Names were registered last week. Over the weekend, that change was noticed and reported. (With one exception, none of the folks reporting have ever contacted US Poker Marketing Affiliate LLC for any information. Consequently, a number of inaccurate impressions have arisen.) The Ten Domain names are available for acquisition or licensing. However, there is no set auction process in place, there is no “fire sale” pricing or term sheets, and company is not acting as an agent, “front” or “ruse” for the US government. (Either a sale transaction or a licensing transaction can be considered.) The actual sale mechanism or timing had not been decided upon when the information broke publicly. Each of the ten domain names was acquired from the United States government by US Poker Marketing Affiliate, LLC. There are no special restrictions. Like any other domain name, these domain names are available for lawful use within the US or the rest of the world. Interested entities are asked to forward a specific proposal, together with verifiable information as to their identity or that of a reputable, verifiable intermediary acting on their behalf. The more information provided the Seller, the more likely your proposal will be considered. There are various means for assessing valuation of a domain name. Thank you for your contact, but make your own assessment of a fair pricing for any proposal you may wish to send for each specific domain name in which you have an interest.“
Weird? I thought so…so I sent a follow up asking his “David Gzesh’s” involvement. I’ll post it when it comes back through the interweb tubes.
- Seized domain names by the Maryland District Attorney which were said to be involved in ‘illegal gambling’ are now being sold. For example, if you visit Bookmaker.com you will be greeted with a message on how to purchase the domain instead of an FBI warning symbol. A little investigation shows the David Gzesh, a Gaming lawyer out of Las Vegas is selling the domains for the government. He also has ties to a Costa Rican office, where many of the gaming sites still available to the US started up shop. Nothing too much out of the ordinary…yet. According to our research this is the same name, David Gzesh, who was the CEO of TruePoker.com which was seized (still US accepted and operational under Truepoker.eu) and the ex-President of the Yahtahay Network, which was re-branded as the Winning Network (another US brand). Now I ask, how did the ex-CEO of an illegal operation who technically should be under the same indictments as the guys mentioned in Black Friday (Pokerstars owner Isai Sheinberg etc) get picked to sell these domains…
