- Chris Ferguson Offers Short Apology After Seven Years of Silence May 23, 2018 Frank Op de Woerd 106 Seven years ago, April 2011, Black Friday shook the poker world with poker's big three.
- Lederer and Ferguson were part of a civil lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department in September 2011 alleging Full Tilt Poker was a Ponzi scheme. Federal prosecutors claimed Lederer.
- Chris Ferguson Full Tilt Poker Outcomes
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Poker legend Chris Ferguson has apologized to the poker community for his role in Black Friday & the Full Tilt Poker scandal. It was short and sweet.
It's about time
For the last several years, Full Tilt Poker has been like Dr. Malcolm Crow in The Sixth Sense, an online poker room that didn't know it was really dead. On Thursday, finally, the once-great poker site will stop wandering aimlessly, a ghost with no home, and accept that it passed away years ago. PokerStars has announced that Full Tilt will be no more.
As Full Tilt has been part of the PokerStars network since 2016, not much will change for the few people who still played on Full Tilt, aside from the cosmetic look of the site. Their accounts will be automatically transferred to PokerStars, including account balances and preferences. In fact, Full Tilt Poker players already had the ability to login to PokerStars using their Full Tilt credentials if they so desired. They will just be forced to do so started February 25 and that Full Tilt login info will officially be PokerStars login info.
Explaining why it is doing this, PokerStars explained in a FAQ on its website:
Our commitment to improving PokerStars software and the PokerStars customer experience in recent years has limited the amount of focus and resources we could apply to the evolution of Full Tilt. We feel it is time to consolidate brands so that everyone has access to the newest features and most innovative games which are available exclusively on PokerStars.
This was a long time coming, but it makes sense. In fact, it is surprising it didn't happen earlier. The Full Tilt Poker name can't have much value anymore and not only was it just a skin of PokerStars, it was operated by the company, so it's not like an affiliate or other operator provided any benefit or marketing dollars.
Full Tilt used to be the belle of the ball
Chris Ferguson Full Tilt Poker Outcomes
As readers of this site likely very well know, Full Tilt Poker, founded in 2004, was once one of the behemoths of the industry. It was unique when it launched, as it had fast software with bright, cartoony avatars, and was founded by well-known poker pros. It's slogan, 'Learn, Chat and Play with the Pros,' was quite true – the first time I played on the site, I played in a micro-stakes game with Perry Friedman, who was very nice to all of us noobs.
The site developed into the place to watch pros play and became famous for the nose bleed stakes cash games. When multitudes of poker rooms left the US market after the passage of the UIGEA in late 2006, Full Tilt jumped in stature even more, as it stayed in the market, along with PokerStars, UltimateBet, and Absolute Poker.
Full Tilt never got as large as its arch rival PokerStars, but it in its heyday, it was a very strong second.
A site that will live in infamy
But then Black Friday came along on April 15, 2011, when indictments were unsealed against principals from the aforementioned poker rooms, charging them with money laundering, fraud, and other violations related to the UIGEA. UltimateBet and Absolute Poker disappeared completely, making off with players' money.
Full Tilt, though, was weird. When the feds froze the site's accounts, it was discovered that Full Tilt did not have enough money to give players their deposits. There were two main problems. First, because Full Tilt was skirting the law, it was using a network of payment processors to avoid having its payments to customers detected. Millions upon millions of dollars ended up frozen/seized in between Full Tilt and the payment processors and the payment processors and customers. Second, and this is what really did in Full Tilt Poker and making it a shameful example of what can happen with no regulation, it was found out that executives, including Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer, took millions in payments from the company, using player funds. Thus, when the money flow stopped, Full Tilt was underwater and couldn't pay players back.
Fortunately, PokerStars came to the rescue. In its whopping three-quarters of a billion dollar settlement with the US Department of Justice, PokerStars agreed to acquire Full Tilt's assets and make its customers whole. The process took years, but most players did get paid back.
Chris Ferguson Racing
PokerStars operated Full Tilt as a separate poker site at first, but players had little desire to return, so it made Full Tilt a PokerStars skin in the spring of 2016. Since then, most poker players didn't even know Full Tilt still existed.
Seven years ago, April 2011, Black Friday shook the poker world with poker's big three (PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Ultimate Bet) getting indicted. Subsequently, Full Tilt Poker's Alderney license got suspended, and a hornet's nest of fraud and malpractice was uncovered as Full Tilt Poker turned out not to have player and operational funds segregated and subsequently wasn't able to cash out its players.
In September of 2012, Howard Lederer gave a lengthy interview to PokerNews, dubbed 'The Lederer Files', explaining his side of things. That was followed by a lengthy interview on the 2+2 podcast. A third interview, this time with DiamondFlush, was to take place but Lederer backed out at the last minute.
Different types of super bowl squares. The general reaction to Lederer's interviews was less than positive with both the poker community on 2+2 and some players lashing out.
But while the majority of the poker community found Lederer's explanation unsatisfactory, there was more uproar about Chris Ferguson's silence in the months after. The professional poker player known as 'Jesus,' was part of Full Tilt Poker's core management group, but he remained tight-lipped throughout the entire saga.
Poker players on Full Tilt Poker were eventually made whole as PokerStars bought Full Tilt Poker's assets and reimbursed the players. Full Tilt Poker's management faced limited consequences of the whole ordeal.
Ferguson and Lederer remained absent from poker's biggest stage in the years to come, but in 2016, they both returned to play the game in the biggest spotlight. At the 2016 World Series of Poker, Ferguson and Lederer played several events, but Ferguson had nothing more to say than 'I'm just here to play poker' when asked by reporters and players. According to Daniel Negreanu, he said 'What are you talking about?' when asked when he would apologize.
While Lederer wouldn't cash in a single event since his return, Chris Ferguson has done much better. At the 2016 WSOP, Ferguson cashed 10 times totaling $253,519, including a fourth-place finish in the $10,000 Six-Max for $183,989. Last year, at the 2017 WSOP, Ferguson one-upped himself cashing 15 times, totaling $380,200. That included a runner-up finish in the $10,000 Seven Card Stud for $151,700 and a fourth-place finish in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo for $150,929.
Ferguson traveled to Rozvadov for the World Series of Poker Europe. He cashed six times, including his sixth bracelet in the €1,650 Pot-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo for €39,289, and took down the 2017 WSOP Player of the Year title.
Now, after having taken down the WSOP Player of the Year ranking in 2017 and playing dozens of events total since 2016, Chris Ferguson has offered an apology via his Vimeo channel. The video, titled 'Chris Ferguson reaches out to the poker community,' was uploaded on May 23rd and has a duration of 42 seconds.
Hi, it's Chris Ferguson.
I'd like to take this brief opportunity to address the poker community which I love and have been part of for a long time. I deeply regret not being able to prevent Black Friday from happening. After Black Friday, I worked relentlessly to ensure that all players got paid back, and I sincerely apologize that it took as long as it did.
I also realize it has taken me a long time to make any sort of public statement and I appreciate my fans and the poker community as a whole for the patience and support. One day, the Full Tilt Poker story will be told, and like many of you, I look forward to that day. Online sports betting oklahoma game.
I hope to see you all at the World Series of Poker this summer. Thank you and good luck.
While Ferguson says he expects the story of Full Tilt Poker to be told one day, and adds that he looks forward to that day, he refrains from explaining why he's not telling his side of the story himself at this time.
Some of the reactions to the video on Twitter:
It took all this time for Chris Ferguson to come up with THIS apology?
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker)Here is a video from Chris Ferguson. It's a shame that so many of the younger poker players have JUDGED Chris so h… https://t.co/o7kEdAcYS9
— phil_hellmuth (@phil_hellmuth)He was a face for a company that stole millions of dollars from its customers. Don't you think he should've release… https://t.co/6EZfhCAm2L
— Dan O'Brien ? (@DanOBrienPoker)@RealKidPoker Despite this I actually kind of feel he isn't the bad guy and there's some sincerity somewhere there.… https://t.co/9SfJKxbo9c
— Patrick Leonard (@plenopads)@RealKidPoker 'I worked relentlessly to ensure all players got paid back, and I sincerely apologize it took as long… https://t.co/lGbGD1fBxi
— Mike Schneider (@schneidspoker)@RealKidPoker Man, I don't know. I didn't feel it was as heartfelt as you did! I guess it did effectively end my po… https://t.co/joaIX35rQk
— eric froehlich (@efropoker)@RealKidPoker Seriously, wtf
— Joey Ingram (@Joeingram1)
Imagine waiting 7 years to release this: https://t.co/u9fmm7mpp0
— Lance Bradley (@Lance_Bradley)@phil_hellmuth Not surprising you would defend this scumbag. Phil and Chris are two birds of a feather, players wh… https://t.co/zb2K8KbDGR
— David Bakes (@DMBakes)@TheTmay @phil_hellmuth Phil's generation grew up scamming and treating each other like scum. They think our genera… https://t.co/SdEf9iSysj
Chris Ferguson Full Tilt
— Carter King (@CKingLivePro)Chris Ferguson Poker Player
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