Home / Poker News December 2011 / 2011’s Worst Poker Stories – The Phil Ivey ordeal
2011’s Worst Poker Stories – The Phil Ivey ordeal
Posted by: Randy Williams - Fri, 2011-12-30 14:24
While some players enjoyed massively successful times through 2011, for Phil Ivey, they year will probably go down as one that’s best forgotten fast. The Tiger Woods of poker struggled through the year, although he kicked it off on the right foot: by being the poster-face of the Aussie Millions. He was also hyped as one of the participants in the world’s largest ever poker tournament: the $250k Super High Roller. Ivey was also slated to play in the Million Dollar Cash Game, which he did indeed, generating quite a bit of buzz everywhere he went. The success of the above said events and with them Ivey’s success, prompted Full Tilt Poker to draw up plans for the Onyx Cup, which was supposed to kick off in March.
The Onyx Cup was planned to be a high buy-in tournament series, which had players like Ivey, Antonius, Tom Dwan and Gus Hansen promoting it before Black Friday put an untimely end to the plans.
Phil Ivey’s own website was launched on March 23, but despite the lofty goals set by the placeholder graphics, not much became of the operation in the wake of Black Friday.
Phil Ivey’s relationship with
online poker site Full Tilt Poker turned sour in the wake of Black Friday when it became clear the site would not be able to repay its US customers in full. Parading as the people’s champion, Ivey decided to break up with his sponsor, boycotting the 2012 WSOP in the process.
He pretty much disappeared off the radar then, but he wasn’t the only one to do so: Black Friday has apparently instilled quite a bit of fear in many of the top Full Tilt pros. Patrik Antonius, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer and Tom Dwan were apparently “boycotting” the series as well.
To cap things all off, Ivey saw off the old year on the wrong foot. Amid allegations that he had paid off the judge who had presided over his 2009 divorce, his ex-wife, Luciaetta decided to sue him.
