Home / Poker News July 2012 / Daniel Negreanu on Phil Ivey and the Full Tilt Scandal
Daniel Negreanu on Phil Ivey and the Full Tilt Scandal
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2012-07-26 03:40
In an interview granted to a popular
poker portal during the
2012 WSOP, Daniel Negreanu has given the world a piece of his mind regarding the Full Tilt Poker issue and the level of involvement of various Full Tilt Poker pros. Specifically, he talked about how the press seemed to single out Phil Ivey, apparently attempting to pin the entire issue on him. According to Negreanu, Phil Ivey was the only Full Tilt player who actually took a stance against the site following the Black Friday indictments. He refused to play in the 2011 WSOP, saying that he wouldn’t play while other people couldn’t afford to on account of their monies being locked up at Full Tilt. As a matter of fact, the very reason behind why some tend to single Ivey out in the Full Tilt scandal may be that he was the only one to take an actual stance. None of the other players and executives (like Howard Lederer and Raymond Bitar) released any statements in Black Friday’s wake.
In the interview, Negreanu also touched on the UB issue, where the community singled out Annie Duke in a similar way, while pretty much ignoring Phil Hellmuth’s involvement with the company.
According to Negreanu, in that instance people were right to point a finger at Duke, who had apparently been involved with UB’s management. Hellmuth was a basically an outsider, who only looked out for himself and who slapped his stamp of approval on a product in which – wrong as he was – he believed.
The question here is, just what sort of background checks should these players perform on companies which they decide to endorse? After all, the fact that Ivey played at Full Tilt directly resulted in player registrations, just as Phil Hellmuth’s presence at UB enticed players to sign up and deposit there. Shouldn’t these endorsing pros assume more responsibility? What kind of weight do their endorsements carry if players know they’re nothing but empty and meaningless sponsorship deals?
