Home / Poker News December 2012 / The Worst Poker Moments of 2012 – The FTP - Bernard Tapie Fiasco
The Worst Poker Moments of 2012 – The FTP - Bernard Tapie Fiasco
Posted by: Randy Williams - Sat, 2012-12-29 09:41
Before it was made public that
PokerStars would take over Full Tilt Poker, most
online poker players had one thing locked in the back of their minds: the funds they had in limbo at the site, which ran a pretty good chance of never being able to recover and to return those monies. Groupe Bernard Tapie was the organization that first dangled the possibility of bailing out Full Tilt Poker in front of the increasingly desperate player community.
The hopes were fanned up in November 2011, when GBT signed a deal with the US DoJ which would allow it to purchase Full Tilt Poker. The deal also included certain conditions which had to be met in order for the takeover to commence, conditions which have apparently never been fulfilled. Regardless, GBT seemed to be teetering on the edge of acquiring the operation for almost the entire year. GBT lawyers would – every now and then – issue a statement or two meant to keep hope alive amongst players, but with all that, players on various
poker forums began to speculate and to suspect that the conditions on which the takeover hinged would never actually be fulfilled.
In April 2012, the negotiations between the two parties – GBT and the US DoJ – broke down for good, and poker players were plunged back into the pits of despair. Fortunately, the GBT failure proved to be a blessing in disguise for players: PokerStars stepped up to the plate, acquired its one-time competitor and has since re-launched the brand and the operation. PokerStars have since begun to repay non-US Full Tilt customers too and a roadmap has been devised for the repayment of US players.
The bottom line: instead of riding to the rescue of desperate online poker players, GBT ended up with egg on its face.
