Home / Poker News January 2012 / THE Worst Poker Story of 2011 – Full Tilt Poker
THE Worst Poker Story of 2011 – Full Tilt Poker
Posted by: Mark Baldwing - Tue, 2012-01-03 11:20
Most people would agree that April 15 was quite positively the lowest point of the old year for the online poker industry. It is arguable however that there was one thing which sucked even worse than Black Friday, and that thing was the way Full Tilt Poker has let its players down. In the blink of an eye, all of the credibility of one of the biggest online poker sites in the world has disappeared. Later allegations of fraud concerning the “reputable” pros at the helm of the site didn’t help things either. Everything considered, the Full Tilt fiasco can indeed be considered the absolute lowest point of the year for the online poker industry.
Of the sites targeted by the Black Friday indictments, Full Tilt was the last one to admit defeat by barring access to the real money tables for US players. Shortly after, Ray Bitar and the Full Tilt team released a statement, re-iterating their position that online poker was legal and that they didn’t feel guilty of breaking the law in any way. The statement also said that Full Tilt Poker was fully committed to respecting the integrity of the game as well as the US laws governing online poker. As it turned out, none of that was true. The following day, the site cancelled its Onyx Cup Series, in the first sign that things were indeed dire for the operation. Things went from bad to worse soon. Thousands upon thousands of US grinders panicked and took to the
poker forums and twitter to seek information about the monies they had stuck at the site.
The Cereus sites tossed in the towel quickly and PokerStars took steps to repay its customers. Full Tilt Poker on the other hand kept silent for quite a while: it soon became clear that something wasn’t right in their books, and sure enough, eventually they were forced to admit they had no idea where the monies players had deposited at their site were.
