Full Tilt scammers

[Fabbs]

Never did trust that outfit. Never got a penny of mine.

Also, in light of their schemery coming to light, what does that make you feel about the legitimacy of the WSOP? Notice how every final table the last ___? years has 7-8 of the players wearing Full Tilt hats?

Can't prove it, but to me much of it's rigged.

Full Tilt's gambling license suspended
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/news/story?id=6717186

[Ghazi]

:(

[DPG21920]

Didn't say anything about rigging. It's pulled because they skirted laws about the legality of handling their money.

[Fabbs]

yeah, as in after the accounts of players were frozen during the investigation, the gov't has since unfrozen the accounts yet **Full Tilt** has not given the players their money back yet.

Like you would not go ape shit if your bank froze your account?

Unethical to say the least. Full Tilt made tons of money off the rake of each hand and tournament fees. They had no reason, none zip nada to use players accounts money. It's called embezzlement.

[MannyIsGod]

You didn't trust them and you thought it was rigged but you put your money on there?

[Fabbs]

Never did trust that outfit. Never got a penny of mine.

Reading is fundamental Manny.

[MannyIsGod]

My bad - I misread it. Carry on.

[Frenzy]

Period

[E20]

I put money in a poker stars account once and they requested a bunch of documents which I gave but they wouldn't unfreeze my account and after 100 emails I just told them to keep the money wasn't worth it.

[ginobili's bald spot]

I tried to tell you ghazi :wakeup

[Ghazi]

hindsight is 20/20

[RandomGuy]

Surprise!



Not.


Probably one of the easiest things to skim money from. Toggle the algorhythm here and there, and let the money roll in. Give away just enough to keep the mind-programmed suckers coming back.

[RandomGuy]

yeah, as in after the accounts of players were frozen during the investigation, the gov't has since unfrozen the accounts yet **Full Tilt** has not given the players their money back yet.

Like you would not go ape shit if your bank froze your account?

Unethical to say the least. Full Tilt made tons of money off the rake of each hand and tournament fees. They had no reason, none zip nada to use players accounts money. It's called embezzlement.

Hmmmmm. Honestly this sounds a bit like banking, and offers an interesting business model.

Bank business model:
You deposit money in the bank. The bank now has
1) an asset,<cash>,
and
2) a liability >the requirement to pay you that cash if you ask for it<

The bank then trades one asset for another, by making a loan to someone.

1) asset <cash>
becomes
1) asset <loan>

Bank then charges interest on the loan and gets money free and clear as profit, after it pays you some jack-shit interest rate for your cash.

Substitute "poker site" for "bank" above and you get the picture.

A large enough poker site, would have tens of millions of dollars in customer's money, on which they probably aren't paying any interest at all. Where can I sign up for free money like that?

Take most of that cash, invest it in safe corporate bonds at 3% to 5%, keeping *just* enough on hand to pay out anybody who wants to cash out, and you have a solid revenue stream, in addition to any funds you can skim through fees or even going so far as to rig your own deck.

Since you aren't a bank, you can invest in far riskier things that yeild more like 10-15%, because you probably don't have any sane regulator looking over your back to make sure you don't bet the farm on mortgage-backed derivatives, and have a solid cash cushion. That might be the death knell, if you get a run on the company, and they can't get rid of their interest earning assets fast enough, just like a bank collapse.


Reading through the thread/article, though, I noted someone said that the final rounds almost always had a lot of company (people?) in them. Often online gaming company people spend a LOT of time playing their own games, something of a conflict of interest.

If all you had to do all day was play poker, and did that 40 hours a week, most of the year, for years, you would get pretty darn good at it, even without the ability to rig the game in your favor. If you were to play your average amatuer for any length of time, that edge would show, and materially increase your overall odds of winning.

[MannyIsGod]

Surprise!



Not.


Probably one of the easiest things to skim money from. Toggle the algorhythm here and there, and let the money roll in. Give away just enough to keep the mind-programmed suckers coming back.

You need to rethink this. You love risk analysis. Take a look at the overall profits made by the company and why those legit profits would make a scheme like this a bad idea.

[Soul_Patch]

It wasnt a scam necessarily, just a big ponzi scheme. Full Tilt used the money people deposited to make investments. When the US Gov shut down US Players, they all wanted their money back at the same time. Full Tilt wasn't liquid enough to pay out to all of those requests, thus sparked all the investigation and their ultimate demise.

[MannyIsGod]

Hmmmmm. Honestly this sounds a bit like banking, and offers an interesting business model.

Bank business model:
You deposit money in the bank. The bank now has
1) an asset,<cash>,
and
2) a liability >the requirement to pay you that cash if you ask for it<

The bank then trades one asset for another, by making a loan to someone.

1) asset <cash>
becomes
1) asset <loan>

Bank then charges interest on the loan and gets money free and clear as profit, after it pays you some jack-shit interest rate for your cash.

Substitute "poker site" for "bank" above and you get the picture.

A large enough poker site, would have tens of millions of dollars in customer's money, on which they probably aren't paying any interest at all. Where can I sign up for free money like that?

Take most of that cash, invest it in safe corporate bonds at 3% to 5%, keeping *just* enough on hand to pay out anybody who wants to cash out, and you have a solid revenue stream, in addition to any funds you can skim through fees or even going so far as to rig your own deck.

Since you aren't a bank, you can invest in far riskier things that yeild more like 10-15%, because you probably don't have any sane regulator looking over your back to make sure you don't bet the farm on mortgage-backed derivatives, and have a solid cash cushion. That might be the death knell, if you get a run on the company, and they can't get rid of their interest earning assets fast enough, just like a bank collapse.


Thats not how it works. I think they might make some interest off of the money players deposit, but each account that is opened up is supposed to have a trust where the money is kept. They aren't allowed to use that money to invest as it is not theirs. The idea behind this is that they CANNOT be susceptible to situations like a bank run.

It appears Full Tilt did not do this, and that is the main issue at here. Its important to understand exactly what was done wrong here because impropriety during the games is not part of the issue.

Even thought it still sucks for those who lost money - its an important distinction to make.




Reading through the thread/article, though, I noted someone said that the final rounds almost always had a lot of company (people?) in them. Often online gaming company people spend a LOT of time playing their own games, something of a conflict of interest.


Its not really a conflict of interest because there's no way inside information could effect a legit RNG game. By nature its random. The company gets paid for hosting the games but the money that is paid out comes from the players themselves.




If all you had to do all day was play poker, and did that 40 hours a week, most of the year, for years, you would get pretty darn good at it, even without the ability to rig the game in your favor. If you were to play your average amatuer for any length of time, that edge would show, and materially increase your overall odds of winning.


:lol No. The adage practice makes perfect does not hold here, but rather perfect practice makes perfect. SOME people might figure out the game through playing it but the fact that the trends take so damn long to show themselves and the fact that a wrong or right decision at any point in time can give you a result that does not correlate.

The real issue, however, is that if you try to learn poker in this way then you're likely to go broke. The more bad decisions you make, the higher your risk of ruin is. Playing 40 hours a week with a negative expected value would probably ruin you quite quickly. Not to mention that amount of time playing poker online would make most people miserable.

[MannyIsGod]

It wasnt a scam necessarily, just a big ponzi scheme. Full Tilt used the money people deposited to make investments. When the US Gov shut down US Players, they all wanted their money back at the same time. Full Tilt wasn't liquid enough to pay out to all of those requests, thus sparked all the investigation and their ultimate demise.

Yeah, which in essence makes my point. I'm sure FT made some more money than they would have - and its probably substantial - doing this but the fact is had they stuck to trust accounts their business outside of the US market would still be going very very strong and they'd be in line for billions each year.

Poker Stars didn't fuck around and they're now going to take a lot of FT's business. They may never serve the US market again, but they'll make a shitload of money legally oversees.

[RandomGuy]

You need to rethink this. You love risk analysis. Take a look at the overall profits made by the company and why those legit profits would make a scheme like this a bad idea.

That actually occurred to me after my initial rather cynical impression.

If I were earning solid revenue streams from investing my customers cash, and skimming fees of various sorts, I would most definitely be interested in keeping the gambling part, the part that is most likely to be regulated, solid and above board to keep the goose laying those beautiful golden eggs.

That said, if the owners get greedy, I would imagine it would be hard for regulators to detect a line or two of code in all the programming required to run such a site. Not being a programmer, I would defer to an expert opinion though. Scammers keep two sets of books all the time, and showing one set of code to regulators and using a different one to run the site the other 98% of the time, seems possible to me.

I personally would not do such a thing, because the fees and deposits seem to be to be an awesome racket.

Improbable, yes. Implausible? No.

I would not say for certain here, as there is not enough information available, so I would simply set the default risk assessment to "remote" in this case, simply because it would be a very high-risk undertaking that would jepardize the other revenue streams, and I would imagine that someone who runs a poker website is probably intimately familiar with risk-return-probability calculations.

[RandomGuy]

The real issue, however, is that if you try to learn poker in this way then you're likely to go broke.

That depends on the stakes and rate of loss relative to your income.

I could sustain a lot of losses in my early learning curve if it were literally penny ante. :lol

[RandomGuy]

Thats not how it works. I think they might make some interest off of the money players deposit, but each account that is opened up is supposed to have a trust where the money is kept. They aren't allowed to use that money to invest as it is not theirs. The idea behind this is that they CANNOT be susceptible to situations like a bank run.

It appears Full Tilt did not do this, and that is the main issue at here. Its important to understand exactly what was done wrong here because impropriety during the games is not part of the issue.

Even thought it still sucks for those who lost money - its an important distinction to make.



One would hope that some kind of legal/financial firewall would be put up between players accounts and the company, and a trust would do that, if structured correctly.

I have to admit that I have not, until now, really looked at the business model, and will defer to you on how exactly it is run, as you seem to be a bit more familiar with it.

I guess if you are going to give money to someone, it is best to look at the fine print, and ask questions.

[MannyIsGod]

That depends on the stakes and rate of loss relative to your income.

I could sustain a lot of losses in my early learning curve if it were literally penny ante. :lol

Sure - but the game played at that level is nothing like the game played at actual levels that matter. You would never learn a thing by playing in such small games.

[Fabbs]

Sure - but the game played at that level is nothing like the game played at actual levels that matter. You would never learn a thing by playing in such small games.
Pretty much disagree. I've followed the WSOP thu the years and the winners consistently make b.s. moves and suck out. And I'm not talkling when they have the opponent substancially outstacked, I'm talking when they put themselves at risk.
This past year the guy with the big noze from New York Duhmell (sp?). I like his style, don't get me wrong. But with two tables left as co-big stack, he goes head to head with Afflak. Aflakk has AA and as all experienced players know this may not be squat after the flop. Long story short he bets perfectly, waits for the turn. Only a gutshot straight out there, no flush, and he has any pair beaten. All in. Big noze can easily fold, he has a ton of chips. Makes a very very poor call and sucks out with his gutshot straight river 15%er. Goes on to win the tourney. Yeah that was skill. :lmao

Joseph Cada in 2009 from the final two tables on had something like 8 suck outs where he was head to head pair vs pair and behind. 8-0? Nothing fishy there. Of course he became the youngest WSOP winner for the 2nd year in a row (Eastgate). Naw, Vegas couldn't possibly be courting the young addicts.
True story: Before the 2009 tourney started i told my buddies and many others that the winner and 2nd place would be the youngest ever -breaking last years record- and a fat caucasian 45-50 year old working man type. Why? "Marketing all the way".
Darvon Moon and Cada.
Well?

2008: Peter Eastgate He was against a boat who went all in after the flop to put Eastgate at risk. Eastgate calls and spikes runner runner quads. Spare me. (His boat after the turn was smaller and he had no way to outboat the boater all along.) Yeah he was drawing to a one out quader. Skill. :lol

2007: Jerry Yang $8,250,000 do we really need to discuss? :lmao

2006: Jamie Gold duh uh look ma i flopped trips for the 82nd time in a row. I'm good.

[MannyIsGod]

Fabbs, you make my point about people playing for long periods of time and still having little to no understanding of the game very well. Thanks.

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

Just dropping by to admit that I thought this was another TSA thread because I first read it as "Full Tit Scanners". Carry on.

[Fabbs]

Fabbs, you make my point about people playing for long periods of time and still having little to no understanding of the game very well. Thanks.
:lol And you represent the blowhards who say they are up but in reality are like 95% of all players. Down.

I'll go head to head any day time and place with you.

[Ghazi]

:cry :cry :cry

[Fabbs]

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p55/RackTheMouse/bored/0-Mannys.jpg
mouse, not the exact pic i had in mind but it's a start.

Yeah Full Tilt looking better all the time Manny.

[mouse]

What was the alternative?










http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p55/RackTheMouse/2222.jpg

[Fabbs]

^^ You did one called "can you spot the 6 differences" which showed two different pics of Manny.

A masterpiece for the evolutionists. :lol
Where did it go?

[Giuseppe]

I put money in a poker stars account once and they requested a bunch of documents which I gave but they wouldn't unfreeze my account and after 100 emails I just told them to keep the money wasn't worth it.

:lol

[ginobili's bald spot]

Probably one of the easiest things to skim money from. Toggle the algorhythm here and there, and let the money roll in. Give away just enough to keep the mind-programmed suckers coming back.





This must be the thread where people come to spout opinions about subjects that they clearly know nothing about.




Look at me everyone! I have an opinion!

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Fill Tilt didn't make it a secret at all that there was a rake on every hand. I remember my friends would get in dick measuring contest about who was the better poker player and they'd play a up game against each other where they each started with $50. One time it went on for awhile and the winner ended with like $63 bucks (meaning full tilt raked 37% of the money on the table after a few hundred hands. If you put money on full tilt and didn't know there was a rake, it's your own fault and you're incredibly stupid.

[ginobili's bald spot]

Every poker site and casino has a rake. They are businesses not charities. The only difference is that casinos take waaaay more rake. Luckily live players like fabbs are bad enough to keep the games profitable.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

The whining about how full tilt didn't have everyone's money on hand and how they wouldn't have been able to pay all their customers if they withdrew their entire account is also stupid.

If not being able to pay back all the money your customers had deposited if they all went to withdraw their account balance at once was a crime, then every bank in this country/financial institution in this country would be shut down. What Full Tilt did with its customers money is no different than what Wells Fargo or Bank of America does.

[mavs>spurs]

yeah what do banks actually keep on hand, like 10% of total deposits? I think that's the law 10%

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

I didn't even know there was a law. Regardless, Full Tilt had like 30% of the total deposits on hand, which I'm sure is A LOT more than banks keep.

[mavs>spurs]

federal reserve requirements imho.

[mouse]

^^ You did one called "can you spot the 6 differences" which showed two different pics of Manny.

A masterpiece for the evolutionists. :lol
Where did it go?


It was made by a vato I knew as Thumb Boy who did all the NBA families that some how made his famous on ESPN TV. But for some reason to this day Manny hates me for posting it.



http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p55/RackTheMouse/RTM-322/000amkmanb.jpg

[Fabbs]

props mouse. :toast
thank you

[mouse]

This must be the thread where people come to spout opinions about subjects that they clearly know nothing about.
Look at me everyone! I have an opinion!


http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p55/RackTheMouse/welcome-to-the-world-wide-web-sign.jpg