Feds bust PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker

Ivey doesn't get the keys to the castle of Full Tilt. He's a paid endorser, nothing more. Word I have heard (which is reliable but hearsay) is that Ivey took a stand against FTP because he owed them a ton of money based on promotion advances.

 

According to that blogger's link from the previous page, Ivey is the one who took $40M as dividend and many millions more of loans, $4.4M of which hasn't been repaid.

Also: The "castle" is a sandcastle and the tide just came in. Are you not understanding that?

 

What does it mean to take money as dividends? Either they are given to you as an owner of stock or not.

 

It means he owned shares in the company, because that's what it's called when the company pays its shareholders.

Here's the snippet from that blog:

Update 9/20/2011 2:00 PM EDT:

The amended complaint refers to another professional poker player and owner who has not been sued as “Player Owner 1″ who has received $40,078,646.6 in dividends and millions in loans, at least $4.4 million of which have not been repaid. This is almost certainly Phil Ivey.

Update 9/20/2011 2:11 PM EDT:

Despite the fact that, by early 2011, Full Tilt Poker was severely insolvent, it continued making payments of approximately $10 million per month to its owners up to and including April 1, 2011. Full Tilt Poker also continued making “loans” to its professional poker players who also owned an interest in the company, including loan payments totaling more than $2,000,000 to Player Owner 1 between August 2010 and January 2011.

This confirms that FTP was insolvent before Black Friday, a theory that Subject: Poker has been working to prove definitively for months. It also confirms that owners continued to pay themselves large amounts of money ($10 million per month) long after the company had become insolvent.

With this additional information, we can also confirm beyond reasonable doubt that “Player Owner 1″ is Phil Ivey.



http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/09/ftp-civil-amended/

He did a nice job of making himself into a martyr with that whole WSOP stunt, but it sounds like he was elbow deep into the money grab with the rest of them.

 

Wonder who the informant was. And how much he was owed.

 

So my guess is that Ivey borrowed a huge amount against future earnings. A nickel says that either: 1) he ran into some tax problems and ratted out FTP; and/or 2) FTP tried to take some sort of action against him and this was his revenge.

 

Which would help explain the Ponzi scheme nature of them.

 

I feel really dumb, in retrospect, for buying into all the arguments that "There's too much money to be made from the rake, no major site would ever do anything shady."

 

How many millions has Ivey won playing poker? And now he may have taken at least $50M in cash and loans from Full Tilt. And still he's upside down on it.

With that kind of impulse control, I guess he really is the Tiger Woods Of Poker.

 

I don't know about Ivey specifically, but I'm amazed at how many "pro" poker players don't really make any money in the long run playing poker.

 

Ever since the ESPN Magazine article about Phil Ivey, I've been telling a buddy that Ivey will be bankrupt in five years. Looks like sooner.