FOX news about to run a segment on FTP/Bitar/Getting money back in ~2 mins.

I would take it as a sign that it is going. How is it going? Only an elite few really know.

Two lawyers, a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney on fox news, just both called the players victims. Well played, Preet Bharara. You've set yourself up to be our savior upon the announcement of repayment and I'm not even mad about it.

^^

~3 min segment, was decent in stating the facts of the case and had a good back and forth between two analysts. The host and the prosecutor referred to FTP as a phonzi scheme, the defense basically said that's not the case.

Didn't really mention details of getting money back .

I am sure you are aware that the indictment states that FTP thought it was going to go under even without BF, so I guess you have a more advanced argument than "FTP only went under because of BF".

I presume it goes something like this:

Without government, FTP would not have had to deal with shady payment processors or mislead the banks. Without government, FTP would have had no funds seized from processors. Without government, FTP's costs would have been lower.

If that's it, your analysis is superficial. None of those probems you assume away in the absence of government was intrumental in FTP's demise. We know this because all of those problems were also faced by Stars, and Stars paid off US players promptly and continues to operate in the RoW. The reason FTP went under and Stars did not is that FTP paid its owners more than the profits they were making. They continued to pay distributions to shareholders (and exorbitant fees and salaries to insiders) even when they weren't making a profit. For us to accept your argument, we'd have to conclude that FTP would not have paid out more than actual profits if there was no government. There is no reason to believe such would be the case.

Also, here's a thought for you: without government, all the payment processors would be shady. Government is in part a product that is created to meet a market demand for regulation of predatory commerce. If you knew anything about the history of law, you'd know that has been a prime function of government for as long as there have been written laws. You'd also know that throughout history, societies with well-regulated markets have on the whole been more prosperous than similarly-resourced contemporary societies with unregulated markets. Whether regulation leads to prosperity or prosperity leads to regulation, I'm not sure, but I think there is reason to think it is a virtuous circle.

"I know a lot of people are angry with me"


They always say dumb things like this

I only had a chance to browse the indictment but this seems interesting-

"Full Tilt Poker provided real-money gambling on internet poker games to customers.."

They allege FTP allowed players to gamble on poker, not that poker is in of itself gambling. If FTP allowed players to gamble on online chess, they could charge them with a similar charge.

.. more to come

Even the DOJ can't figure out there, their, and they're!

Once again I'm not defending FTP's actions. I'm simply saying that the laws prohibiting people from VOLUNTARILY exchanging money with other people hurt FTP and its customers.

Just because I oppose government "regulating" a market doesn't mean I oppose private entities doing so. The government monopoly on regulating causes more harm than good. The land based casinos lobbied to get PS and FTP shutdown and now they want to start their own internet poker sites.

I'm not so sure about that. I always had a bad feeling about FTP. I played there because it seemed better than the alternative at the time which was either (1) not play anywhere or (2) play in crappy games on PSTARS when they had default 50bb max tables.

At any rate, I remember thinking to myself I was going to DREAD the day I had to withdrawal money because I had heard so many horror stories of people not getting their money back because of accounts shut down or couldn't get verified or just money not showing up.

IF a settlement ever arrives and payment back to players ever does happen, it may end up being a blessing in disguise, because I had very little confidence getting my money off of Tilt even when it was operating. I never tried to make a withdrawal because of it.

There was private regulation of FTP. They were licensed by Alderney who supposedly required that they have total player deposits on hand (The AGCC). It didn't turn out well for anyone...

But Microsoft Word can. Go ahead and type teh sentence into MS Word -- it will underline "there" with a blue squiggly to hint to you that it is a misuse.

Robots 1, Humans 0.

That ignores economies of scale. Pokerstars had a larger share of the market and was making a better profit off of the players they had due to economies of scale. So, it's not as simple as comparing apples to apples.

That being said I do think FTP was run poorly. That's pretty clear. Though if the government was not pushing the envelope I fully expect they would be in business today and we'd be getting cash outs just fine.

The reason people had trouble getting money off the site is because of the laws FTP had to skirt.

Plus they never had enough money.

While FTP was damaged by the government's actions, it's useful to remember that FTP and PS were in fact made big by the government's actions.

This means that you can't complain that the government seized your money when the reason you became no 2 in the market is because the government introduced the same regulation is enforcing which allowed you to take a business risk.

Conclusion? The rake should probably have been higher for Americans...

Also I constantly hear people talk about the need for regulation and I am not sure I buy that either. FTP was regulated by the French regulating authority -for which the French people are paying exorbitant rake- but they didn't do ****.

Also, you can make the argument that the unregulated market worked. Perhaps FTP and UB were big scandals but nobody is arguing that there's no fraud or failure in an unfettered market. If anything, this should have made consumers more attentive about their choices; given enough time -theoretically since that takes the assumption there's no government interference- the market could have evolved into a place where credible companies took most people's business.

put down the ****ing crack pipe

An issue that everyone seems to ignore is that PS has 1 major owner. FTP had many smaller owners. Lets say they both netted 20 million a year in profit. Of course that is enough money for Isai, but when you split that 20 million over 15-20 FTP investors (I think the Bitar only had supposedly 8%), the number becomes much smaller. These owners see how much money Isai is making and they compare it to the what they are bringing in, and think they should make a much as Isai.

FTP made a mistake by bringing in too many people and giving away too many pieces of the pie.

Well, if you put it like that, I totally see the error of my ways. TYVM.

Thanks for adding the info to the OP, it helps not have to go through hundreds/thousands of posts. Hopefully if there any important updates/info they can be added too? These threads get really long.

well is there any sort of time frame or guesstimation as to when we might hear something next? or are we back to waiting for another 4-5 months in the dark...? Or better yet, what is the next step in this?

No.

What you actually said was:

In other words, but for the existence of government, FTP is still in business today. Which reflects a base fundamental understanding of the superceding indictment, among other things. Have you even read it?

<---- link to Politards forum

"Ian J. Imrich, Esq. ‏@ijiLaw According to 2+2 Poker Forums, FTP executive Raymond J. Bitar has surrendered to the authorities in NY. (with a link to 2p2 forums) "

Look: a 'finally, the real bad guy got caught" announcement.

I'm not buying it. Bitar is there because he is going to sing.

Howard and Chris are sweating bullets right now.