Quote:
Originally Posted by baltostar
What a criminal enterprise FTP was. A marketing ploy to mythologize the abilities of a few charismatic and/or good-looking pros and siphon all (future) rake back to them. A number of those pros were of marginal skill-level and suffered from severe delusions about their long-term viability as pro gamblers and started demanding shares of future rake ( via loans & sponsorship ) and thus the scheme unwound.
Why did nobody figure this at the time ? I certainly did not. I bought into it hook line & sinker loving the "play with the pros" concept.
That is the funny thing, we can now see many of the full tilt pros were playing on borrowed money, with debts that weren't going to be asked to be repaid. So those massive pots were fake.
Then without that site subsidy, their real ability has revealed itself. "According to Card Player’s source, Ivey and Lindgren both owe $4 million to the site, while Benyamine and Flack owe $2 million apiece. Matusow and Greenstein owe less.
Both Benyamine and Flack have been in debt to the site since 2007, according to the source.
Card Player was told that the debts amounting to about $18 million are on the books, and that Groupe Bernard Tapie has known about it for months."