A Kentucky politician will literally do or say anything for money and to enhance his standing with the knuckledraggers in my state. They actully have no political will to do any else but this. A bad joke of a Gov actully elected to get casinos for us 6 years ago

df, did you hear anything about the deal supposed to be signed this past Monday. zbt had tweeted that it was supposed to be signed. curious. thanks

why.. why whyyyy must we continually get soo so close only for it to be yanked away from us. Why do the poker gods tease us so? What have we done to deserve this?

"As hold'em river cards are we to the poker gods, they bankrupt us for their amusement."

Miss ya bud.

SOOOOOOOOOOOO F TRUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

also, (assuming what ZBTHorton said is actually true) what would be a likely holdup for the deal to not be signed if it were "supposed" to be signed monday?

Diamond Flush Posted This In the CLOSED Thread Re: PokerStars FTP Offer "Just A Bluff"
This is only my opinion...

I totally accept that there are people, for various reasons, that would not want this deal to go through.

As to the whole fakeout thing though, if PokerStars were ready to close its doors and just sit back and count their money, thats one thing, but as a company who has everything to gain for short and long term, to see that players are repaid while settling their own civil issues with DOJ, do you (collective you) really believe that there is no down side to them either playing the DOJ by just pretending to be interested in absorbing the FTP account balances? There are some casual players out there that have no clue what transpired on Black Friday, or before or after. But PokerStars must depend on a global community to continue being their customers. Double screwing those players out of $350 million has no upside if they want to continue to operate. It would be corporate suicide.
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DF, thank you for all the work you are doing on behalf of the players.

I disagree with you on your bolded statement above. Pokerstars has a monopoly and as a ROW player I (and all the other ROW players) have no choice but to continue to play at Pokerstars (even if they scuttle the deal for FTP).

In the long term, the DOJ did a huge disservice to players by not approving the Tapie deal. Without real competition in this industry, rake will continue to rise, rakeback and bonuses will continue to fall, and innovation will be stiffled.

Competition is a good thing for customers and without it the balance of power between customer and provider tilts massively in the favor of the provider.

If Tapie wants to open his own site, hand out massive amounts of rakeback and other bonuses, and be "innovative", what is stopping him? It is not like being able to compete with PS is contingent upon possessing FTP.

The reason they wanted FTP is that FTP already had an installed base of millions of ROW players. Starting from scratch and generating awareness and trial from this many customers is too big of an entry barrier - it costs too much. That's what protects the monopoly.

Went out for the night, and come back to all the rumors...

So it's nice to see that they are false apparently... However the deal was "supposed" to be signed on Monday and wasn't for w/e reason, forcing people to file what they did before the deadline? Right?

So we were that ****ing close to a deal?

Sorry if this has already been mentioned.

Is it possible that things have been delayed because of the decision to grant bail to Bitar?

If having Bitar surrender himself was part of the deal, maybe the DOJ is nervous about signing off on everything and then having Bitar skip the country, never to be heard from again.

why can't you play on party poker? or any of the euro sites?

So what?

The DOJ's job isn't to facilitate breaking up monopolies in the Rest of the World.

I just think it would have wreaked of shadiness for the DOJ to be in one courtroom Monday asking a judge to deny bail for the CEO of one company, while submitting an agreed upon deal to a different judge to turn over that company to the CEO of another defendant in the same case.

They likely want to put some space in between to make it appear that they are still negotiating and Bitar's surrender had no connection to the 'new' agreement they announce at a later date.

I wouldn't even be surprised if the 'deal is dead' misinformation was leaked to James Barnes deliberately.

You're right. They obviously didn't care.

The so what is that in the long run its going to cost us (the players).

Seems unlikley.

I agree with this whole post.... good thinking sir, would make a ton of sense. Then RB, would say "why is he getting a pass when I'm in jail". So I like this angle.... so they could hold off a few more weeks, then announce the deal is done.

It is not a question of them not caring. The competitive state of online poker is simply totally irrelevant.

I'd like the AGCC to regulate the new FTP.

If the deal falls through.

Bitar will be scooped up and essentially never see daylight again.

IIRC:

It was PartyGaming, not just PartyPoker.

They chose not to fight in court but made a plea deal.

The offence was not related to poker, but to other gambling made available in part though Party Poker.

Totally irrelevant to the DOJ or to players?

irrelevant to me

Totally irrelevant to the DOJ. We are talking about resolving criminal indictments and civil complaints, not making the world of online poker a better place.