Classic, imagine if you had been in a coma, woke up and wanted to play on your favourite poker site, FTP. You login and nothing happening, just shoot them a quick email.....Lol

just fyi this is a standard generated message which basicly fits every question.

but atleast they got one lol

A handful of highly-visible sponsored pros, earning reasonable compensation for their efforts, makes perfect sense. Every site has those.

FTP went WAY beyond that.

On a little tangent, but I got my money today from Merge network. I requested it about two weeks ago and got it now.

I am not sure they will be around soon and do not want the same message as FTP when I ask later.....

What percentage of "Phantom Deposits" were legit deposit attempts that went uncollected vs "Phantom Deposits" that were nothing more than players trying to scam FTP?

I'm guessing a majority of those were never collectible to begin with therefor shouldn't count towards FT's earnings.

Any word on the FTP employees in Ireland? Is anyone left?

As usual, your point is valid about the PDs from scammers being irrevelent to FTPs income I wonder if there is any way to get close to a correct estimate of how much of the PDs were legit deposit attempts and how much were folks using FTP business stupidity to enrich themselves?

You do understand the principle of "nut/expenses"

Losing 50% of your player base could equal over 100% of your profits.

They might need 60% of pre-BF levels to break even.

I also think its a ridiculous assumption that every single ROW FTP player is just going to come back and play as if nothing has happened.

Just guessing but if as many as 50% came back we are at traffic/rake levels of around 25% of early 2011.

One interesting line from the financials is that depreciation of fixed assets in 2010 alone was 4.5M euros

Thats a huge writedown, do they have more assets than we think they do?

Lets assume FTPs goes back to 2009 staffling levels (390) then their wage bill alone is going to be around 27M Euros. (36M dollars)
Thats not without other fixed infrastructure expenses.

not sure if this has been mentioned...

maybe a major factor in the delay has been a U.S. legislation watch.

If the U.S. opens up for online poker, would FTP2 even be considered for allowing to join in?

If so, then maybe this is part of the reason for the delay.

No sources, obv.

Post UIEGA there were only a few companies willing to risk being in the US.

If legalized im not sure what market share FTP2 would have compared to percieved safer land based casinos and their partners.

Not sure how a delay would help either?

FTP is getting deeper in a hole every day with no income and fixed expenses.

What are you talking about? I specifically included their effects on FTP and their lack of effect on FTP2.

I've showed you my back-of-the-envolope calculations. How much money do you think Tapie can make on whatever portion of the ROW market he can reclaim, and how do you get those figures?

Every bill - state or federal - that has been proposed for legal online poker has had one caveat in common: only currently licensed businesses (either casinos, river boats or horse tracks) with physical assets within the jurisdiction will be eligible to get a license.

The obvious reason being that the government will have something to seize if the money disappears, which is why 888 and Party have formed partnerships with major casinos.

The chance to operate in the US market would be incentive to close the deal sooner, in order to form a partnership, rather than to wait around and see if the market opens up.

Unless he already has a partner lined up, the partnership was part of the financing, but it's the partner who has cold feet in regards to the US market.

Ah.

Thank you.

What's Pokerstars doing?

Preparing for trial.

New name for the new FTP -Phoenix Poker with the bird in between the words, wings spread.

What do you think the rake:deposit ratio was? How much rake do you think FTP collected off of hands played by phantom depositors against real depositors? The net loss due to phantom deposits was less than the total of phantom deposits. Also the time period over which those profits were made was some months longer than four years. A more reasonable number, looking at it your way, would be a theoretical profit of about $80M annually. Cut that in half for losing the US market: $40M , and cut it in half again for losing half the ROW rake (they will lose less than half the ROW players, but the net amount played per player will also drop): $20M. Now cut their profit margin in half because their remaining costs will not drop very much: $10M. Now add in new costs (about $3M) to finance the remaining ROW player deposits: we're down to $7M. Close enough to the $8M I had before. The margins of error here are obviously quite large.

I totally understand that certain costs associated with doing business in the US will entirely disappear. What you need to understand is that FTP2 will lose more than the US market, and after they cut out the costs of doing business in the US (seizures, phantom deposits, etc,) most of the remaining costs will not decrease anywhere near as much as the decrease in rake.

There are at least four things wrong with that statement: the assumotion that the profit was made over exactly four years rather than several months more, the assumption that they will lose only the US players, the assumption that their profit margin (after adjusting out phantom deposits and seizures) will remain unchanged, and the assumption that the amount lost due to phantom deposits was the full amount of phantom deposits.

GBT will lose more than half their player base. Not only will they lose the US market, which accounted for about half the rake but more than half the expenses, they will also lose a portion of the ROW market. They will lose players in the countries which recently enacted national license requirements, until they get those national licenses. They will also lose a portion of their old ROW players in places they will continue to serve, due to people cashing out all or part of their balances, and due to people being more cautious in the wake of BF and ongoing legal uncertainty.

While costs of DoJ seizures and phantom deposits will disappear, other costs will not go down at all, despite the the loss of about 3/4 of their rake. The costs to maintain the software don't really scale with the size of the customer base. Neither do administrative costs. I doubt that there will be any sudden change in real estate costs (whether rental, maintenance or taxes.) Customer support costs will only partially scale to size of customer base, and do you really think Tapie will be satisfied with the abysmal level of support FTP used to offer? FTP had huge marketing costs. Tapie won't need to market in the US any more, but will need to do a major relaunch push in many other media markets.

The case of Full Tilt: Bernard Tapie filed a reverse?

Well-known player, blogger and expert on American poker backstage Matt Glantz in his recent blog dealt with the situation around Ful Tilltu, because he had allegedly able to obtain quite a lot of information from several insiders who belong to the circle of shareholders of the bankrupt casino. Although Glantz could not publish anything in particular, his conjecture bloggerských clearly showed that Bernard Tapie filed is likely to reverse, and therefore standing water around the cases are not a random phenomenon. According to Glantz every reason to believe that the business group Tapieho only now gaining time, as it does not behave at all like the real buyer. The reason why Tapie nevycouval officially from the acquisition, it is not clear. This non-clearly behavior but may be related to his other future projects, for which so far seems to be about publicity of this case beneficial. Do this scenario could fit also reports of debtors Full Tilt - most pros, which Tapie published, to refund the money you currently do not, so after the official reverse gear can be easily named and important zádrhel Tapie will not lose face ...

(google translate from http://www.pokerman.cz/americke-stri...hellmuth-4206/ )

Ful Tilltu

The Matt Glantz blog is old news. It was posted here a few days ago.

It's possible to download new FTP software updates via their website, right? Seems to be 4.45.10 now

I heard they are really close to a deal, I'm pretty sure the deal goes through next week.

http://www.gamingintelligence.com/ma...ilt-completion

- FTP have agreed final terms of forfeiture agreement with DOJ on 24th Jan.
- GBT can now hand over $80m needed to purchase.
- Tapie hoped to launch by March 1st but likely that he will miss that target.
- In negotiations with AGCC, expectation of positive outcome being announced soon.
- Tapie to rebrand FTP, same name but redesigning brand.
- End of Feb is next deadline, this is when the initial deal with DOJ expires.

Don't know how new this information is - especially the AGCC-thing.

Source?

All old news. Including the AGCC.