It's obivous FTP rigged the games in favour of their big name pros. The fact that there's no evidence of this is just further proof of how well organised and run FTP are, which is why Post-Black Friday FTP is still a billion dollar company while their competitors like Pokerstars have gone bust.

Yeah, obviously rigged for Gus Hansen who lost like 4 million since 2007 including a ~11 million dollar downswing and obviously rigged for David Benyamine who ended up about even after a ~6 million dollar downswing, and Tom Dwan who went on a like 7 million dollar downswing right after they signed him to Team Full Tilt


stfu you mongoloid

might want to check your sarcasm meter...

I'm as ready as the next man to throw team full tilt under the bus, and I know others have been found to be cheating who people generally considered totally ethical, but I can't believe people really think Phil Ivey was cheating somehow.
I am sure a seemingly unlimited bankroll dovetailed nicely with a hyper aggressive style (I have only seen him play on PAD etc on tv, and I am certain aggression is only one aspect of how he plays but yeah), but that wasn't an unfair advantage.

Damn Phil Ivey is crushing damn near every game! I don't care what anybody else has to say, the guy is a machine!

I didn't read the last sentence of his post where it made it clear it was a joke


f me I look dumb

Well he's won at 3x higher winrate than all of the other nosebleed superstars. That is just so completely ridiculous. If you think about it one of the following two statements must be true:

1) He has perfected a strategy that is very different from any other nosebleed reg which includes an agression factor, check-raise percentage (32pc), looseness and showdown percentage that is way out compared to the other superstars. Moreover, despite playing at these stakes online for 5+ years his genius peers haven't found a successful counter-strategy / copied his style. I mean on a really simple level if he really check-raises 32 percent of flops I'm flabbergasted that this strategy isn't crushed by the genius nosebleeders (cbet less, cbet/call more and 3b bluff flops).

2) He cheated

I think it is 1) which I find even more astounding than the possibility of 2)

I keep seeeing this "3x higher winrate" mentioned but I'm not sure where people are getting that from. If you are just talking about money won per hand then you need to remember that Ivey's average stake would be a lot higher than anyone else so it wouldn't really be 3x higher in bbs at all. eg. in PLO Benyamine hardly played above 200/400, whereas Ivey was by far the biggest winner at 500/1000 PLO (He must have won 5 to $6m there, mainly from Durrrr) so Benyamine's winrate in bb/100 is probably higher. He was also one of the biggest losers in HA.

In high-low Rafi actually made more in $ per hand despite playing lower stakes. He probably did have the best winrate in horse (but not that much better than PA) and that's not surprising since he plays all the games well.

I have 12k hands on Ivey from before full tilt banned observer hand histories so I did a quick stats check too. Rangey had Ivey's flop cbet at 93% but I think this must include both limit and NL and is heavily skewed by limit, in which Ivey cbets pretty much 100% HU, because I have his flop c-bet in NL at 75%, which is not unusual. His flop check-raise in NL 6 max is 16%, which is similar to Durrrr and slightly less than Patrik in the hands I have. He does cold call a lot but no more than Lars, Gus or Benyamine. Ivey is 300k below EV over those hands and his non-showdown winnings are around break-even, Gus and Durrrr seem to have the highest non-showdown winnings. This doesn't incude PLO though as I don't have the PLO hands on this laptop.

I also compared his stats in HU limit to Matt Hawrilenko and they are actually quite similar, right down to the amount they check-raise on each street. The only obvious differences were Ivey cbets more in position and Ivey 3-bets a lot more.

Also, Hasu mentions Ivey running 300k over ev in limit as if that's a lot but they were playing 2k/4k and 3k/6k so I don't think it is. Sure it's limit but if one or both players is not always reloading and they are all-in fairly frequently then that doesn't seem ridiculous.

There doesn't seem to be anything that points to him cheating but I think the evidence is pretty strong that he didn't cheat. I think it's most likely that he and Patrik just won more than anyone else because they are the only ones who play all the games exceptionally well, as well as playing the higher average stakes than anyone else and it's likely that Ivey did run very well too, particularly at 500/1k PLO.

Hate to bring back the thread when I just a few posts previously made a fool out of myself by reacting to a post before reading it in full and realizing that it was sarcasm, but gotta bump it for ben wb's great post that never got replied to.

Ivey winning would not help with the hole they were in. I mean it was Ivey's money, why would Ivey give money to the company? They would have had to come clean which would have made Ivey go nuts. There is no point in rigging things for Ivey. (OK, making one of their pros look good might be a reason, but the benefits of that are so minimal I cant believe even these guys are that stupid)

...not sure if serious?

FTP is owned by pokerstars.....

If u gonna troll make up something more believable.
"FTP is owned by pokerstars"
Yeah right.