I don't believe he deserves any credit for paying players back post BF. His company promised that the funds were segregated... and they were. He paid back because it's our money. He deserves no extra credit for just doing what's supposed to be done. The fact that his business is surrounded by filthy competitors is not enough to warrant praise imo.

He does deserve credit for having the cajones to start something from scratch and working hard to grow the empire to the size that it is. Of course he benefitted from this, but that's the idea behind entrepreneurship.

For him to be removed from his company must be saddening to him and with good reason. Anyone who works hard for many years on anything will develop an attachment to it besides the dollar signs.

The way Pokerstars is being run since early 2010 has not being optimal for their customers or for themselves. There have been far too many scandals and with US regulation I don't expect them to remain as top dog in the online world barring some serious changes to their policies in nearly every department.

Isai in 2009:
Saw him responding a lot to micro players as well. Much appreciation for Isai and Pokerstars here.

Isai Scheinberg for president imo

Do you want to thank your bank too lol. Only thing these guys have done any different from the other sites is that they haven't stolen from you lol. They run the games on the absolute brink of extinction rake wise - if you want to thank them for that then fair enough.

That's because he doesn't have 22,000 death threats. lol

I think your short sighted here: While there is no doubt it is about money lets not kid ourselves that if he had not made the FT deal a long line of investors were not behind him to make a FT deal. In fact, few if any other entities would step off in a shut down business with huge liabilities from former owners under US Federal indictments all while not even sure when or if they will get a license to operate in the US in the future.

While you think a $5 football bet is a risk, this dude has onions the size you and I will never have.

Actually, I did give praise to a credit union I belong to back in 2008. Credit unions in general didn't participate in the same crap some of the other banks did.

Thank you, Isai.

**** him. If you are an American poker player with a positive balance in your ftp account on BF, but for some reason owed full tilt money via a marker, he is threatening to sue you for the marker, but won't pay you your balance.

No one will say this because he has all the money to pass out to the poker community.

He stole millions when FPP were redeemed for American players.

This guy is no angel, and anyone thinking otherwise must be little bo peep, or something

Poker and PS has given me an opportunity to live a better life. I live in the philippines. Before i was paid by my employer about $9 a day. Nowadays i can earn that amount in an hour. I'm only a low stakes player but life is much better now. I live a very simple life and $60 dollars is enough for me. Thanks PS!!!!!

*$60 a day

No this does not effect the crimanl charges vs.him.

DiR killing it there

I'm trying but my heart doesn't wana give a damn

Seriously, bud.

I just hope he doesn't turn FTP into a clone of Pokerstars. FTP was a bad-run business, but the site itself was great.

i tell u something about uranus ... it isn't as great as everbody says and i guess uranus is a stinking mess

he said to me a few times that he wanted to buy ftp solely (or mainly) as a business deal because he thought it was a good deal. Each time i was pretty sure he really just wanted to bail out the players and that was the excuse he gave himself. So ya, go isai, and ty again.

well if durrr says it he must deserve it.

TY Isai. I

The high rake makes losing players lose more, and makes winning players win less. Both winning players and losing players care about rake. Winning players in general put in more volume than losing players, thus they should actually care about rake more than losing players do. Do you understand now?

Isn't that amazing? It's called the Free Market.

Weirdest post evar. You must actually live in durrrrland if you believe that he just wanted to bail out players. Not everyones intentions are a honorable as yours.

On it's own and from what I could figure a deal to buy FTP would be -EV. Since PokerStars was going to wind up paying a lot of money to the DOJ PokerStars getting FTP was a way for the DOJ to get a little more money out of Stars and Stars would get something in return. That made it less -EV to break even. The implied odds consisted of favorable US Poker regulation if PokerStars played ball, preventing FTP coming back with someone else and taking back some of Star's new non-US market and the goodwill from bailing out players.

I don't think any other investor would have had it as good as stars.

Gotta be some kind of intelligence range merge

i think he got something of value but overpaid for it b/c he wanted to bail out players

Party paid $300 million in fines and stopped trading in the US in 2008 or whatever it was. How do you think he did in comparison?

Still love your work Tom, just tighten up your believing billionaire's range and you'll be fine