ill save my thanks to Isai when FTP and Stars is regulated in the U.S.

yeah that's totally in Isai's control

Look at the way Pokerstars acted after Black Friday:

They didn't invoke some "Act of God" clause in their user agreement. They didn't insist on working out issues with the DoJ before they paid back customers. They didn't screw around at all.

Pokerstars allowed their American players to withdraw everything right away, and even allowed them to cash out VPPs (which no one really expected them to do). They did the right thing and did it without hesitation.

Employees usually are a reflection of their bosses. Keep it up.

Sick read. I guess there's a high chance that Tom Dwan is the new Stars pro they were talking about.

obviously party fished it rly hard and stars got a way better deal. but by most accounts i heard the amount the deal increased by when adding ftp was more than i thought the value of ftp was to stars by a bit. I always had the read isai agreed but wanted to bail players... could be wrong obv

Party paid $105M, the $300M was the non-prosecution settlement of the CEO (Dik****), Isai has yet to clear his criminal charges.

The amount of value FTP added to the deal will depend in large part on the (rush) patent, if that patent becomes enforceable then Isai got a bargain.

PokerStars lawyers take over from Full Tilt’s in Pocket King’s patent case for Rush Poker.

Pokerstars has always been an industry "leader" and as a player I respect their vision. If there were a nobel peace prize in poker it would have to go to Scheinberg, Durrrr, Kidpoker or Galfond for keeping things legitimate and offering leadership when **** hit the fan and everybody else was tearing down the curtains.

Your logic is flawed. This deal was worth more to PokerStars than it would be to anyone else. The only way that the deal would make sense strategically would be if the players get paid back. The value of the software could only be restored that way because the amount of work required to make the origin of the software untraceable to another buyer who wanted to use it in the future would be substantial. The risks involved in such a transaction would be unknown.

It could be argued that the only buyer that could have paid back the players and justified the price would be PokerStars.

They are also going to make megabucks off the deal from the European deposits that they will be "refunding". That money will be going right into the accounts and so you can discount that amount by half right from the start. Additionally you get a whole bunch of players that have never played on your site before so it greatly increases overall market share.

So him wanting to bail out players might be a nice thought but this deal removes huge amounts of financial risk from the table for them because they do not have to admit wrongdoing and they have capped out the amount they will have to pay.

I estimate that their net revenue from the new poker site will pay for the entire deal within 3 years maximum.

The guy is brilliant and the company is excellent but this seems to be a case of doing the right thing because it is the most profitable thing. Which is what they consistently have done and it is why they are one of the best run companies in the world.

Now if they can figure out how to get poker legalized in the United States and get access to the market they will achieve legendary status.

Wonder what the figure is for the estimated profit Stars made from US customers by not pulling out of the US in 2008 added to the fines they were due to pay in 2008?

I love Poker Stars.

No you are!

You greatly overvalue the software to a company like PokerStars as well as the expense of managing two completely different code bases, development groups and infrastructures that do basically the same thing.

I would agree with this. If PokerStars didn't buy FTP players would be ****ed. Just because they were the only ones that could have doesn't mean they were required to.

If someone owes you 1 megabuck but can't pay you and I agree to pay you that 1 megabuck back just for the chance that you might do business with me (and you already may be doing business with me since the other guy went out of business) and transactions will earn me a teeny tiny fraction of a megabuck, how much megabucks do I have?

What?

The were going to do this anyway. Settlements of this type are common with the DOJ and Stars was under no obligation to do anything related to FTP or it's players and would have saved money by not including FTP in it's settlement. i don't think the FTP deal is going to be as lucrative as some people think and I was surprised they did it. I don't have any inside details though.

I'm curious to know what you think the total cost of the deal is to Stars?

So you're going to wait until legendary status until you would even type 9 little characters on a forum to express some gratitude to a person that put out hundreds of millions of dollars that will directly benefit players and had to step down from his company to make it happen?

I never expected I might regret starting this thread.

Am I missing something here? Does Scheinberg insist that Stars use a farm of underage slave labor to actually shuffle cards instead of an RNG?

If isai main reason for doing a deal was not that in doing so he would basically be cleared of all charges and admit to no wrong doings with the company I would be shocked. Not saying that he in fact wanted to help out players, but its tough to believe that was his driving force behind this deal. You can spin this deal however you want to get good PR for isai, and he should get a pat on the back, but lets be real.

If Stars were run like UB/AP or FT, (or even Party) online poker could be in a much scarier & bad place right now.

All of the above may be in it solely for the $$, but Stars took the far better approach in trying to be a, you know, strategically/legitimately well-run business and all.

3 things;

1) This didn't have anything to do (on paper) with isai's criminal charges. Although it seems likely to have a small positive impact

2) The amount of redundancy between ftp/stars was huge. Dunno how ppl are missing this. They had similar marketing areas, their player bases overlapped huge etc. Ftp was worth way more to multiple other people than stars.

3) In view of the eastern district decision i think the deal was good for stars- but that was a very undecided issue at the time of sale, and i believe (not sure here) unknown at the time the sale started being discussed.

Thinly veiled "I know Isai Scheinberg" brag. If true, Jesus Christ, what a man.

1) I would call be cleared of any wrong doing by the DOJ, which has a pretty good confiction rate a little more the small positive impact.

and

2) How was FTP worth more to other people? If a player was willing to play across both sites, for whatever reason, (time/prize pools/game selection/whatever) To me the money generated by the players would be the same if PS or Joe Random owned it. On top of that PS has the closest thing to a monopoly in their field of business now that they own it, and they don't have to compete in the short time with a competetor's strategy to win a share of the market (lower rake/better structures...) Unless there is something I'm missing, and that could be the case, it seems that FTP was worth more to PS then multiple other people.

I think you misread what he said. Unless I missed something Scheinberg's criminal case is still pending. Only the civil case against him has been resolved. Calvyn Ayre wrote something in August that he heard rumors that Scheinberg's criminal case may be dropped but he may have to pay a big fine in the settlement. Don't know how accurate it is but it's the only thing I've found indicating some sort of settlement pending with the DOJ for his criminal charges.

Scheinberg and Stars was probably going to settle with the DOJ and spend a lot of money in fines anyway. DOJ probably wasn't too happy that FTP and AP/UB didn't have enough money/assets to pay fines and pay back players so it probably helped him a little by saving the DOJ the hassle of dealing with Full Turd Poker.

You make it sound like giving up hundreds of millions of dollars isn't a big deal. The FTP portion of that wasn't the whole thing.

Bump.

From http://www.smalltalkdan.com/2014/11/...keting_16.html

Sometimes you don't appreciate someone until they're gone.

maybe he will rebuy it when amaya tanks it into the ground?

It really pisses me off when people act like it's a bad thing that he wanted to profit from his actions. Under him Pokerstars was a reputable, honest, honorable company that almost always did the right thing.

Actually I thought they were TOO nice to players in some situations(like refunding HUSNG players when they forget to unregister to a SNG), that's how amazing they were. I would tell people IRL about them all the time. They were not only great compared to other pokersites(all other sites suck so thats not hard) but they were great compared to companies in any area.

And yes he profited a lot and I am really happy about that because it's a good thing when positive actions get rewarded.

By the way I still think Stars is the best site to play online poker by some distance because all the other sites suck and most of what Isai created is still there but step by step Amaya is slowly but surely bringing Stars down to the level of the competitors.

Why isn't there a David Baazov appreciation thread?

Is it because he's a complete ****?

I wonder if Both Scheinbergs care about what is happening to PS. They created a wonderful company than profited nicely but after all they did to see where PS is heading, I wonder if they feel just a lil sadness or the 5 billion makes it void. =)

Me too. I wonder if they're rolling over in their money.

All that money, but without a pot to piss in.