https://www.pocketfives.com/articles...d-both-634519/

Glad that Lance Bradley got to do the honours. He's been grinding poker media for over a decade now and his love for the game is evident.

A few interesting tid bits from the interview:

• He travelled overseas a lot after his indictment, wasn't holed up on the Isle of Man like most thought/assumed
  
• He plans to play at the WSOP - Would be nice for him to receive a standing ovation when he first enters the Amazon Room, but he'll likely mostly go unnoticed (as I'm sure he'd prefer)
  
• He still harbours some regret about Black Friday and believes it could've possibly been avoided if they proactively reached out to the DOJ
  
• He's a key investor in Chess.com - this has been whispered for years, but is now confirmed

legend. and nice timing, on the 10th anniversary of BF

I don't get why the guy is so great to deserve a standing ovation? Is the standard for being a good guy in poker so low that "didn't steal everyones money" and "We thought about doing something that may have prevented BF, we didn't but it's the thought that counts right?" all it takes to get standing O level of good guy in the poker world.

Yes.

Maybe I'm missing details and this didn't happen, but my understanding is that he agreed to pay out funds from FullTilt, while under no obligation too.

Paying back money owed to customers of your failed competitor seems like a pretty ****ing good guy move to me.

As someone who didnt blemish the name of online poker, and didnt create the stigma that online poker is not cheating. I would say this man has done wonders for the community. Rather than go into hiding like ray bitar and his crew, he took responsibility like a man and faces the US government. Only respect

Short answer: yes.

Grabbing my popcorn for this post.

yes

Hi Everyone:

One thing that's not in the article, nor should it be since at most it would only be a small footnote, is how much support Isai and Poker Stars gave to this website. In fact, if it wasn't for their support we might not be here today.

Simply put, Isai was a giant in our industry who treated everyone as well as possible. And for this we at Two Plus Two thank him.

Best wishes,
Mason

Lol

ok from other posts he seems to have done a lot of good

But equally.. when your operating in effect an illegal business in the USA for years.
And making hundreds mllions / billions from it..
Then the US government says to you - you can 1) have full charges against you and end up going to jail for 20 years or something ot 2).. re-imburse your competitor and the 400 million owed to people.. and we may give you 4 weeks in jail

Lol at saying he did it out of the goodness of his heart

Or 3) don’t pay and never enter the US again.

Pretty sure he could have lived with that option..

i like how him volunteering money to cover full tilt balances is seen as altruistic.

had nothing to do with them valuing the intellectual property or trying to win the favor of the feds. no way!

he's a good guy. don't be a cynic.

Trash company. Trash person.

How about an apology to all the poker players?

10 years later on the anniversary, this trash waste of life has the nerve to do an interview?

We will see for sure. Oh we will see.

Nope. You made this forum great. Isai had nothing to do with it. Stop it. You are depressed if you think he had even a little impact on your success.

I'm so sorry everyone but I refuse to have a thread where we tinkle all over someone who in my opinion does not play by the rules.

He is not a hero. He is not a good person. He is selfish and cowardly.

Classic NVG flaming the guy who paid out in a week & covered FTP's shortfall like he's the one who screwed everyone over

TIL that some random poster knows more about this forum's success than the owner and founder of said forum.

Stop looking in the mirror.

I understand the conversation about black friday when discussing Isai and his impact on poker. Black friday events were a small part of the his story and much less important than everything up to that point in time.

PokerStars had a very positive and material impact on the growth of poker and created an environment that enriched scores of reg players and the overall poker economy for years.

Isai had an enormous impact on PokerStars.

nuff said.

i don't know if this is even up to debate, if Isai Scheinberg is a great guy within the industry.

yes, it makes you a hero to have integrity, if so many operators and users are scammers.

he created a great business, and while i never met him, all of his former employees speak highly of him.

calling him out for running a shady business is also laughable ... i'm writing articles since 2006 and back then, the law was discussed over months. some legal experts held the opinion, that poker wasn't included.

right now, many operators are on grey markets ... not long ago many even on black markets. so please name me a company, that always was on white markets (okay, RIO poker, but nobody can be more pure than galfond)

and btw: partypoker only left the usa because they were traded on the stockmarket and offered casino games. not out of respect or anything like that.

How epic would it have been had they managed to buy the Rio and the WSOP brand.

That NAPT would have likely been huge too.

Such a shame how far PS has fallen since he left. I realise the poker market would have contracted regardless but I reckon all the major national live tours plus the EPTs would still be huge.

What is it that you think Isai did exactly? When BF hit PokerStars was able to cover US based players right away. As someone who was effected by BF across all the major sites AP/UB/FTP/PS I for one wish all of my balances were on PokerStars as it would have made life much easier. Isai built an amazing product and company that helped make the poker economy what it is today.

Question his morality as much as you like, the hard truth of the matter is basically no one contributied half as much to the growth and development of online poker as I.S. that money spilt into so many other parts of the industry too, had a huge impact.

Then when it all went to **** he stood tall.

Debate all your want whether he should have been operating in the US pre black Friday, but if you've ever played a hand on GG or ACR you basically forefit your right to be outraged at breaking those rules.

It’s so much more than just Black Friday. The way pokerstars treated players when he was in charge was unbeatable.
- He valued having a support team that didn’t just send blanket emails out in response to serious issues.
- He valued ALL his players, the winning ones and the losing ones, low rake and high rake.
- They were the first ones to implement real security measures for their players. Also Stars used to use deductive reasoning to make decisions, now it seems they point to a (sometimes) arbitrary rule in their book and say ‘ahh, look you violated our ToS now were confiscating your money’.

Then the most obvious one that’s laughably easy, he DIDN’T steal our money on BF and actually held funds segregated like he was supposed to. There’s so much more than what I just said, I’m sure others will chime in

Yep, this. He didn't just run a great poker business, he ran a great business.