I have done the math. I also read the part about "Full Tilt Poker had always covered these losses". Since they have been covered by FTP, they are totally immaterial to the issues involved in the most recent civil complaint.

The DOJ in not gonna stop. They contend FTP is violating existing US law. They got a grand jury indictment (9 felony counts, $1B in fines). These things don't just disappear.

And FTP is healthy? Please.

FTP is very healthy from a financial POV. 2+2 is still 4 right?
You do the math you can see player funds are very secure if only FTP could continue.

They made a profit of about 5.460.400.000 USD between april 2007 and april 2011. This is based on the differences between balances on 31 March and 12 June. The real number could be way off, but just to have some numbers to work with (would love to see the actual numbers).

Roughly 444M of this profit went to the owners, so they invested over 5 billion in their company meanwhile.
Of course that is worth a little something.
Way more than all our accounts together.
Even just the brand value is worth more than that, despite the DOJs actions.
They are a strongly financed company that could easily get a needed cash injection under normal circumstances.
The problem is the circumstances aren't normal at all;

The only party involved in all this that is insolvent is the DOJ!
Have you thought of that?
They need the money so desperately they steal it from us.
I just hope they realise if they don't kill the goose they can steal so much more.
Of course other goose would love to see this one dead.
That is how you get all these dirty politics.

Read the civil complaint how much political -and hardly legal- a lot of this is.
It is designed to kill the FTP brand and make sure they can't return.
If they succeed we lose our money!

Over $5 billion in profit? Explain where you are getting that from again. From my math it's more like $500 million. By your calculations about $5 billion is totally unaccounted for.

What the DOJ did has no bearing on the fact that the FTP board committed illegal acts.

LOL at a horribly insolvent company being strongly financed.

BTW our money is already gone into the owner's bank accounts so...

There are a lot of other explanations for the difference in the shortfall figures between 31 March and June 12 than just profits. For instance, repayment of loans, arrival of funds previously due from payment processors, transfer of funds from one of their shell companies, etc.

That is why I would love to see the actual numbers. I pretty much messed up these by the way, did the math before I had coffee. Put a digit wrong and did not include the 10M pay out on 1 April. Most of the period was after Black Friday anyway.

Problem of course is we don't have the actual numbers, but the DOJ has some. According to them FTP made "approximately one third or more" in revenue over the deposits.
According to Forbes in February 2010 FTP had an estimated revenue of 500M.
Yearly deposits must have been almost 1.5 billion.

Before PartyPoker left the US market 60% of the revenue was net profit.
"PartyGaming was able to keep a larger % of its poker revenues due to the fact that the fees it spent to process withdrawals/deposits were much, much lower than they are for Full Tilt Poker today (at least for their US players)"

Say the US player processing fees cost FTP one third of their net profits and besides that they were so much mismanaged they only made half of what Partypoker did.
Almost impossible, but for the sake of argument.
Even in that case they would still have made 500M profit in 4 years.
A capable manager like Mr. Tapie could double profits, it's what he does.

A pokercompany under normal circumstances trades at 16 times its annual profit. So before Black Friday FTP was in this worst case scenario still worth 2 Billion. After BF you lose 40% of that (ROW has 50% higher ROI than USA) and it should still be worth at least 1.2 Billion.
Of course the brand value has suffered so it could be less than that but it is still clear our funds are very secure if only they can turn the machines back on.

Is this the article you are referring to?

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/10/int...okerstars.html

Here is what it says about PokerStars.

This article barely mentions Full Tilt.

Maybe you need some more coffee.

Legit companies pay dividends out of EARNINGS, not customer money they are supposed to keep safe.

According to Forbes in February 2010 FTP had an estimated revenue of 500M.
This is a FACT!

Some have an agenda and cleverly use another article, that isn't about FTP at all to make it look as if I am mistaken on that. Why would they do that?
Well, if Forbes is right it is pretty obvious the DOJ is wrong. The same people spread other lies for example that FTP changed their TOS after Black Friday. These guys have an agenda, believe me.

Me too; I have money on FTP and want it back and also like FTP software best.
Obviously I would never defend them if I thought they took my money.
I really wanted to know if they did so did all the math.

Obviously you can't cite the article. So you are mistaken.

And you are too braindead to admit you are wrong.

Are the Feds Cracking Down On Online Poker?
Nathan Vardi, 02.11.10, 05:40 PM EST
Forbes Magazine dated March 01, 2010

Full Tilt, which we estimate generates some $100 million in profits on $500 million in annual revenue, did not respond to requests for comment.

Wait what exactly are you claiming that the DOJ is wrong about?

No way Forbes had more detailed information than the DOJ anyway.

so tilt straight up jacked players world wide... and now the hammer is on them

so will tilt find an investor, pay its players back and try to revive tilt? also prove that the DOJ was wrong the whole time.. or weasel their way out of this


or will this company will disappear, and jesus and howard go to jail?


those are the only things i see happening

1 thing is for sure... within 2 years there will be another online poker boom

so if your hoping to get your money back on tilt.. i would just consider it gone. if you want your money back.. then you actually want to help full tilt.. lol

Sounds awesome - can I send them a check to help them out?

So you're essentially predicting widely available and legal online poker within two years?

While I love your optimism, I disagree.

I think it's reasonable to expect a resolution RE: Full Tilt within 2 years, but at the current clip, I don't expect our issue to be seriously take up for a long while. I just don't think most Americans care about online poker. Because of that, I don't think Congress cares much. Right now, I think the nationwide economy and unemployment are taking center stage, and will continue to do so, until we're back on our feet. There are far too many drippy eyed billionaires in the pockets of politicians for them to be greatly concerned about our grassroots efforts.

That's not to say we should stop what we're doing. I think what we're doing is greatly important. I'm simply saying that expecting a two year timeframe in which to expect favorable resolution is likely irresponsible.

Fully agree on that, Forbes made a very rough -and very low- estimate.
If Forbes is right about the revenue it shows the DOJ must be wrong about boardmembers taking money out of the company.

They were likely making about 50% net profit on rake translating in 162.5M a month before marketing costs (but after all the other costs).
Whatever they spend on marketing, which must have been a lot, is an investment in the company and of course part of the 444M pay outs can also be considered marketing costs. Under normal circumstances a pokercompany trades at 16 times its profit so with these investments they build up a very profitable company worth 2 billion. Between April 2007 and April 2011 they invested at least 206M in the company, assuring our funds the best way possible. They didn't take out a penny; they are nits not bankers.

Another thing the DOJ is wrong about -they suspect so themselves- is the one third of deposits that is raked in. Pokerplayers know it is way higher than that! For it to be only one third on average winning players have to make twice as much as they pay in rake.

FTP made so much money for many people it is hard to imagine.
Of course they would hate to show that

Where do you get your numbers from?

Can you explain how gross/net profit is calculated?

ALL FRAUD-TALK ASIDE
I HAVE ONE QUESTION.
I REALIZE SOME OF THE DEPOSITS WERE NEVER COLLECTED, BUT HERE IS THE SIMPLE QUESTION

It is or at least was in the owner's bank accounts. Some was seized by the DOJ and some was stolen. The owners should be expected to eat that cost so if you look at those as an operating expense then the owners have/had all of our money.

Ok this post makes absolutely no sense.


"of course part of the 444M pay outs can also be considered marketing costs"

Absolutely not. Dividends can not in any way be considered marketing costs for any company ever.


"Under normal circumstances a pokercompany trades at 16 times its profit so with these investments they build up a very profitable company worth 2 billion"
FTP hasn't operated under normal circumstances since UIGEA. With the legal issues it faced it would be very unlikely to be worth 16 times its earnings.

Even with your numbers FTP wouldn't be worth close to 2 billion.



"Between April 2007 and April 2011 they invested at least 206M in the company, assuring our funds the best way possible. They didn't take out a penny; they are nits not bankers."

What is your source for the 206M figure? I would be very interested in seeing that.

I don't understand what you mean they didn't take out a penny. You said yourself that they had 444M of payouts. That is the owners taking out money.

Of course you can never consider dividends marketing costs.
But part of the pay outs can absolutely be considered marketing costs, no matter how they are allocated. In this unique case where the owners performed in their own shows.
Definitely worth something.
Didn't include this in my calculation by the way.


I never said they were worth 2 billion either; I said they build up a company worth 2 billion.
Under normal circumstances. Unlike now, I never disputed that. We all know this:

"FTP hasn't operated under normal circumstances since UIGEA. With the legal issues it faced it would be very unlikely to be worth 16 times its earnings.

Even with your numbers FTP wouldn't be worth close to 2 billion."

These numbers aren't mine by the way, I got them from the DOJ, WSJ, Forbes, NoahSD and various other sources. With these numbers after Black Friday FTP would still be worth 1.2 billion.


206M, you have a calculator? 4 x 162.5M minus 444M. Happens to be 206M.
If you make 650M and pay out 444M of that, you don't take out a penny, but put in 206M.
That is not really what you call a Ponzi scheme.


You know I can't get to the net part in case of FTP, because the data simply aren't public and also the gross part is debatable. Do you have a better suggestion than to use publicly traded pokercompanies as a reference instead?

650M is an absurd #. Even without counting all the DOJ seizures, the $42M stolen, and the $120M+ lost because of uncollected deposits, no credible source has FTP ever netting more than $150M per year. Once we factor those things in, they made far less than they paid themselves.

I call that fraud.

I'm not sure why we should accept Forbes's estimate as correct and the DOJ's numbers as wrong, especially when FTP refused to speak to Forbes and the DOJ have access to actual records.

Yes, lets uncover this evil conspiracy! What evidence do you have that FTP didn't change its TOS on any of its regionally-tailored web pages after BF?

So you have concluded that FTP never paid out distributions to owners when doing so would result in FTP having less money in its own bank acounts than the balance of player accounts? You concluded that Ray Bitar never received a salary cheque when player blanaces were larger than cash on hand and when there were outstanding player withdrawl requests? You concluded that the most recent superceding indictmet is full of lies? OK.

Some of these comments are interesting in hindsight.

Do it right, you couldn't fathom why FTP was being so silent? They weren't just waiting for a crisis to blow over so they could reopen, the company met its end, why would they speak when it is against their self interest? Are you surprised that UB hasn't said anything substantial either?

Whoa, this is a blast from the past. Can we all agree that FTP stole our money yet?

Howard had a baller Fourth of July Party...