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Black Friday’s Interesting Turn of Events After a Year

Written By: PokerNet.com | April 16, 2012 | Posted In Poker News

A year has passed after the DOJ sealed the fate of the three largest US poker sites, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet. This dark event for the sites and its poker fans gravely called this the ‘Black Friday’.

So what happens after a year? Where are these three companies who flew across the sky before like gods of the mountain of Olympus but were stripped off their powers and banished into mere mortals before they could get a chance to blink an eye and react?

PokerStars have been quiet on the US front since the indictment but when it comes to their offshore mouths, they didn’t stop talking in terms of mobile products being launched in a number of European jurisdictions. They have also released Zoom Poker which is said to be the rip-off of Full Tilt Poker’s Rush Poker. Offshore they are getting back at their feet, but in the US, hello Black Friday and sorry US players you aren’t allowed to join the bandwagon here.

Full Tilt Poker seems to be on the “acceptance” state. CEO Ray Bitar, admitting he was “surprised and disappointed by the government’s decision to bring these charges,” before the firm suspended “real money play in the US” until the case had concluded.

Both FTP and PokerStars promised to pay back their players and Stars had done so with the full support of Isle of Man during the hard times. With Stars paying back ther players, FTP focused more on sorting out their defense in the case rather than finding way of paying back their players. To make the long story short, last month Bitar apologized to players who had been wronged and the Los Angeles Times reported that the firm was sold to European investors. The firm may have a bright future but not anywhere near the US.

On the other hand, the Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet run by the Cereus Poker Network were in a haze when the Black Friday news broke out. It was some kind of a big hallucination, a bad dream to which they begged to be woken up. Alas, it wasn’t a dream but the haze continued after players reported that they were still able to access the site. The site didn’t officially close after a month of indictment.

AP had been stalling a lot. They promised their players that they would pay them back only to find out that they don’t have the power to since their liquid assets is only amounting to $5-6 million a sorry amount compared to the $24.2 million they owe to US players alone.

AP co-founder Brent Beckley turned himself in with a plea agreement stating he would be getting just 12-18 months as opposed to the maximum 35 years he could get.

The fate of a company depends on how it run, it’s a general rule like the sky being blue during daytime. PokerStars was run well from the start and had the money in players’ pockets early on and they didn’t continue serving US customers and instead transferred to the green pastures of the UK. Full Tilt Poker on the other hand, the company was quite poorly run, but not on the scale of the Cereus and seemed to have little regard for their players. Full Tilt Poker has hope and one day we might just see it competing with PokerStars in the future.

Source: Calvin Ayre

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