Full Tilt laid off some 200 people on the Pocket Kings staff in Dublin last week — leaving pretty much just the head honchos, who apparently believe that ole Chris Ferguson bit about “a chip and a chair” too much and somehow still think they can salvage the company something.
Sucks for the Dubliners, but for the rest of us, that means 200 or more employees with insight into FTP operations over in Ireland, no real reason to necessarily protect certain information anymore, and access to 2+2.
Sure enough, at least two former employees from two different departments are posting away and answering questions. Check it out … worth the skim.
Nothing earth-shattering (yet … gotta figure anyone with the uber-goody dirt probably would go to the DOJ requesting immunity before turning informant) but the virtual deposition one former employee goes through provides plenty of color to paint a decent picture of what life was like in the middle of a corporate collapse … not to mention how the nouvea-poker-riche behave without the cash (and TV shows) that previously formed the foundation of their power.
For example, I learned:
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LONDON–There’s nothing more exciting than mysterious European investors. The kind of people who turn up in blurry photographs, wearing sunglasses while looking into the middle distance.
At least that’s how I imagine the potential saviours of Full Tilt Poker must look. The beleaguered online poker provider is currently locked in negotiations with a secretive group of moneymen, who have designs on a portion of Full Tilt’s Euro operation. Ahead of next week’s landmark hearing in London, these briefcase wielding millionaires could be the last hope for the ‘Home of the Pros’.
An official announcement on the deal was expected late last week. No such missive emerged, but the news hounds at EGR Magazine did manage to rustle up a ‘source connected to the suspended poker company.’
Most important, the insider indicates that the buyout will have “nothing to do with [Full Tilt’s] stateside activities.” That would leave thousands of U.S. players waiting for Howard Lederer to refund their frozen bankrolls weeping on the sidelines.
The linchpin of the sale could be Pocket Kings, the company responsible for Full Tilt Poker’s software and marketing. The value of the actual Full Tilt brand is amorphous at best and will depend heavily on the outcome of Tuesday’s hearing.
The former online poker behemoths are being held to account by the gambling commission of Alderney, a small island off the coast of France, where their gambling operations are licensed. Following the events of Black Friday, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission revoked their license, effectively shutting down the entire network.
As a member of the Channel Islands, Alderney is governed by UK law, so the AGCC are taking a short plane trip to London to present their evidence in public. I’ll be entrenched on location, sneaking out morse code transmissions tweets (@JoeOE18) to keep you in the loop. Keep your eyeballs glued to Pokerati for hard hitting analysis as the hearing continues.
The midterm elections and the November Nine are over, but interesting things keep happening in the gaming world. For starters, the lame-duck session of Congress is underway; time will tell if anything that affects Internet gaming will pass before the start of the next congressional session. In addition, here are the legal tidbits that I thought were the most interesting and/or relevant coming out over the past week:
- FullTilt Turns Off Washington – In big news from last Friday, FullTilt Poker has elected to follow PokerStars’s lead and discontinue providing real money games to players located in Washington State. This impacts players residing in Washington and non-residents of Washington visiting Washington. Tilt’s FAQ on the matter is here. This is being done to preserve Tilt’s Internet-poker-only-is-legal argument. A related fact is that they’re able to protect their poker-only and transparent processing solutions by turning off Washington. This leaves fewer offerings out there willing to service Washington State poker players. [Poker News Daily]
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- New Jersey Moves Forward on I-Gaming – Irrespective of what’s happening in Congress, New Jersey continues to move forward in its review of an intra-state Internet gaming offering. This week, the NJ Senate’s Budget and Appropriations Committee reported out S490 (Permits Internet wagering at Atlantic City casinos under certain circumstances); the bill now goes to the full State Senate for consideration. This bill has State Senator Ray Lesniak as the primary sponsor. It seeks to authorize Internet wagering in Atlantic City casinos, thereby allowing New Jersey residents to place wagers on casino games by means of the Internet. All games, including poker, which may be played at a casino in New Jersey, may be offered through Internet wagering under this bill. Several commentators have been saying for some time that New Jersey is one of the more promising states for intra-state gaming; if this bill becomes law – and there’s a ways to go yet – those predictions may turn out to have been prescient. [NJLeg.state.nj.us]
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- Kentucky v. PartyGaming – In other US state news, PartyGaming is not (initially, at least) rolling over in the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s attempt to extract damages from Party. Recall that Party was added to the state’s suit against Pocket Kings (Tilt) earlier this year; Microgaming was added last month. Party has now brought a motion to dismiss the complaint on several grounds. This will be interesting litigation as it rolls forward alongside the Kentucky domain name litigation. Watch for one or more of the identified defendants in Pocket Kings et al to settle. [EGR Magazine]
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- GTECH Worldwide Expansion – GTECH, a Lottomatica subsidiary, continues to generate interesting news and business. Recently it has struck a number of deals with various operators, including with provincial operators in Canada. Last week two more deals were made public. The first was a 10-year agreement with the Shenzhen Welfare Lottery Center to upgrade existing Keno systems, selling online lottery games, and increasing the operator’s terminal base. [iGaming Business] Then came word that GTECH has received a two-year extension to continue providing support to Pronosticos para la Asistencia Publica in Mexico. [Gaming Intelligence] Even though the parent posted a net loss in Q3, keep watching GTECH, folks.
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- gTLD Expansions – This is the most important ongoing story in Internet gaming (and, indeed, in intellectual property) that you’re hearing nothing about. Basically, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is opening up the general top-level domain registry well beyond what’s currently available. Instead of .com, .biz, etc., people will be able to create their own extensions and registries. Some of the new registries could include cities (.london, .nyc), Internet auction providers (.ebay), and people with strong trade-marks and domain names in a host of industries (think of .pfizer or .coke). The implications for Internet gaming are huge. Not only could operators register trade-marked names (e.g., .pokerstars), but they could add security to their offerings by owning, domiciling, and managing their own registries. Some think that a more generic name could be registered by one or more parties: .bet or .poker, perhaps. A summary of changes in the proposed final new gTLD applicant guidebook are here – worth a view. [via CircleID]
So many socio-political hot-spots right now you’d think the 2010 WSOP were being played in the Paktika region of Afghanistan. Poker’s legal quandaries keep growing … as the industry’s longtime adversaries in Kentucky have filed suit against Pocket Kings, the alleged dba for Full Tilt.
Here’s the actual complaint, filed two weeks ago in Franklin Circuit Court. You’ll see they spell out a host of alleged infractions by Full Tilt according to Kentucky state law against the citizens of Kentucky. And thus, they’re seeking to have all rake and player losses refunded.
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The Full Tilt Poker legal team is busy. On the heels of the presumably still-unresolved Clonie Gowen $40 million lawsuit, another case was filed in the Nevada court system on September 11, 2009. This is the only information available thus far:
Jason Newitt
v.
Tiltware; Full Tilt Poker; Pocket Kings Ltd.; Pocket Kings Consulting Ltd.; Raymond Bitar; Howard Lederer
9/11/2009
Contract action. Plaintiff says he was unfairly fired, and that his distribution payments were unfairly ceased. Defendants then took control of his ownership.
Newitt was the former Tilt employee responsible for inadvertently forwarding Howard Lederer e-mail about Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke (the “freak and very weird dude”) — an “oops” that revealed a little something about Lederer and Bitar’s positions and powers within the Full Tilt money machine. Whether or not this had anything to do with Newitt’s dismissal and the subsequent lawsuit remains to be seen until we get our sneaky little hands on the court documents.
