Posts Tagged ‘Full Tilt Poker’

Phil Ivey having Tough Year in Online Poker

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Often referred to as the “Tiger Woods of Poker,” Phil Ivey is regarded by many as poker’s top all-around player. His past results definitely back up this sentiment since he’d earned $19.24 million in online poker before 2013. However, the key word in this statement is “before” since Ivey is having a miserable time on the cyber felt this year.

Perhaps emulating Tiger Woods’ struggles from a couple of years ago, Ivey has lost over $2 million in 2013. And dating back to November of 2012, when Full Tilt Poker came back online, he’s lost $2.55 million.

So what’s changed from the first decade of his poker career to now? Well he seems to have undergone quite a bit of stress over the past two years. First off, Ivey lost a great deal of money when the old Full Tilt went down in 2011. He then damaged his reputation by launching what many people saw as a self-serving lawsuit to get his investment/money back.

Last summer, he was also involved in an ordeal where he won £7.8 million from Crockfords Casino, only to have Crockfords keep the fortune on suspicion of cheating. Ivey just recently launched a lawsuit against London’s oldest casino to recover the £7.8 million.

Now based on these major events, it’s likely that the nine-time WSOP bracelet winner isn’t fully focused on poker. And if this is the case, it’s hard to keep up with talented and hungry players – even when you’re Phil Ivey.

Despite his recent online poker struggles, Ivey is probably making plenty of money in live games. Plus he had a very impressive tournament year in 2012, after earning $3,657,531 in live tourneys. With the 2013 WSOP right around the corner, it’ll be interesting to see how he fares here.

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Full Tilt Poker gets Player Segregation Right

Sunday, April 21st, 2013

One of the bigger poker stories from last week involved Full Tilt Poker rolling out their ‘New to the Game’ tables. The games are meant to help new and/or recreational players get used to real money poker without being throwing into shark-infested waters (a.k.a. player segregation).

New to the Game tables are open to any real money player, they’re offered in low stakes NL Hold’em and Omaha ring games/tournaments, and players can try these tables for 2,000 cash game hands or 75 tourneys. Additionally, New to the Game tables run at a slower pace and players can only try two tables at a time.

The key in all of this is that players can only participate in 2,000 ring game hands or 75 tournaments. And this is where Full Tilt gets the idea of player segregation right, versus other rooms like Party Poker and Lock Poker.

Both Party and Lock run similar player segregation models where they prevent winning grinders from competing against losing players. In Party’s case, they didn’t even warn players about segregation; they just hid the losing players from winners and certain people happened to notice. In either case, there is no limit on how long the players are divided up, which really punishes winners.

Full Tilt, on the other hand, puts a restriction on how long players can try the New to the Game tables. Once the 2k cash game hands or 75 tourneys are up, people are forced to “graduate” to the regular games. What’s more is that everybody has a chance to try these tables, rather than being restricted to losing players.

Segregation is still in the early stages in the online poker world. So it’ll be interesting to see if more sites take a similar approach to the matter as FTP.

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Ray Bitar avoids Jail Time – A Travesty or Humanity?

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

Disgraced Full Tilt Poker CEO Ray Bitar finally had his day in court, and he got about as light of a punishment as he could’ve hoped for. Bitar was credited with “time served” before sentencing and won’t have to do any more jail time. The reason why is because he needs a heart transplant and would likely die behind bars. The kicker is that he’ll have to forfeit $40 million worth of assets, which isn’t that much of a kicker when you consider what he did.

Not long after Bitar was indicted by the US Department of Justice on various felony charges, Full Tilt eventually lost its license along with $330 million worth of player deposits. It was later revealed that he used funds from Full Tilt player accounts to pay himself and other board members. He also misled new players into thinking that their money was kept separate from FTP’s payroll and expense accounts.

Considering that Ray Bitar earned well over $40 million during his time at FTP, it’s pretty clear that $40 million in asset forfeiture and a little time served in jail is a sweet deal. In fact, most would say that justice wasn’t served at all in this matter.

Millions of professional players who trusted Full Tilt with money had their lives rocked. Some pros were forced out of the game altogether when their bankroll essentially vanished on FTP. All the while, Bitar was lining his pockets with money, even though he knew the risks associated with running a US-friendly online poker site.

Obviously what he did was immoral and affected a lot of people’s lives. So most would rather take the risk of him dying in jail over letting him get away with a less than satisfactory punishment. On the other hand, if Bitar’s heart condition is as bad as he claims, it seems like he’s suffering enough already. Fretting about what would happen to him all these months definitely took a toll on the obese man.

So has justice been served in this matter? The truth is that there’s no clear answer, but just know that Bitar didn’t get out of this matter totally unscathed.

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Tom Dwan wins $2 Million, then Loses Big

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013

Last month, we wrote a story about how Tom Dwan had been unsuccessful and largely absent from the online poker scene over the past couple of years. However, he’s recently returned to the internet poker scene in a major way and has seen some huge bankroll swings in the process. That said, let’s discuss some of this recent and very notable sessions.

A Triumphent Return

After bleeding out millions of his hard-earned poker winnings over the past two and a half years, Tom Dwan made a huge comeback. He won $1.25 million over a 25-hour session and made most of this money through 2-7 Triple Draw games. Some of the excellent players that he earned money off of during this session included Ben “Sauce1234″ Sulsky, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond and Hac “trex313″ Dang.

Dwan wasn’t quite done yet though because he continued the winning by collecting another $871k on the tables. Some of the players that he faced off against during this session were Ben “Bttech86″ Tollerene, Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond and “patpatpanda.” Thanks to two huge sessions, Dwan had earned over $2.1 million.

Hitting a Downswing

There’s no doubt that Dwan put himself back on the poker map following a $2.1 million profit. However, he lost some of this money over the past two days after dropping around $900k.

Despite losing nearly $1 million “durrrr” can’t be too angry about the losses. After all, he’s netted $1.1 million in a week and has $2.14 million in career profits at Full Tilt Poker. Sure this is a far cry from the $7.23 million peak that he was at in June of 2009. But Dwan has proved that he’s still capable of winning big in online poker, despite dedicating most of his time to live cash games in recent years.

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Mike Matusow Bitter over Full Tilt Poker

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

With his fanny pack and big attitude, Mike Matusow recently did an interview about his lack of a Full Tilt Poker contract.

Matusow is fresh off of winning the 2013 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship ($750,000) – a tournament where he had to overcome 12-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth in the finals. With that being said, “The Mouth” is simply dumbfounded as to why Full Tilt wouldn’t renew a contract with him because obviously he still has what it takes to make them money.

Matusow expressed his extreme annoyance about FTP signing Viktor Blom, Gus Hansen, and Tom Dwan after they reopened. He stated, “You know, I was hoping to catch back on with Full Tilt. But they don’t want me, it looks like.” He added, “I don’t know why – I’m a walking billboard. It’s crazy, I walk around here and everybody knows who I am. Everybody wants pics and autographs.”

Matusow is a confident player and fully believes he is being overlooked. He said “Why anybody wouldn’t want me to represent them is beyond me. But they wanna have these internet kids with no personalities and nobody even knows who they are. Hey I’m not gonna beg somebody to make them money. I know what I bring to the table.”

He even pulls out some low blows by saying that Blom and Hansen were “stone degenerates who go in and out of money every week.” Of course, this may just have been the tampons talking that were in his fanny pack. It’s unfortunate that Matusow has become a bitter menopausal over the situation; but hopefully he will catch the eye of another well known online poker room and have more success with them after the NBC victory.

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Patrik Antonius back at Full Tilt Poker

Monday, January 21st, 2013

Prior to Black Friday (April 15th, 2011), Full Tilt Poker was THE destination for online high stakes poker action. Many of the game’s most notable players like Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey and Viktor Blom were grinding at the Full Tilt nosebleeds on a regular basis. However, from the spring of 2011 until FTP’s relaunch on November 6th, 2012, these games were forced to disappear.

Luckily, The Rational Group saved Full Tilt, and the high stakes games have quickly returned to prominence. Now grinders like Ben Sulsky, Phil Galfond, Blom and Ivey are back and playing again. And now you can add Patrik Antonius to this list as well since he just started playing online high stakes poker games again last week.

Slow Start

During his first session back from a lengthy hiatus, Antonius didn’t exactly do too well. The Finn lost $300,000 to a variety of opponents throughout the day. After taking some time to regroup, Antonius came back and won $485,000 in his next session – giving him a $185,000 net profit.

Things have gotten a little rougher since that great session because, at the moment, Patrik is showing a loss of $190,000 since coming back to Full Tilt. If history is any indication though, it shouldn’t be long before we see a comeback from him.

Place in History

As some poker players know, Phil Ivey is the top earner in online poker history with over $18.5 million in total profits. And Antonius actually checks in behind him with the second most internet poker profits at $11.65 million.

He was initially at $11.84 million, but the recent losses dropped his bankroll down a notch. This being said, it’ll be interesting to see if Patrik Antonius can get back to his winning ways and continue improving upon the $11.65m mark.

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What happened to Tom Dwan in Online Poker?

Saturday, January 19th, 2013

When it comes to online poker, Tom “durrrr” Dwan will always be known as one of the most famous players. After all, he was widely considered a top internet grinder from 2008-2010. However, the past few years have seen Dwan’s profits and online reputation take a major hit. To illustrate this point, let’s follow Dwan’s profits during the most significant rises and drops in his career:

- October, 2007, -$330k (rough start)
- December, 2008, $5.73 million (the legend was born)
- February, 2009, $2 million (a sharp drop)
- June, 2009, $7.23 million (Dwan’s peak)
- November, 2009, -$1 million (playing Viktor Blom takes its toll)
- April, 2010, $6.72 million (thank you Guy Laliberte)
- April, 2011, $2.4 million (a steady drop before Black Friday)
- January, 2013, $883k (the fall continues)

As you can see, Dwan has never been a stranger to wild bankroll swings. However, it looks like these swings have been going down far more often than up since April of 2010. Because of this big bankroll drop, some people question whether or not Dwan could even compete with the top online players of today.

There’s no simple answer to this thought because, as his results indicate, durrrr has not been a successful player over the past two and a half years. However, it’s worth mentioning that Dwan doesn’t dedicate the bulk of his time towards beating high stakes games at Full Tilt Poker anymore. Instead, he’s still grinding in the live Macau cash games and making a healthy profit off the Asian businessmen and whales there.

Assuming the Macau games were ever to dry up, it’s likely that Tom Dwan would fully rededicate himself to beating online poker – if there were no other juicy cash games elsewhere. And while it’s debatable on whether he’d definitely beat Blom, Ben Sulsky, Phil Ivey and other high stakes grinders, he could definitely become a profitable player.

After all, Dwan did revolutionize the way many poker players thought about the game during the late 2000′s. So as smart as he is about poker, it’s merely a matter of wanting to be one of the best again.

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Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom dominating Online Poker

Monday, January 7th, 2013

When Viktor “Isildur1″ Blom first hit the online poker scene in 2009, his hyper-aggressive style and fearlessness baffled opponents. He was taking on the world’s top poker players just months after moving into high stakes games – and he was winning too!

Unfortunately, Blom ran into a red-hot Brian Hastings, who was armed with ill-gotten hand histories on Isildur1′s play. Hastings’ massive EV spike coupled with the hand histories helped him win $4 million off of Blom in a single session. Since that time, the Swede’s profits have spiraled downward at both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. That spiral continued into this past November, when his career Full Tilt losses hit $2.97 million.

But it seems as if a cloud has been lifted because all of the sudden, Viktor Blom is dominating the online poker world. And when we say dominating, we’re not just talking about a few hundred thousands dollars in a week; instead, we’re alluding to the fact that he’s won almost $2.5 million in the past week alone!

Thanks to the $344k profit that he hauled in last night, Blom has earned $3.1 million since early December. What’s more is that this $3.1 million amount has easily made him the biggest winner in the “new” Full Tilt Poker’s history.

Blom is still only up $222k for his entire career at FTP, which dates back to 2009. As mentioned before, he was quite a bit in the hole after the $4 million losing session to Hastings. And he’s never really battled out of the red – until now that is. Seeing as how he is now pulling a profit, it’ll be interesting to see what Blom does from here. The 22-year-old is much younger than most high stakes poker pros and could really take over the game as time moves on.

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Phil Ivey returns to Full Tilt Poker under New Name

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Following a long hiatus from the poker world, which coincided with Full Tilt Poker shutting down, Phil Ivey has been getting more and more involved in the game lately. First off, he returned to the 2012 WSOP and won five gold bracelets. Then he started a poker training website called IveyPoker. Now it appears as if he’s back to playing high stakes poker games on Full Tilt – only under a different name.

Ivey was previously a sponsored pro by the site and owned a stake in FTP. But now that he doesn’t have any contractual obligations with the poker room, he’s been grinding under the screen name “Polarizing.”

Apparently this started a few weeks ago when other high stakes players were sent an email stating how Ivey would be changing screen names with the Full Tilt relaunch – something that’s been acceptable given how the revamped FTP is owned by a totally different company.

Since his return, the eight-time WSOP champion has wasted no time in winning on the high stakes tables. Over the past couple of days, he’s collected $225k in profits while playing against some of the world’s top 2-7 Triple Draw players. His overall winnings this week are a bit lower at $114k, but still very good nonetheless.

Before Full Tilt Poker went offline in June, 2011, Phil Ivey was easily the greatest online player of all-time. He’d earned $19.24 million in profits, which is simply amazing when you consider that Patrik Antonius is a distant second with $11.84 million. Based on the hot start he’s gotten off to already since the FTP relaunch, we can only assume that Ivey will continue building on his record amount of profits – rather than suffering through major losses like fellow high stakes grinder Gus Hansen.

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Gus Hansen – Still an Online Poker Loser

Friday, November 16th, 2012

From 2009 to 2010, Gus Hansen became this lovable sort of online poker loser that just couldn’t stop spewing millions. It got so bad at one point that many people questioned his decision to keep battering his bankroll and reputation against the top online players.

After hitting rock bottom in August of 2010 – when he’d lost over $9.2 million – Hansen magically started getting better. Okay, so maybe it was more hard work and perseverance, but the point is that the Great Dane suddenly became this elite player.

While taking on some of the world’s best high stakes PLO players, the Great Dane managed to rack up over $6 million in winnings from September, 2010 to June, 2011. He was the talk of the poker world too during this incredible run, and many players thought that Hansen had finally conquered the game.

Unfortunately, Gus’ great run came to an end when Full Tilt Poker lost their license in June of 2011. With much of his bankroll wrapped up on the site, Hansen was forced to stop playing high stakes online games for a while. But after 16 months of being stagnant, Full Tilt has their license back and Hansen is on the tables again.

Sadly this hasn’t really been a good thing for Gus because he’s dropped over $2 million in less than a month. It’s difficult to pinpoint what the exact problem is right now, but it is clear that Hansen isn’t showing the same dominance he displayed in late 2010/2011. And now his overall losses sit at around $5.2 million, which is among the worst in poker history.

Hopefully Gus Hansen can find what made him so great last year again, but he’d better do it quick because the losses are mounting!

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