The Lederer Files

I have been slowly watching all the parts of the Howard Lederer files on Facebook through Youtube. Thanks to Tony and Matt for posting. There are 7 parts so far and I have watched most of 6 of them. They are about 30 minutes each so it takes a lot of time to watch it all. A few things are apparent real quickly. One Howard is very boring to listen to. He talks in mostly a monotone voice and is trying hard not to look as the bad guy. He clearly has waited until he knew that he was mostly off the hook before coming forward. He talks a lot about what happened and how it happened as he sees it. It is an interesting perspective and I would recommend that any online poker player should watch and learn because what happened to Full Tilt could easily happen to any online site. If I follow correctly, He says that a big part of there lack of funds came from the fact that after the new law regulating the banks that Full Tilt kept giving players there full deposit and allowed them to play even though they were not getting the money from the processing company. So very little money was actually coming in and they were still paying out if players cashed out. I believe him that this was part of the reason, but there has to be more to it. What he doesn't talk about was what he and the other board members were getting from Full Tilt during this time frame. He does say that one point they tried to raise enough money from the board to try and keep the site going, but by then the government was so far into it's investigation that not enough money could be raised to keep Full Tilt alive. So now, Poker Stars owns Full Tilt but isn't required to pay any of the money back. The government has most of the money but why should they give it back. All they have to do is sit back and manage the lawsuits from players that lost the most and settle with them for a small amount. Meanwhile guys like me that had a small amount on the site are out of luck. I had maybe $25, so there is not much of a point in trying to reclaim it. For Poker Stars it's a big win. They buy out there main competitor when the US market opens up again and will have access to all Full Tilt player data base with really paying much of anything. It is a gamble for them if the US market doesn't open back up, but I would think that they know what they are doing and planning for the future. Here is a link to part 1 in case you are interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g1wFJx461U&feature=relmfu