Full Tilt Poker’s Fall

In the wake of Black Friday Full Tilt Poker have slid further and further down the totem pole

Full Tilt Poker have paid off the £250,000 that was outstanding for their online gaming license to the regulator the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC). This means that the poker website could now be a more attractive prospect for investment, or at least that was the thinking behind the AGCC’s decision to allow them to continue negotiations with a consortium of European businessmen who are interested in buying the crippled poker giant. The roots of Full Tilt Poker’s demise lie in the events that occurred on April 15th 2011 also known as Black Friday.
On this day the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) swooped down the top three online poker companies in the world and ejected them from the US market by freezing their bank accounts and their URL’s preventing them from operating in the United States. In the wake of these measures the poker firms, Full Tilt, Poker Stars and Absolute Poker were forced to comply with the demands of the DOJ which included repaying their American clients all of the money that they had in their accounts and not marketing themselves in the US. In contravention of this deal Full Tilt Poker failed to pay back their former clients in the US and ended up having their gaming license suspended by the AGCC as a result.
The public hearing in the swanky Belgravia neighbourhood of London was supposed to be a full and frank discussion of the issues affecting Full Tilt Poker but instead turned into a farce when the hearing was put behind closed doors after a request by the full Tilt lawyer. As things stand the website has until September to secure a bid for their site from this European consortium behind closed doors. What has really made Full Tilt Poker a source of ire for the online gaming community is that when the AGCC suspended their license they stopped trading and ensured that every single player was unable to gain access to their money wherever in the world they were located, regardless of the laws of their country. Other poker rooms, such as William Hill Poker have been seeing a lot of new players coming to them since the collapse of Full Tilt Poker with the William Hill brand proving a strong incentive to players looking for a safe place to put their money while they play poker.