Guy Laliberté is known worldwide for his role as Co-Founder and CEO of Cirque du Soleil, his brief stint as a space tourist and his philanthropic efforts.
Full Tilt Poker Online
The payments will be paid in the near future (in advance of the March 31 deadline) for all undisputed Full Tilt Poker claims, and players expecting the refund of their Full Tilt Poker bankrolls should be on the look-out for an email from the Garden City Group with instructions on how to receive their payment within the next few weeks.
Aside from all that, he has found time over the years to participate in high stakes live and online poker games as well as organize the “Big One,” a $1 million buy-in poker tournament during the WSOP in which much of the proceeds are donated to his One Drop Foundation.
Due to his high-profile stature at and away from the felts, many heads turned when an interest piece published by Le Journal de Montréal Wednesday quoted the billionaire as saying he was the victim of collusion while playing high stakes games at Full Tilt Poker.
A thread started on the popular 2+2 News, Views, and Gossip forum earlier this week contains quite a few opinions along with a detailed translation of Laliberté's exact words that were quoted on the French language website.
Competing Against Colluding Opponents?
Full Tilt Poker Usa
According to Laliberté, he doesn’t play online poker anymore because of actions taken by (assumingly) Full Tilt Poker pro players during an undisclosed time frame.
At some point in his online career, Laliberté says he was competing against 2 or 3 players who were constantly forcing the action with multiple raises in an alleged collusion ring in which the competitors had previously agreed to split any eventual winnings taken from the entrepreneur.
What’s more, he claims that his opponents had access to “unlimited funds” via their cozy relationship with Full Tilt Poker (hence the assumption that the players he is referring to were professional representatives of the site at the time); instantly reloading their accounts as they squeezed him with frequent bets/raises from all sides of the virtual table(s).
The allegations imply that Laliberté's opponents at the time in question had access to reload their account infinitely without any risk; basically enjoying a “freeroll” situation against the Cirque du Soleil CEO.
Unfortunately, there is no way to prove or disprove (or even investigate) Laliberté's claims currently since no specific players or dates were named in the original article.
Haralabos Voulgaris Chimes In
Full Tilt Poker Free Play
Fellow Canadian and well respected poker player Haralabos Voulgaris—who estimates he has played over 100 sessions of live poker against Guy Laliberté—posted a comment of nearly 1,000 words in the 2+2 thread under his online name coltranedog, stating that the billionaire’s claims are “a case of someone with an ego being embarrassed that he lost a fortune playing online poker and now attempting to save face.”
Specifically referring to the games in question, Voulgaris stated that “Guy basically was a huge loser the first week he started playing FTP, these guys weren’t playing with imaginary limitless money, they were playing for the most part with Guy’s money, and his opponents bankrolls kept on going up and up the more he played.”
“Guy never even really had any upswings when playing live or online, the gap between him and the players he was playing against was that big… he was drawing dead,” Voulgaris continued.
Voulgaris did hint that Laliberté could have been placed in an unfair situation due to his relationship with an unnamed Full Tilt Poker pro who allegedly provided money for Laliberté financial transactions on the poker site and could have tipped superior players off that the wealthy businessman was about to play whenever those transactions were taking place.
No Evidence Available
For now, it appears we will have to wait for more details to emerge to decide whether or not Laliberté's claims are valid.
The allegations come just three weeks before the start of the 2014 World Series of Poker, where the Big One For One Drop tournament is scheduled to be played out from June 29 to July 1.
It’s been more than five years since the US Department of Justice shut down the major online poker sites operating in the US. Black Friday in 2011 caught American online poker players completely unaware and cut off from their online poker accounts at Full Tilt Poker.
For 97 percent of complainants, the fight to reclaim that money is now over, including another 1,000 people who received the good news that their remission claims had been approved just six weeks ago.
The latest round of Full Tilt claims
In October, the Garden City Group (GCG) — selected by the DOJ to handle the remission process way back in 2013 — announced the ninth and likely final wave of refunds to affected players. These most recent payments total approximately $2.7 million.
As the remission process dragged on, and fewer and fewer people waited for their refunds, the poker community’s attention waned. This latest update would have likely gone unnoticed if not for Haley Hintze over at Flushdraw.
According to an announcement on the GCG website:
“All Petitions have been reviewed and, with this round of payments, approximately 97% of Petitions will have been paid and 3% have been denied. Accordingly, the Petition for Remission process is now closed and filed Petitions will no longer be accepted.”
This brings the total number of refunded players up to around 45,000, and the total amount of money refunded to roughly $114 million. That is roughly 72 percent of the total amount believed to be owed ($160 million) to US poker players by Full Tilt Poker.
The money paid back for Full Tilt so far
Most of the money was sent in the first wave on Feb. 28, 2014, when GCG sent more than 27,500 players more than $76 million.
The subsequent rounds of payments have been on a much smaller scale, but altogether total a hefty $38 million:
- April 1, 2014: 2,200 players were sent $5 million;
- June 12, 2014: 3,200 players were sent $14 million;
- Sept. 25, 2014: 600 players were sent $1.8 million;
- March 31, 2015: 3,500 players were sent $2.5 million;
- June 4, 2015: 2,000 players were sent $4.3 million;
- Oct. 5, 2015: 1,900 players were sent $5.5 million;
- March 11, 2016: 1,180 players were sent $2.6 million;
- Oct. 28, 2016: 1,000 players were sent $2.7 million.
At the end of the remission process, any unpaid money will be split between the Department of Justice and Garden City Group.
Unfiled Full Tilt remission claims
The total number of players owed money by Full Tilt Poker isn’t known. However it’s likely substantially more than the number of former Full Tilt customers who filed claims.
It’s widely believed that the significant difference between the money owed to US players and the amount repaid during the remission process has to do with a significant number of accounts with small balances that never filed a claim with the GCG, for any number of reasons, including:
- Not wanting to deal with the hassle of the claims process for such a small amount of money;
- Dormant accounts that were unaware there was a remission process;
- Dormant accounts that were unaware they had any money in FTP accounts.
But these small balance accounts don’t account for the entirety of the $46 million or so dollars still unpaid.
Outstanding Full Tilt claims and appeals
There is still a possibility that GCG and DOJ could approve more of the roughly 1,600 remission claims that have been denied by GCG.
“GCG will continue to work with the Department of Justice to evaluate appeals, and any previously denied Petitions that are determined to be payable will be included in an upcoming distribution,” the GCG Full Tilt remission website states.
Many of the denied accounts are believed to be sizable, as denied claims were mainly sponsored professionals and large affiliates, along with claims with informational errors.
However, after several rounds of appeals, spanning a period of nearly three years, it’s unlikely many of these claims will suddenly be approved.