Door HansytheKing, geplaatst op dinsdag 27 september 2011, 11:55. Views: 1.

Tien dagen geleden kon je al een blog lezen van Dusty "Leatherass" Schmidt waarin flink tekeer ging tegen Howard Lederer en Annie Duke. Nu is er alweer een blog verschenen van de Dusty waarin hij er nog rustig een schepje bovenop doet. De top van Full Tilt Poker moet het dit keer ontgelden. Hieronder enkele citaten uit zijn blog. Zijn gehele blog kan je hier lezen

- I guess you could say the timing of my last blog railing against Annie Duke and her Epic Poker League was pretty funny. I just got through calling her brother Howard Lederer the "Bernie Madoff of Poker" and two days later I read a headline news story calling FTP (for which Howard is a significant shareholder and Board member) a "Ponzi scheme." I wouldn't go so far as to label it that myself, but there is no question at this point that they were paying themselves with player funds, so call it what you want, that SOB still belongs in prison.

For that matter, you can go ahead and throw anyone else who was "in the know" (it will be interesting to find out how many of our poker heroes that entails) regarding FTP in there as well. Maybe they can all go the the same prison and play poker against each other. The loser must "drop the soap" in the showers. That seems to be a fitting payback for Howard Lederer, a man who made himself out to be a poker superstar when he was terrible at poker. Now maybe he might wish he had simply tried to improve his poker game rather than trying to think he was above the law and run an online poker room from the United States.

- I do want to applaud Tom Dwan for opening himself up to the poker community by doing open Q & As as well as interviews. He made himself available to answering questions to Noah Stephens-Davidowitz, who in my opinion is easily the most respected poker journalist in the world right now. He runs a site called Subject Poker which is designed to be site containing hard hitting journalism that doesn't exist anywhere else in the poker industry today. If you want the real scoop on what is going on in our industry, Subject Poker is very clearly the best website for that.

Back to Dwan though. I think Dwan's promise to return every cent he was paid from FTP is a great gesture. He plans to return over a million dollars to the players. He is the only player who has stepped up to this point and I think this is a very smart and noble move by Tom Dwan. He was also able to answer a number of tough questions. In some of his interviews, even he has admitted that he still thinks he might be somewhat jaded on his perspective regarding some of the people running FTP because he was friends with them at one point. So he seems somewhat reluctant to fully admit that some of his friends are in fact scumbag criminals, although he has admitted that there is no question that some are. My 2 cents would be that Tom Dwan ought to have a "come to Jesus" (and I don't mean Jesus Furgueson!) moment with himself and just realize that any of his friends who he even thinks "might" be a criminal, IS a criminal.

I have had a very similar situation in my past, and it always takes awhile to be truly convinced that your friends or business partners are indeed scumbags. But in the end, I did come to realize that in my situation that my friends and business partners were all scumbags. I think Tom Dwan is young and it is hard to fault him. But he is going to realize that if it looks like scum, smells like scum and acts like scum, IT IS SCUM!

- I think it will be interesting to see how the FTP mess affects our prospects of fully licensed and regulated online poker. On one hand, it could be viewed as the poster child for why we do need licensing and regulation. On the other hand, it could be viewed as the exact reason why the government should just continue tokill the industry the way they have been. We are all obviously hoping for the former, but man, who knows. This is UGLY!

Within 10 minutes of FTP being labeled a "Ponzi scheme" by the DOJ, I had like 10 emails of the mainstream news article being forwarded to me from friends who don't even play online poker. I will never know their honest opinions on how they perceive this stuff as I am sure they wouldn't want to make me feel badly, but you never know how people perceive this stuff. Sure, every sensible person I talk to agrees that the industry should be regulated, but our country is not run by sensible people.

- I was thinking the other day that the FTP saga would make for an amazing movie someday. Then I saw on 2+2 that they were already throwing around names for what that movie might be called. I do think it would make an amazing movie. You reading this Hollywood?

- Oh what the hell I'm just going to say this: Man am I glad I endorsed Poker Stars and not FTP!

FTP would not have been possible post 2008 for me. I would have taken a pro spot prior to that if offered, but once I realized that they could not prove they were segregating player accounts, I would not have represented them. Once I found that out, I always kept my FTP balances much, much lower than Poker Stars. I was never afraid to keep basically any amount in my account in Poker Stars money, but always cashed out of FTP as fast as I made it, for the most part. Eventually I quit playing on the site in early 2010.