Full Tilt Unable to Fulfill Promise to Sponsor Cardiff U.K. Poker Tournament
This was published 03-05-2011Following the recent action on 15th April, by the Federal Government in the United States against US poker sites, and in particular, the indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan charging Raymond Bitar, founder of one of the world’s biggest online poker company, Full Tilt Poker, many people have been dealt a hard blow.
People who have invested a lot of energy in the game of poker such as content providers and television products as well as the professional players have all suffered since the action by the Federal Government on 15h April (since known as Black Friday).
Full Tilt Poker, the parent of Dublin-based Poker Kings, had originally undertaken to sponsor the prize money for a televised poker tournament in the UK but this tournament had to be cancelled after the Irish-based company failed to produce the promised prize money.
It was necessary for the TV Company covering the poker tournament in Cardiff to stop filming due to the fact that the funds did not arrive from Full Tilt Poker in Dublin.
According to press reports, the six players who were being sponsored by Full Tilt were unable to produce the $20,000 entrance fee for the tournament.
Although Presentable, the television company covering the tournament emphasized that the filming had stopped with Full Tilt’s agreement, the company blamed Full Tilt for the collapse of the tournament.
Megan Stuart, the managing director of Presentable, said “The money hadn’t come through for some of the players, basically the Full Tilt ones. We would have been staging the tournament under false pretences had we carried on.”
Despite the fact that the American authorities shut down Full Tilt two weeks ago the government thereafter restored Full Tilt’s “.com” domain so that the company could return funds to its customers. However, there remain significant practical and legal impediments to returning funds to Full Tilt players in the immediate future as the company has no accounting of the millions of dollars of player funds that have been seized by the government.
