37 replies to this topic

[grocery_mony]

Great news that hopefully everyone will get their money soon. Pokerstars is gonna come out of this looking like heros again and have a huge chunk of the market share. Cant see them doing this unless there is an agreement that if it is legalized in the US that they wont be shutout. Be cool if you could transfer money between sites in the matter of seconds.

[QED]

Good to see GBT out of the picture, would have been very hard to have any trust with them.

[FCP Bob]

Brian Balsbaugh‏@BalsbaughIn an industry full of intelligent people, Isai is playing chess and everyone else checkers. Smartest guy I know. Check Mate

[CorvairShaggy]

So, I was thinking about this, and trying to understand some more of the dynamics. Help me out here.1)Pre-Black Friday I could totally see this. #1 buying #2. Buy your biggest competitor, and have dominant market share. May tick some players off that hated PS and only played on FT, but if they were US Players, where else could they have gone? Basically no where. I understand that there were others Pre-BF, but game selection would have been terrible, just like it is now for US players. I don't play much anymore b/c I really don't want to wait 1 Hour + for a $5-$10 45 man SNG to load, let alone a waiting for a 180. Basically if you were a US player that was more than a every-once-in-a-while, you were going to be eating out of the PS pie.2)Post BF - PS loses a huge chunk of business (I would love to see the real numbers/percentages here), but still has dominant market share ROW to still keep chugging along. Their #1 competitor goes belly up, which had to make PS smile. For ROW players they still have other sites to play on, and a few bigger sites, but PS I would think still has excellent position and huge market share. Maybe someone outside the US could comment here, but I would guess PS is a hands down #1 site??. Someone comes along and is trying to reopen their #1 competition. If the GBT really had enough capitol to reopen, pay ROW players back, and try to compete with PS is anyones guess. Some insiders may know if the $$$ were strong enough to do that, or have them play some kind of games to try to churn up revenue. I still think PS probably was not too worried about this.3) US Market Share - WHEN (not IF IMO) poker becomes officially legalized, regulated, and structured properly, that would be a huge market for anyone (newcomers or established) to want to get. How many millions have been spent in the past on lobbyist, etc. trying to get this done Pre-BF? Now, PS is already good in bed with Uncle Sam, seeing how they repaid and settled very fast (lightning fast considering how slow the government usually takes) with Uncle Sam. Now if the acquisition of FT by PS goes thru the DOJ that fast (I understand there are still other issues, but the elephant in the room has to be the DOJ) and US Players get repaid just like the way PS repaid its US share, then PS would have to be snuggled up really well with Uncle Sam, but why??? I mean, what assets does FT still have left that are worth $330 million? The brand will always be tied to shadiness, and after 1 year + of being shutdown, any assets that were not seized have been liquidated by now. Personally I liked the software of FT better than PS (but PS game structures were better IMO), but if PS just wanted to buy another site, could they not have already bought a smaller established site with less headache than this? I mean, could they not sneak back in on the US market and buy a company that is already on Merge? If publicized then that would have brought some US players back online, but then would have really pissed the DOJ off, and could upset the already unstable balance of US online poker. But, if they were just in it for a few $$$, this would make more sense to me.Basically, what would be the point of a non-US business being a hero to US players/voters and helping the DOJ fix a mess, if not jockeying for position on what has to be an inevitable gold mine? What company in this day and time would spend $80 mil+ on giving to a group of people that could not give back to them? (Assuming US players are paid back). I am sure there is alot more to this than alot of people know, but to me it just seems like they are trying to win over the US by looking like (if all works out as hoped, then BEING) a huge positive ambassador for the legalization of online poker in US. This move would have to make some the skeptics that think online poker is nothing more than a shady scamming business start to think otherwise. A shady game that a business runs that actually protects its customers, and goes above and beyond to take care of its customers, not once but twice?? My stock portfolio and mutual funds wish US companies would have been that kind a few years ago, and they are supposedly regulated by the US already.Anyway, just my thoughts. I could be off-base here, but open for friendly discussion.

[FCP Bob]

My response to CorvairShaggy1. Poker Stars is by far the dominant site and their business at the .com site is only down 13% compared to before Black Friday. If you add in the Italian and French sites they are probably larger than before Black Fridayhttp://www.pokerscou...f...012&week=16http://www.pokerscout.com/2. This is just speculation on my part Poker Stars buying Full Tilt makes sense for both Stars and The DOJ- The Tapie group did not have the money to pay players back and the DOJ probably didn't want to risk selling to them and things going badly- Poker Stars has to write a big check at some point to settle with the DOJ so that they can move forward. With that big check they are both settling their legal issues and buying what could be their largest competitor. Full Tilt players are going to play with their balances so when you buy $1 Million is player's liability your true cost isn't $1 Million as you will get increased business from those players even if they already have a Stars account.- As a straight business deal buying Tilt for a lot of money doesn't make a lot of sense but when you combine a DOJ settlement with gaining control of a very large potential competitor it does and the DOJ gets their win without having to piss off players who have balances at Tilt.

[FCP Bob]

This is pretty funny.Howard Lederer on business ethics

[xmykro]

So what happened with this? Are there anymore rumors. A week ago this was a "done deal", now everyone is quiet.

[Lrgetrout]

xmykro, on Monday, April 30th, 2012, 3:30 PM, said:

So what happened with this? Are there anymore rumors. A week ago this was a "done deal", now everyone is quiet.

Kind of hard for any more news on this when everyone's "source" was the thread on 4.

[FCP Bob]

xmykro, on Monday, April 30th, 2012, 6:30 PM, said:

So what happened with this? Are there anymore rumors. A week ago this was a "done deal", now everyone is quiet.

Lrgetrout, on Monday, April 30th, 2012, 8:48 PM, said:

Kind of hard for any more news on this when everyone's "source" was the thread on 4.

There is too much smoke for there not to be something serious happening but that doesn't mean a deal will get done. Until any deal is finalized I wouldn't think that we'll hear anything official in public.

[FCP Bob]

Tapie’s Audacious Attempt to Hire Full Tilt Staff, Launch New Poker Room

[psujohn]

FTP going belly up might be good for Stars but FTP being up amidst a big fraudulent management scandal is terrible. The FTP scandal drags down the potential of all sites by feeding the whole "online is rigged" fear. If Stars is really buying FTP I'm sure the message is "look online is safe" as much as anything. I'm sure FTP has some assets that would benefit Stars. I preferred their software and there's the rush patents (which could be worthless I know I at least had the idea way before FTP came out with rush) and there's probably not 100% overlap in the player lists. But really if the purchase can restore a good deal of confidence in online poker that'd be the biggest win for Stars. Specially if as Bob speculates the purchase price includes money Stars would have paid DoJ anyway.

[FCP Bob]

http://www.gaming-aw...S/archives/9222This article is speculating that the deal is done and will be announced by the end of May

[FCP Bob]

Good article about the current status and speculation about the Stars-Tilt deal.http://www.kickasspo...-tilt-doj-deal/

[FCP Bob]

Lots of buzz today that there will be an announcement on Monday about Stars buying Tilt.I hope there is some fire and not just smoke.

[donk4life]

Man at this point it's so hard to excited for stuff like this. I guess when you've lost all hope is when they good news finally comes, but I refuse to get excited about this.

[Lrgetrout]

Exactly. This topic has been beaten more than Fred Willard's privates. Wake me if it actually happens.

[Pokerkid555]

So can someone explain to me in cliffnotes style what Pokerstars buyin Tilt would mean?

[FCP Bob]

Pokerkid555, on 28 July 2012 - 10:14 PM, said:

So can someone explain to me in cliffnotes style what Pokerstars buyin Tilt would mean?

Hopefully it would mean that players who have money on Tilt get it paid back.