Full Tilt Poker Black Friday
It seems that the time is finally here and Full Tilt poker players may finally be getting their monies. But how do you know how much you’re owed? If you check in the Full Tilt poker client right now you will see a zero balance. The same zero it has been since black Friday.
Home Full Tilt Poker’s Nelson Burtnick Pleads Guilty To “Black Friday” Charges Full Tilt Poker’s Nelson Burtnick Pleads Guilty To “Black Friday” Charges By Earl Burton - Sep 20th, 2012. Black Friday was just a beginning of many problems to come for everyone involved with Full Tilt Poker. In this article at pokerhistory.eu we will draw a timeline of what happened with Full Tilt Poker after Black Friday on April 15th 2011 and up to now (May 2012).
However, you can get your account history to see what it was before they zeroed it out. Here’s what you need to do.
Steps to get your Full Tilt Poker real money balance
– First you need to get the poker client from Full Tilt poker if you don’t have it anymore. Download it from FullTiltPoker.com
– You should be able to login with your old username and password
– Once you are in go to “Requests” at the top, and from the drop down menu select “Account History… (Web)” – This will open up a webpage where you can make an account history request.
– Click on “create new request”
– Select “All Types” in (1) Report Type. Select all in (2) Balance Type. By selecting everything you can see everything that was done to your account, and you can see if they have converted any tournament tickets into poker money balance or if any other transactions went through that you were not aware of.
– Then in (3) Time Range I would select everything that they allow you. Choose “from” and put the end date as whatever the date is for you today. Then put the start date as 01/01/2005. – The reason why I chose this date is because this is the earliest date that Full Tilt Poker will allow you to go back to. Then click Submit.
– Then your account history will be pending for a minute or two while Full Tilt Poker gets all your data and puts it in a file for you. Once it’s ready there will be a “download” link there for you to click on.
– You can try to refresh the account history page to see if it has changed from “pending” to “completed”. They will also send you an email when this is done. If you don’t have access to that email address anymore then you can also wait a few minutes and then go back to you poker client, go to “Requests” at the top, and from the drop down menu select “Account History… (Web)” again and you should see a download link now.
– Download the file and open it in a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or you can use the free Google Docs. Another option is to download the Microsoft Excel viewer.
– You may have to unzip the Zip file first before you can view it. You can use something like 7-Zip or Winrar.
If you want to see your Full Tilt Poker points balance, also known as “FTPs” then you can just open your poker client and look in the cashier. Our Full Tilt Points are sitting pretty there, although we have no way to use them, and there’s no information about how they will be handling that type of stuff that is not “real money”.
Either way you need to be on the lookout for those emails that should hit your inbox starting September 16th. Hopefully everyone will get what they are owed. Stay tuned to the news on the web, and be sure to check FullTiltPokerClaims.com for updates.
Image courtesy of winnifredxoxo on Flickr
Former Full Tilt Poker executive Howard Lederer issued an apology for the events that led to the poker site failing to have funds on hand to pay all its players in the wake of 2011’s Black Friday.
Lederer, in part, said “I take full responsibility for Full Tilt’s failure to protect player deposits leading up to Black Friday.”
You can read the whole apology here, which was posted at poker pro Daniel Negreanu’s blog. Negreanu had been one of Lederer’s most vocal critics.
The abbreviated history of Lederer and Full Tilt
In the wake of its domain being seized by the U.S. Department of Justice in April of 2011, Full Tilt was not able to refund all account balances because of a failure to segregate operational and player funds. PokerStars went on to buy the Full Tilt platform and refund all players.
Lederer, the public face of Full Tilt, settled a civil complaint stemming from Black Friday in 2012. He’s pretty much stayed out of the poker spotlight ever since, other than a series of interviews he did called the Lederer Files.
The Lederer apology, at a glance
Lederer does not get into much in the way of details about the events leading up to Full Tilt having a massive shortfall of funds, but endeavors to apologize. In the wake of Black Friday, Lederer admits that Full Tilt players “trusted the site, and they trusted me, and I didn’t live up to that trust.”
More from the apology:
I take full responsibility for Full Tilt’s failure to protect player deposits leading up to Black Friday. The shortfall in player deposits should never have happened. I should have provided better oversight or made sure that responsible others provided that oversight. I was a founder in the company that launched Full Tilt, and I became the face of the company’s management in the poker community. Many of our players played on the site because they trusted me.
At the same time, Lederer also deflects some of the blame, pointing out he really wasn’t in charge when things went down:
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Even though I was no longer overseeing day to day operations, my inattention in the two years leading up to Black Friday imperiled players’ deposits. My involvement in Full Tilt from 2003-2008 put me in a unique position of trust—a trust that I disappointed by failing to ensure that Full Tilt was properly governed when I stepped away in 2008. My failure to make sure proper oversight was in place when I left resulted in the situation that began to unfold on Black Friday.
Why now for the Lederer apology?
Full Tilt Poker Black Friday
It’s a curious time for an apology from Lederer, and years overdue, according to most of the poker-playing public that had money on Full Tilt when Black Friday happened.
Why now? First, the apology comes as the Full Tilt software platform is being retired and the player pool merged with PokerStars. That’s led to some nostalgia for Full Tilt — once the No. 2 online poker site worldwide and in the U.S. And perhaps that was what triggered Lederer to speak.
The other main theory of why Lederer apologized now? He might plan on showing up for the World Series of Poker that starts later this month. Negreanu hinted at that, writing, “My guess is that he just wants to be able to play poker again without the vitriol sent in his direction.”
We’ll find out if that theory is correct in short order — showing up without some sort of blanket apology before the WSOP in Las Vegas likely would have ended poorly for him.
Does anyone care that Lederer apologized now?
Had Lederer apologized in 2012 or 2013, it might have been better received by the poker world. In 2016, the apology seems to be a day late and a dollar short.
Negreanu, for his part, accepted the apology, writing “I have no interest in continuing to hold my grudge against him.”
In talking about Lederer on Twitter soon after the apology became public, poker players’ reactions generally ranged from ambivalence to cynicism.
Many people had moved on from the Full Tilt debacle years ago, even though claims in the U.S. regarding player funds are still being dealt with today. The Lederer apology certainly tests the idea of “better late than never.”
Full Tilt Poker Black Friday
Photo by flipchip / LasVegasVegas.com used under license CC BY-SA 3.0