Guy Laliberte claims professional poker players cheated him outof millions of dollars

http://www.pokerupdate.com/poker-opinion/guy-laliberte-claims-he-was-cheated-on-full-tilt/

I thought this article was pretty interesting

the "got bent over and provided the Vaseline himself" quote is priceless IMHO...LOL

I think I remember seing this guy in a Celebrity Poker Show on the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, or espn.

I am sure he gave up a lot of valuable information that day. And now he wants a charity. Well, he got the article.

jk I wish the best

Given what we now know about how Full Tilt was operating at the time, he may actually have a point...

It doesn't change the fact that he was essentially a fish playing against the biggest sharks in the world though. Even without "infinite" bankrolls, it's still very unlikely he would ever have come out on top.

How much did he lose? This is the cirque de soleil owner isnt it?

MadMaddie said:

How much did he lose? This is the cirque de soleil owner isnt it?

Click to expand...

Do believe i read somewhere at one time that he lost somewhere in the realm of 25+million on FTP or something, and yup he is good for it being the owner of all that is "Cirque de Soleil".

Always have to assume there is the possibility of being cheated

Keep in mind that he's not saying he was "cheated" in terms of having someone look at his hole cards or colluding against him or anything - he's saying that the sponsored pros he was playing against were effectively being given "free" money by the site, and that put them at a big advantage.

Whether it really was "free" money, or whether it was loans that the site wasn't particularly dilligent about getting repaid, is a grey area I guess. I thought I remember reading somewhere at the time of the scandal that the pros were expected to pay the funds back, though if you're talking about someone like Ivey who also had an ownership stake in the site then who knows what the deal was.

Which sponsored poker pro are involded?

Thats why I said, any sponsored poker pro at any site should not play at his own backyard just to eliminate some doubts.

They can play any other sites or live (of course) but not on the site they are being sponsored upon.

misko said:

Which sponsored poker pro are involded?

Click to expand...

Just look at Team Full Tilt back at that time and you'll likely have your answer. IIRC David Benyamine logged a lot of hands against him, guys like Gus almost certainly would have too. Probably Juanda, Ivey, you get the picture.

It'd be a little bit hard to tell because I'm pretty sure Laliberte was bending the rules himself by using multiple accounts and screen names.

hffjd2000 said:

Thats why I said, any sponsored poker pro at any site should not play at his own backyard just to eliminate some doubts.

They can play any other sites or live (of course) but not on the site they are being sponsored upon.

Click to expand...

If sponsored players couldn't play on their own site, then nobody would get sponsored any more: why would a company pay someone to effectively draw traffic elsewhere?

When you see that in this high level someone says that he was cheated.You wonder if the online poker is really safe.
I wonder why the best poker room dont have any bether program to log on their site(exemple:to show id and yourself every time when you connect to the site).
Most likely because because their earning are more important than security of the players.

Again, keep in mind that he's not saying he was "cheated" in the usual sense of the word: he's not saying anyone looked at his cards, or pretended to be someone else while they played him or anything. He's just saying some of the people he played against may have had an unfair advantage because they were effectively playing with "free" money.

There's absolutely no reason for security and operator earnings to be mutually exclusive either: in fact, cheaters are probably bad for operator earnings, because they're likely to take their ill-gotten gains and cash out rather than keep playing and keep giving the site rake. And that's before you even get into looking at what allowing cheats would do to your site traffic, and therefore your rake.

Wow some of these sites might be pretty shady anyone that follows the poker news should already be wary of playing just because of full tilt. But then again he is a billionaire so.....I wouldn't have cared much.

I watch the super high roller 100k PCA ep2 yesterday.Guy Laliberte was in,i must say that on my opinion he is one big fish.
I think that any good player can beat him without cheated.

I don't get it.
Surely it is even, infinite bankrolls (Big cirque de soleil vs smaller Tiltware LLC).
He made his money by fleecing clowns ... ... ...
Tiltware made their money ... ... ...
well actually tiltware probably made their money clowning with a ponzie scheme

Really though he should have realized that although he might have had the bankroll for it he was still lacking the skills to play at the levels he was.

Chemist said:

Really though he should have realized that although he might have had the bankroll for it he was still lacking the skills to play at the levels he was.

Click to expand...

You can be almost certain he knew that he was a dog playing in those games.

Reading this though, I wonder if he thought that having so much money behind him was his edge in the game?

Guys like Ivey and, to a lesser extent, Dwan probably weren't scared by it. But to someone like David Benyamine, even Gus, the amounts of money Laliberte was willing to play for would almost certainly have hurt them if they'd lost, and that could have affected their play in some way. If Laliberte was banking on that being the case, not knowing that these guys were effectively playing with free money... ouch.

MadMaddie said:

How much did he lose? This is the cirque de soleil owner isnt it?

Click to expand...

About an hour and ten minutes of his income.

There was a a hand on a PAD high roller game where David Benyamine had his stack in against him. You could see that he was in a bind when the cards turned up on the flop. David Benyamine prolly had his whole stake in there, and the sweat started rolling off him.The guy was obviously scared way beyond just loosing a big hand. he was in deep.

Guy, seeing this, let the guy off the hook. Renegotiated the pot size strictly out of altruism. It was the kindest act I've ever seen in poker.

The look of relief on David Benyamine's face was priceless. :handkiss:

Guy is truly a good guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNMDVHoDNXM

-

I don't know how I feel about this. Because Guy basically is the whale at high stakes. Yea, I mean if they were basically "freerolling" him kinda sucks. But at same time, sounds like he is bitter as if they took his edge away. Since he sucks, his edge is the unlimited supply of money he has. Take that away, and give players basically a unlimeted supply to play against him. Now they don't have to be scared of his insane amount of money and they obviously have the edge in skill. In my eyes he is mad cause he was the one who had the unlimited availability of funds and they took it away from him if these guys were getting free money to play with and he lost about the only edge he had on these guys.

JPoling said:

I don't know how I feel about this. Because Guy basically is the whale at high stakes. Yea, I mean if they were basically "freerolling" him kinda sucks. But at same time, sounds like he is bitter as if they took his edge away. Since he sucks, his edge is the unlimited supply of money he has. Take that away, and give players basically a unlimeted supply to play against him. Now they don't have to be scared of his insane amount of money and they obviously have the edge in skill. In my eyes he is mad cause he was the one who had the unlimited availability of funds and they took it away from him if these guys were getting free money to play with and he lost about the only edge he had on these guys.

Click to expand...

That's pretty much exactly how it seems, yeah.

I can see some of the bitterness being justified though, and it's because he didn't find out until afterwards that they were playing with unlimited bankrolls. At the time, it would have been perfectly reasonable to assume that they were all playing with their own money and if he had've known otherwise, it's very possible he would have played differently or just not played at all.

These website cheated almost everyone who put their money in it before black Friday a lot of top online player don't even play online anymore so might be correct

i hated this guy from the very start when he organised the big one drop i wanted him o lose at the very first so i dont agree

hope they didnt cheat him, hes just a nice guy with way too much money

businessplay said:

i hated this guy from the very start when he organised the big one drop i wanted him o lose at the very first so i dont agree

Click to expand...

Um... wow. Why? He's a self-made multi millionaire who entertains people for a living and gives loads and loads of money to charity, what's not to like?

Sounds like he has too much money and doesn't know what to do with it,

$25 Mill gone wow.

hffjd2000 said:

Thats why I said, any sponsored poker pro at any site should not play at his own backyard just to eliminate some doubts.

They can play any other sites or live (of course) but not on the site they are being sponsored upon.

Click to expand...

Agreed, its like the kids who run a home game and play in it...
Big no-no to me I refuse to support even the softer games where this happens.