FullTilt Staying

To be honest, I was a little surprised when FullTilt didn’t join the ranks of poker rooms fleeing the US. Given the fact that executives from some online sportsbooks have been arrested recently and the fact that the Team FullTilt members are rather well known and frequently in the country, I expected them to be worried that they may find themselves behind bars. I’m sure there’s some legalese where Team FullTilt doesn’t officially own FullTiltPoker they are just paid representatives, but I don’t think the government would necessarily let that stop them from making some arrests.

But, maybe that’s what they want. The arrest of a high profile poker player for nothing more than owning a stake in an online poker room could be the best thing that happens to online poker. Imagine what would happen if someone like Phil Ivey or Howard Lederer got arrested. I think it would turn them into a martyr. No one gets too upset when some unknown executive from a sportsbook few people have heard of gets arrested, but when a popular figure such as any of the FullTilt pros gets arrested I think it may cause some public outrage at the ridiculousness of this whole thing.

Plus, if in fact they were to get arrested, poker rooms would then have the media attention needed to actually get their point across to the rest of the country that doesn’t normally pay attention to stories such as this. I think if you ask most people they would say online gambling should be legal, as long as it was regulated/audited. With enough publicity we could get this point across to politicians who might actually vote for the majority if they are vocal enough.

Finally, while I’m guessing any high ranking member of a successful gambling site is fairly well off, I also think the full tilt pros have plenty of money to spare. Should they get into legal trouble I envision them going through the lengthy and expensive process of challenging the law. There’s plenty of inconsistencies and hypocrisy that I hope they could find a way out of it. Of course I know very little about the legal system so I could just be pulling that part out of my ass.

So maybe that’s their secret strategy. Open challenge US law in order to bring attention to it and change/strengthen public opinion to their cause. Or maybe they think they’re still legal and there are billions of dollars on the table now that many of the big names have run and hid.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com