Jesus Ferguson and Howard Lederer (?the Professor?) did not invent online poker. They just took it to new heights ? and, according to the authorities, new depths ? as their company, Full Tilt Poker, became a gambling palace of the Web.
The poker press routinely described the two pro players as grand masters, and endlessly parsed their styles. Ferguson, whose official first name is Christopher, was the mathematically minded PhD; Lederer, the strategic Kasparov of Texas Hold ?Em. As the years went by, Full Tilt became a powerhouse in the cultish world of internet poker. By 2010, Americans were gambling $16 billion a year through such sites, according to PokerScout.com.
But on April 15, players in the United States went to fulltiltpoker.com and found this message: ?This domain name has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.?
Federal authorities had blocked access to Full Tilt and two other top poker sites, Absolute Poker and PokerStars, and accused all three of money laundering and fraud. In poker circles, April 15 became known as Black Friday.
But Black Friday was just the start. A bigger bombshell hit on September 20, when prosecutors asserted that Full Tilt was, in effect, the biggest bluff in poker. In a civil complaint, the Justice Department said certain Full Tilt executives, among them Ferguson and Lederer, had defrauded players of hundreds of millions of dollars. Full Tilt, the accusations went, was not just a poker site, but also a vast, global Ponzi scheme.
However this scandal plays out ? Full Tilt and its executives have denied wrongdoing ? the internet poker debate is now stretching from the tables of Las Vegas to the halls of Congress.
In a bid for legitimacy, poker sites and players are pushing for the federal government to legalise, regulate and tax online poker. Big-name casinos, sensing opportunity, have thrown their weight behind the idea. Big Poker and its fans say the best way to safeguard players would be to give Washington a piece of the action. Prying the game out of the dark recesses of the Web could yield many billions of tax dollars for public coffers, these people say.
The push to legalise the game comes despite a federal law that tried to curtail online gambling in 2006. Whatever the qualms about online gambling, Uncle Sam is leaving a lot of money on the table. Over 10 years, legal online gambling could generate $42 billion in tax revenue, according to the Congressional Committee on Taxation.
Last March, before Black Friday and the Full Tilt scandal, Representative John Campbell, a California Republican, introduced a bill that would legalise online gambling. But it?s Republican Representative Joe Barton?s Bill, introduced in June, that industry experts believe has the best chance of passing because it focuses specifically on online poker. So, despite the imbroglio over Full Tilt and, in many ways, because of it, confidence is building that Washington will deal poker a winning hand.