Misplaced Pages

Full Tilt Poker is not a gambling website. This applies to both the free site and the real money site. Poker is a game of skill, and is therefore NOT gambling, according to most generally accepted definitions of "gambling". Deepfryer99 23:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes poker is a game of skill, but it still is gambling which can be defined as "wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods", for example if you were to go all-in pre-flop with pocket Aces in NL Hold'em odds are you will win against another random hand but that is no way a guarantee thus the uncertain outcome. poker becomes a skilled game based on tactics, patience, and observation among many things, but there is and always be a degree of luck, be it good or bad.▪◦▪≡ЅiREX≡ 23:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Just pointing out that, based on that definition, endevaours such as business and investing of many forms would be considered gambling. --Sesameball 02:52, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

And basically you can take that view, but as the gambling article points out, society general doesn't view it that way, but rather would include some statement to the effect of "game, contest or sporting event". In any event, poker obviously is a gambling game, even if it is agreed skill predominates. 2005 03:05, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

There's no "view" to "take". Investing falls squarely under that proposed definition. Of course, that is not to say that social norms (not to mention legislation) will be the predominant relevant determination. To me, investing is obviously a gambling game as well. --Sesameball 23:24, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

According to that definition, even things like buying a house or accepting a job offer could be considered gambling. I think your definition may be flawed... after all, the outcome of everything in the world is "uncertain". I just think that the use of the word "gambling" is questionable in this context, and it may be better to use a word like "wagering" or "betting", which are much more appropriate and relevant to the game of poker. Deepfryer99 21:44, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a standard definition, and yes you can take it to mean anything in life is a gamble. Another definition is "the voluntary risking of a sum of money on the outcome of a game or other event" which may be a better way to state it here. We are talking about gambling games, rather than those things in life that are not games but also "a gamble" like running a cross a busy street. 2005 23:37, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Just because it's a bet on a game of skill doesn't mean it's not gambling. I can place a bet on a shuffleboard match, a football game, a golf match, or a game of pool, and it's still gambling. And those are all games of skill. The definition of gambling isn't flawed. The word "gambling" means what it means. It's the betting that makes it gambling, not the skill or lack of skill involved. Rray 00:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Jerry Yang

What exactly is the point of the Jerry Yang bit? What does it mean he's a "friend" of the site? I'm guessing somebody meant to put something like Jerry Yang uses Full Tilt Poker as his online poker site, but then if so it'll need sourced. --212.84.123.161 01:01, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Watch the WSOP 2007. There's your source.Yoryx 19:53, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Company

Can someone get more information about the company? Specifically, I'm wondering where they are based out of? Probably some small island in the middle of the ocean, but it would be nice to know for sure. Deepfryer99 23:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Full Tilt was developed and marketed by Tiltware, LLC which was originally based in Los Angeles, California (see launch press release) and operated by Kolyma Corporation which is based in Aruba (where online casinos are legal) with licensing by Canada's Kahnawake Gaming Commission. Tiltware moved to Dublin, Ireland in 2006 after the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act was passed. --Sesameball 03:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

1. The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act was never passed, instead a law similar to it was passed in the Safe Port Act. Also they moved to Dublin in around August, while the Safe Port Act / UIGEA was passed in September 2006 Strongsauce 12:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction. I had read on a few sites that the move was "in response" to the Safe Port Act, although that language doesn't neessarily mean it was after the legislation had passed. --Sesameball 18:22, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Information like where they operate, and who licenses them, belong in the article. 198.70.210.20 (talk) 09:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone know what Full Tilt is worth, their income, operating expenses and stock symbol? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.242.230.162 (talk) 20:33, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

They are a private company so have no stock symbol, and don't declare those various details. 2005 (talk) 01:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Times Links 404 Error

Notes links 1 and 3 point to Times website articles but if you click them you get a 404 error. Does anyone have an updated link to these articles?

The articles appear to no longer be available online. Link 1 (as was) may have been the Poker Face feature of Chris Ferguson, which mentions FTP, from 1/4/06 - but there doesn't seem to be a Times article on the creation of the site as implied by the context. Haven't found anything like link 3 (as was) either. I've removed both links. - Bobathon (talk) 11:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

- I removed the the inactive Times links in the Notes section and one other inactive link. Another thing I changed was the resource link to the Records section. Someone had replaced the previous link that was added by the original author of that section. I'm fairly new to Misplaced Pages but it doesn't seem ethical to just replace a link with your own when you didn't contribute to the content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Josh60950 (talk • contribs) 05:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Please read WP:COI, WP:V and WP:SPAM. Adding links just to promote your website(s) is not allowed and could lead to the sites being blacklisted. Also, dead refences should not be deleted. They should either be updated or left alone. 2005 (talk) 07:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm new to Misplaced Pages but I added the "Records" section and linked to the appropriate source. Then someone just comes along and changes the resource link (PokerNews)to their own page about the record being set. So, somehow what they did is not spam? Also, why on earth would dead links be "left alone"? That is just silly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Josh60950 (talk • contribs) 05:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Josh, I thought the same the first time I deleted a bunch of dead links and was told to stop what I was doing! Please check out WP:DEADLINK - there is method to the madness :) Hazir (talk) 05:42, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

WORLD REKORD

Full Tilt NEVER broke up the rekord. Stars startet his new world rekors tournament about one hour erlier. So FT never broke the rekord. --Oetsche 22:26, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Team Full Tilt > Domain Names_Domain_Names-2010-01-12T17:13:00.000Z">

Under the Team Full Tilt section there was a line that said Full Tilt Poker buys and owns domain names of up and coming players, even those who are not Full Tilt Pro's. The source was this article by PokerNewsDaily which got its information from a blog post by NatArem. Nat Arem is somebody who I would consider to be a very reliable source for this sort of information, however, when I ran a WHOIS search for many of them names (I stopped at about five) all of them show a private registration. In addition, I don't think 'Full Tilt Poker' owns much of anything. The company is a maze of offshore and onshore shell corporations across the globe. I highly doubt that even if they do own those domains, they are in the name of Full Tilt Poker, much more likely one of their shell companies, which would be difficult, at best, to prove belonged to Full Tilt Poker or who owns Full Tilt Poker.

My reason for concern with the statement is that the ownership of a domain which is confusingly similar to the trademark of another company, or which contains the legal name of an individual, if used in bad faith (and re-directing it to FullTiltPoker.com would certainly be using it in bad faith), constitutes a trademark violation and is illegal. Full Tilt could not only lose those domains, but be liable for substantial damages should any of those companies or people choose to sue them. So the article was stating that Full Tilt was engaged in illegal activity - without definitive proof of that, which does not seem available at this time, such a statement should not be in the article. Please note that if any of those domains (or all of them) currently forward to FullTiltPoker.com (I did not check) that does not mean Full Tilt Poker (or any of their associated companies) own the domains - they could be owned by an affiliate who profits when people signup to Full Tilt Poker after being redirected.

For anybody not familiar with domain law or domain trademark issues, I would be glad to provide outside sources or further information, though please don't revert back the article without a better source.DegenFarang (talk) 17:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)_Domain_Names"> _Domain_Names">

I think the Poker News Daily article is more reliable than your original research... Hazir (talk) 20:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I didn't do any research. I didn't add anything to the article, I removed something. Let me try and state more clearly what I said: PokerNewsDaily is accusing FullTiltPoker of breaking the law. Owning those domain names would be breaking the law. However nobody can confirm whether or not Full Tilt owns the domain names because the WHOIS settings are all private. DegenFarang (talk) 20:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Why should I give more weight to your original research with the WHOIS searches than Poker News Daily's investigative work? I seriously doubt they would make such an accusation without good evidence. And if was baseless, why has no-one come out and said anything from Full Tilt? Hazir (talk) 20:41, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Clearly the WHOIS was not private at the time of the article. The article was written quite some time ago. If the WHOIS was private at that time, they never would have written it DegenFarang (talk) 21:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

In all fairness it is not that hard to go around the WHOIS rules, most registrars I work with don't exactly double check the identity of the site owner. Countless sites don't reflect the true site owner.

I'm not sure whether you are arguing for inclusion or exclusion with this - but you are correct, it is easy to fake a WHOIS. That said, there is no fake WHOIS in this case, there is a private WHOIS. Whether, a fake WHOIS or a private WHOIS, though - if we cannot determine with certainty that Full Tilt owns the domains, we should not be accusing them of breaking the lawDegenFarang (talk) 21:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Also, I am not sure about your claim that "...'Full Tilt Poker' owns much of anything...". It is not a maze of anything, this is how most online casinos work. I suspect you are not familiar with the reasons why they do it that way. FFMG (talk) 21:01, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

They did it that way because the owners live in the United States and they don't want to go to jail. A secondary reason is to save money on taxes. A third reason is the protection of assets, such as domain names, from lawsuits or other legal action. Full Tilt Poker has not said anything because they never say anything about anything. They rarely even show up to court when somebody sues them - they certainly aren't going to come onto Misplaced Pages and complain that we are alleging they are breaking the law. The fact is that nobody can know for certain who owns those domains because the WHOIS is private. They could be owned by a domainer, by a Full Tilt affiliate, by an employee - they could have been sold or transferred since the NatArem.com and PokerNewsDaily.com posts - nobody knows. If we cannot verify the ownership of those domains, today, we should not include in the article that they are owned by Full Tilt - as it is breaking the law for them to own them. DegenFarang (talk) 21:17, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I would agree to the inclusion if the article explicitly states that 'PokerNewsDaily reported on xx date that Full Tilt owned these domains, however the WHOIS has since been made private and it is unclear whether Full Tilt owns the domains anymore" I trust that at the time Nat Arem wrote his blog post (which was the basis for the PokerNewsDaily article) that Full Tilt did indeed own the domains - I am however not confident they own them today. I would be glad to get Nat's opinion about this if necessary - he made his post quite some time ago. I'm quite certain he would agree with me that the WHOIS being private makes it impossible to state with certainty that Full Tilt still owns the domains DegenFarang (talk) 21:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I am not denying that at all, but as you rightly said we cannot trust WHOIS record, so we might as well use the reference we have. Maybe you could add some dates to reflect the possibility that they no longer own those sites for some reason.

As for their behaviour with US courts I am not sure I understand what it has to do with this discussion. How do you know they are a US owned, do you have any refs? What makes you think the US has jurisdiction on those offshore sites? FFMG (talk) 21:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The US does not have jurisdiction, that is why US citizens would base their online poker site offshore. The owners of Full Tilt are Ray Bitar and the founding 'Team Full Tilt' members - with Howard Lederer being the CEO - all Americans. DegenFarang (talk) 21:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

If by jurisdiction you were referring to me saying it would be illegal for them to own the domains, I did not mean illegal in America. Somebody would have to sue the owner of the domains in whatever country they were based in - and they could get the domains from ICANN via a WIPO claim, regardless of what country they are in. This is an international law matter, not a US law matter DegenFarang (talk) 21:46, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Following your logic, how do we know that they still own/operate it?

And at the risk of repeating myself, I am not sure what it has to do with the original point you raised. You are mixing different issues at the same time. FFMG (talk) 21:48, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

We don't! We assume! That is why what I just stated is not in the article, because it cannot be proven. For the same reason the ownership of the domains should not be in the article. It cannot be proven! DegenFarang (talk) 21:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

• Nat Arem told me he figured it out by doing a reverse IP check on the domains. I just did it and they all are on the same IP along with 4,000+ other domains so it appears as though Full Tilt still owns them, I have re-inserted the sentence back into the article as it appeared before. I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment the two of you have - that is that an editor cannot question what a source says or prove a source wrong, however it would be a purely theoretical argument and does not apply to this edit or article so I guess we can just leave this alone ;) DegenFarang (talk) 22:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

What's with the hyper-monologue? What is your agenda? Hazir (talk) 23:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

A google search only turns up about ten uses of the term 'hyper monologue' and it is not clear to me what that term means from any of them. I don't have an agenda, just trying to improve Misplaced Pages. DegenFarang (talk) 00:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how verification of anything is an "agenda" and it doesn't seem odd to me. Honestly, if I ran into a seemingly ridiculously claim like that, I'd investigate as well. Things can be sourced by a hundred different things, even places we say meet WP:RS, but that doesn't automatically mean it's what should be in the article or it's "fact". It could be a very strong case with very heavy WP:WEIGHT and overwhelming consensus, but nothing is automatically here forever as consensus can change. It's an entirely normal Misplaced Pages editor habit to research these things-- It's possible User:DegenFarang specializes in researching dubious claims in articles since a lot of editors have a preferred area of "expertise" or a Misplaced Pages "discipline" they work most in. Mine would be combing over any article I see listed on an incident board, checking for past unseen problems, and hitting the incident "reset button" by confirming a clean edit version is present as it moves ahead. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 02:45, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I thought it made sense that we as editors could question and disprove an RS. And you are correct, I do have a specialty: poker, Full Tilt Poker and domains. DegenFarang (talk) 03:31, 13 January 2010 (UTC)