I don’t need to tell the readers of this magazine that when you’re deep into the poker world, you are going to hear, and use, the term “poker community” a lot. It is very common in poker forum parlance. We often express positions or ideas in terms of what effect we think they will have on “the poker community.”

I think the worst you can say about this term is that it sometimes comes off as a little too generic or all-inclusive. After all, the poker community is very diverse. But it’s also not an inaccurate term to use. The poker community that we all consider ourselves part of does behave like a community. We get together and talk about poker. We share stories and opinions. We relate to one another. In other words, our affinity for poker goes beyond merely playing it.

Two Plus Two is a core component of today’s poker community. In fact, when I think “poker community,” I usually think of Two Plus Two as if they’re synonymous. Other highly-trafficked forums, like PokerStrategy, are also important elements that deserve mention.

However, the poker community is just one segment of the broader poker public in America and in the rest of the world. This is an important distinction to make, and the community generally realizes this. We often acknowledge that there are poker-playing folk out there who are outside of our cultural herd, but we don’t always have a quick term to describe them (except occasionally “fish,” which I think is crude and unfair). Well, I think the poker public is a good term for it.

I like public versus community because I think “public” fittingly describes a large group of consumers without carrying the connotation of solidarity or collective self-awareness that community does.

I used to prefer the term poker-playing public, but I ended up dropping the playing because I thought it was too specific, and shut out what might be a large segment of people who don’t habitually play poker for whatever reason (can’t afford it, can’t find a game, don’t think they’re good enough, etc.) but still enjoy consuming poker in some form – say, watching it on TV.

The poker public therefore encompasses both poker players and non-poker-playing poker fans as well.

It may seem like I’m being nitty, but this stuff matters on a macro level when evaluating the poker economy and the poker industry. Since the poker public is probably much larger than the poker community, it is important that the poker public’s influence in shaping the culture and the business of poker at large be recognized and studied by anyone who has an interest.

Often times, the poker community is derisive or critical of the poker public. See for example the famous “lol Zynga” thread on Two Plus Two. I won’t deny that it’s hard not to find some of those comments amusing when you have an above average understanding of poker strategy. But still, it comes off as very elitist, and the poker community acts that way sometimes.

I recently saw the poker community be more respectful to the poker public over the minor controversy surrounding the name Ultimate Poker. Many people within the poker community seem genuinely appalled that the Fertitta-run online poker newcomer would name itself anything “Ultimate.” After all, doesn’t Ultimate Poker sound just like Ultimate Bet, the site that cheated us all?

The other side of this argument points out, correctly I believe, that most players outside of the poker community, are not as familiar with the scandals that Ultimate Bet was marred by, and therefore they will not be as put off by the sound of Ultimate Poker. Being annoyed by the name choice is a poker community problem. The poker public doesn’t care.

Dividing poker players into community and public is extremely important if you work in the online poker space, for example. I just came from an online gaming conference in San Francisco called GiGse (Global iGaming Summit & Expo). There are many such conferences year round where a bunch of people in the gambling industry get together and, as you would expect from any commercial trade show, try to figure out how to best monetize customers.

In the case of online poker, most of the time, these companies are valuing issues pertaining to the poker public more than they are valuing issues affecting the poker community. This is because the poker community is typically viewed as the better skilled poker playing contingent that beats fish off rooms and is basically pretty unwelcome because of it. Online poker rooms, it is said, would much rather listen to the needs of the recreational poker public.

I tried to interrupt this trend earlier this year, or at least introduce an alternative, when I assembled a panel of professional poker players to speak at the 2013 iGaming North America (iGNA) conference in Las Vegas, for a session specifically centered on the educated poker player’s point of view on the game and on the industry. My belief is that nobody knows online poker better than the players. When it’s not being dismissed as a hotbed of trolls, a forum like Two Plus Two is actually an enormously rich reservoir of highly sophisticated online poker insight. Any company that is aiming to develop an online poker product nowadays neglects the poker community’s precious perspective at its own risk.

While the poker players’ panel at iGNA was appreciated by many, some believed that the pros’ view was overrepresented, and that I had failed to sufficiently include the voice of the recreational player. Here we saw a manifestation of the “regs vs. recs” player model debate that pervades many iGaming industry circles.

While the poker ecology issues are sometimes a little complex for me to discuss, I don’t believe that the interests of the poker community must always be contradictory to those of the poker public, although that is occasionally the case. In addition, regular or skilled poker players should not be disqualified from opining on what they think makes a good, sustainable game. Quite the contrary, their experiences as gamers are unequaled, and they almost always start as recreational.

Conversely, it would be nice to see the educated poker community take better steps to respect the poker public, considering the well-being of the industry as a whole rests on as many players as possible continuing to play the game and having a good time doing it.

April 24 2012, Brett Collson

Group Bernard Tapie Managing Director Laurent Tapie confirmed Tuesday that negotiations to purchase Full Tilt Poker’s assets from the Department of Justice have officially ended, a move that could potentially pave the way for PokerStars to purchase the assets of its former competitor.

According to a statement issued by Groupe Bernard Tapie, the drawn-out deal with the DOJ fell through due to “unresolvable” legal complications and failure to agree on player repayment plan. Tapie was supposedly in the final stages of negotiations with the DOJ and preparing to re-launch the embattled poker site in the near future.

“GBT proposed a plan that would have resulted in immediate reinstatement of all ROW (rest of the world) player balances, with a right to withdraw those funds over time, based on the size of the player balance and the extent of the player’s playing activity on the re-launched site,” GBT said in the statement. “All players would have been permitted complete withdrawal of their balances, regardless of whether they played on the site, by a date certain, and 94.9 percent of ROW players would have been fully repaid on Day 1. DOJ ultimately insisted on full repayment with right of withdrawal within 90 days for all players– a surprise demand made in the 11th hour, after months of good-faith negotiations by GBT.”

The complicated sale of Full Tilt Poker had dragged on since last November when GBT agreed to purchase the forfeited FTP assets from the DOJ for $80 million. In the end, Tapie says the purchase price, along with the substantial amount of cash needed to re-launch FTP, were “too substantial to overcome.”

In addition to that shocking news, rumors began swirling Tuesday that PokerStars had swooped in and purchased Full Tilt Poker’s assets for $750 million from the DOJ. Following initial rumors started in a TwoPlusTwo thread, ChiliGaming CEO Alex Dreyfus posted via Twitter that $330 million will go toward the repayment of players, while the rest will settle the outstanding charges against PokerStars.

Terms of the deal have not yet been confirmed. PokerNews reached out to the Department of Justice on Tuesday, but a spokesperson declined to comment.

On Tuesday, Groupe Bernard Tapie lawyer Behnam Dayanim sent the following statement to PokerNews:

Groupe Bernard Tapie regrets to announce that, after seven months of intensive work, our efforts to obtain final approval of the United States Department of Justice of the agreement to acquire the assets of Full Tilt Poker have ended without success.

Ultimately, the deal failed due to two major issues.

1. The parties could not agree on a plan for repayment of ROW players. GBT proposed a plan that would have resulted in immediate reinstatement of all ROW player balances, with a right to withdraw those funds over time, based on the size of the player balance and the extent of the player’s playing activity on the re-launched site. All players would have been permitted complete withdrawal of their balances, regardless of whether they played on the site, by a date certain, and 94.9% of ROW players would have been fully repaid on day 1. DOJ ultimately insisted on full repayment with right of withdrawal within 90 days for all players– a surprise demand made in the 11th hour, after months of good-faith negotiations by GBT.

2. The legal complications surrounding the deal – specifically, questions surrounding the legality of the forfeiture under non-US laws – also proved unresolvable. All of the key assets of the FTP companies reside outside of the United States. A non-US court well might regard the purported forfeiture as a “fraudulent transaction” and declare it invalid or deem the acquirer of the assets responsible for all of those creditor obligations.

Given the $80 million purchase price, and the substantial amount of cash needed to relaunch FTP, those issues ultimately proved too substantial to overcome.

GBT is very conscious of the hopes it has created – among FTP employees that they will retain their jobs, among FTP players that they will recover their balances, and among the entire poker community that the world’s finest poker platform will be relaunched and bring a needed added element of competition to a world market that today is fully dominated by a single operator.

GBT cannot accept the end of those hopes. For that reason, unless a concrete and legally viable solution is found in the very coming days to save the employees and repay the players of FTP, we will move to our own plan of action.

We understand from press reports that the DOJ may have entered into an agreement with PokerStars pursuant to which PokerStars will acquire the FTP assets. If accurate, we can only assume that PokerStars determined that it was willing to accept these legal and financial risks in order to resolve its own legal situation with DOJ.

If a PokerStars acquisition of FTP means that all FTP players will be fully repaid immediately, we are very happy for the players, as their final and full repayment has always been our priority. We only regret that such a deal would signal further consolidation of a poker market already dominated by a single player – an outcome that may raise antitrust concerns and that, in the long run, is probably not good for players and for the whole online poker industry.

April 24, 2012 12:39 p.m. PDT: Head of Corporate Communications for PokerStars, Eric Hollreiser posted the following comment on the PokerStars Blog.

We’ve had a lot of inquiries and there’s lots of speculation on the forums, so I wanted to address the PokerStars chatter. As you know, PokerStars is in settlement discussions with the U.S. Department of Justice. As such settlement discussions are always confidential, we are unable to comment on rumors. As soon as we have information to share publicly we will do so.

We’ll bring you more on this story as it develops. Follow PokerNews on Twitter for up-to-the-minute news.

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