Top 10 Stories of 2016, #7: Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer Return

This year’s Top Stories are brought to you by the VerStandig Law Firm, LLC. Combining a keen understanding of the gaming world and an equally keen understanding of the law, Mac VerStandig and his colleagues are devoted to fighting on behalf of the poker community and its members.

Every year at the World Series of Poker, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be a notable absentee from the star-studded fields. This year, 2016, Phil Ivey was arguably the biggest star missing from the action, but Ivey’s decision to skip the WSOP was overshadowed by the return of two of poker’s most hated players Howard Lederer and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson.

Both Lederer and Ferguson were well-liked in the poker community, even revered by some, but after April 15, 2011, both became figures despised by thousands of poker players due to the pair’s involvement with Full Tilt which ultimately went under and had to be rescued by PokerStars. To this day, there are still customers from the old Full Tilt days who have not received back their frozen funds.

Until this summer, sightings of Ferguson in the poker world were nonexistent. There were only a few occasions where Lederer has been seen playing high stakes cash games in Las Vegas.

In May 2016, as the WSOP rapidly approached, Lederer issued a statement on Daniel Negreanu’s blog on FullContactPoker.com that read:

I am writing to apologize to everyone in the poker community, especially to all the players who had money on Full Tilt Poker on April 15, 2011. When Full Tilt Poker closed in 2011, there was a shortfall in funds, a distressed sale to recover those funds and a long delay in repaying players. Throughout this period, there was little explanation for the delay and no apology. Players felt lied to. They trusted the site, and they trusted me, and I didn’t live up to that trust.

I take full responsibility for Full Tilt’s failure to protect player deposits leading up to Black Friday. The shortfall in player deposits should never have happened. I should have provided better oversight or made sure that responsible others provided that oversight. I was a founder in the company that launched Full Tilt and I became the face of the company’s management in the poker community. Many of our players played on the site because they trusted me.

Even though I was no longer overseeing day-to-day operations, my …

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