Full Tilt Poker's rule-bending deal with CardRunners raises eyebrows (March 16, 2008)
Last week, Full Tilt Poker
announced a deal in which some of the professional players from
poker instructional site CardRunners would join the ranks of sponsored Full Tilt pros.
In return, Full Tilt's players would have access to some CardRunners instructional videos and materials.
In online forums, questions were immediately raised about the deal. CardRunners pros had been seen
in their own videos
using the accounts of friends and fellow pros in violation of Full Tilt's terms of service.
This was presumably done to maintain the anonymity of some of the better-known pros while they
tried to illustrate poker concepts for the viewers. Some in the online poker community
questioned the wisdom of sponsoring pros who were known to have violated the site's rules.
Questions were also raised (mainly by CardRunners subscribers) about how the pros could continue
making realistic videos. They were now limited to playing on Full Tilt, where their names would be
highlighted in red. Their opponents would know that a Full Tilt pro was sitting at the table and
possibly making a video. Play would inevitably be distorted by the celebrity factor, and the
educational value of the videos would suffer.
That's when things got a little stranger.
CardRunners pro Taylor Caby
announced that a solution had been negotiated. In an exception to the normal rule of "one player,
one account," the CardRunners pros would be allowed an alternate,
anonymous account for the purpose of making instructional videos. The players at the table would
not be told they were up against a sponsored pro until after the fact, at which point they
would be give a "small token of appreciation" for their unwitting participation in the video.
Players who lost money to the pro would also be given "additional compensation," though the
extent of the compensation was not spelled out.
The news set tongues wagging in the poker forums and blogs.
(One
thread on 2+2 has attracted more than 800 posts so far.) Was Full Tilt bending the rules too far?
Was the deal good or bad for the other players and for online poker in general? Was any of this
consistent with Full Tilt's
recent firing of Jonathan Little for sharing his account?
Whatever other effects the controversy may have, it apparently has not hurt CardRunners.
Traffic at the website is
up over 20% this week, according to Alexa.
Follow-up story:
Full Tilt Poker heeds player concerns, revises CardRunners deal
