As many of you are surely aware, Howard Lederer gave a very long interview to PokerNews in which he discussed the full history of Full Tilt Poker and its eventual self-imploion. Tom Dwan, once one of the most infamous nose-bleed stakes players at FTP, gave his reaction to the 7 video long interview provided in 30 minute segments, now known universally as the Lederer Files.
Unlike most of FTP’s tight-lipped high-stakes players, Dwan has been the most vocal of all poker pros involved with the Full Tilt brand. He has kept the general public informed of all he could since Black Friday hit via his Twitter account and the 2+2 forums, even going so far as to appear on American news stations. Dwan promised everyone that he would speak more on the matter once an acquisition of Full Tilt Poker had taken place. While he didn’t exactly follow up on that promise, remaining silent up until this point even after FTP’s number one rival, PokerStars, successfully procured the poker site a few months ago, Tom did have a lot to say regarding Lederer’s lengthy statements.
Dwan assured the online poker community via Twitter that he believes Howard’s statements to be sincere, at least for the most part. [Note that all quoted statements below are exact quotes, aside from several punctuation and capitalization fixes for fluency purposes.]
“Just watched the last of the Lederer files and then read Andy Bloch’s interview. I’m pretty confident the majority of what they said is true.” Tom Dwan affirmed this belief by saying, “I knew a bit of stuff independently and what they said mainly lined up with that (although I thought Howard emphasized wrong a few times).”
While the young American poker pro supported most of what Lederer revealed, he did make it known that he was not in favor of some of Lederer’s actions. Tom said that his main issue with the interview was that Howard, as well as Andy Bloch, who was also interviewed just after the Lederer Files were released, didn’t seem to understand just how critical a factor it was for the online poker site to continue accepting deposits after April 15th, 2011. “Both of them [Lederer and Bloch] were way off on thinking FTP taking deposits post black Friday was acceptable,” Dwan tweeted.
As to Dwan’s role throughout the debacle, he stated, “I think I have some obligation as a person/known poker player to, when possible, help people avoid being taken advantage of – and I messed up some by not trying to make more sure that FTP had the players’ $$. I think the owners owed this to the players more than I did, obviously, which makes it a bit extra ridiculous (although still understandable to me and definitely possible I would’ve made the same mistake) that so few owners were willing to step up and take board seats to provide oversight.”
Full Tilt Poker is set to re-open under the new ownership of PokerStars sometime in November of this year. A multitude of well known professional poker players, including Howard Lederer himself, have already asserted that they will be returning to the poker room as soon as it opens. As to whether Tom “Durrrr” Dwan will be making an appearance, that remains to be seen.
