Showdown at FullTilt

With lawsuits come depositions. Depositions mean a lot of questions. Lederer and Ferguson have shown a lack of interest in giving straightforward explanations about ownership of FullTilt in the past (they claim to own the software that's being leased to FullTilt). It will be interesting to see how they handle the deposition questions from Clonie's lawyer.

Ethics and online poker sites

I really have more and more serious doubts about Full Tilt poker. I didn't blog about it when Clonie Gowen got caught committing plagerism, although I did put some comments on a website. But she's one of the Full Tilt "pros". Plagerism is theft. Full Tilt doesn't seem to think that's a problem. Theft is okay with them.

I really don't know what kind of ethical compass they have over there. It just seems like a problem to me.

Now we have another Full Tilt "pro" with an ethical glitch. Matasow talks about some cheating he did as if it's just another day at the office.

He took over in a tournament for a friend when he was 6 hours deep, to bring a fresh mind to the game. I personally don't think sites should have rules against that simply becuase it's impossible to really enforce the rule. But they do have rules against it. It's cheating. Some sites will take your prize money back and 86 you if they catch you doing it.

But Full Tilt seems to think it's just find so long as it's one of their insiders who is doing it. I don't know if it happened on Full Tilt or not, Matasow won't say, but why they think supporting an admitted cheat is a good idea is beyond my ability to understand.

Update:
For a couple of viewpoints that differ from mine in some ways see PokerBlog.com and Random Shuffle.

For a negative view of FullTilt's approach to ethics that's unrelated to this particular event see BlogsRGhey