According to a post on QuadJacks.com the person who has been keeping the poker community informed of what’s going on with US player cash-outs from Full Tilt Poker is none other than Full Tilt Poker PR representative Michelle Clayborne posing as “FTPDoug” on the 2+2 Poker Forums. As source close to Full Tilt Poker claims that “the real FTPDoug left the company a long time ago and they just use the name since he had some credibility on 2+2.”
According to the same source claiming to be very close to Full Tilt Poker, “Ms. Clayborne is/was the personal assistant to Howard Lederer, among other Full Tilt pros. Another source reported in late May that she had also worked closely with Phil Ivey, but that he had since terminated their professional relationship.”
Michelle Clayborne is also said to have written the angry response issued by TiltWare to the announcement by Phil Ivey that he is not playing in this year’s WSOP and is suing Full Tilt Poker.
What exactly does this all mean?
It means that someone at Full Tilt Poker, possibly Howard Lederer himself, has been pulling all the strings and feeding the online poker playing public misinformation for the past 2 months. With the exception of the initial press release by Full Tilt Poker claiming that they are working with the US Department of Justice to release player funds the only information players have received has come from the “FTPDoug” account on 2+2.
Most US online poker players have lost faith in Full Tilt’s ability to pay and as time passes players from other countries are beginning to as well. According to Pokerscout.com Full Tilt’s traffic is now down over 52% since April 15th, 2011.
Now that the “FTPDoug” account has been outed, we have no idea how Full Tilt will try and get a message out to players but we’ll keep an eye out for the next puppet show.