I am about damn tired of hearing people rip on Full Tilt Poker. They did business the way most companies do it, and the same way I’ve been doing things since I ran a lemonade stand when I was a kid. I took the same crap from the same self righteous jackasses that are attacking Full Tilt now. In fact, let me tell you the lemonade stand story and maybe it will help you understand what Full Tilt is going through.

I started a lemonade stand when I was eight years old. I got some money from a few investors that I used to buy lemons and sugar, and my dad helped me put together a little wooden stand so that I could sell it by the side of the road on hot days. I was a cute little kid with a hand painted sign, just running my little business and trying to make enough money to buy a brand new bicycle, and business was good. Over the summer my business made about two hundred million dollars before the Department of Justice shut me down.

Of course my investors all started squawking about wanting their money back, but what was I supposed to do? I didn’t have the money! When they asked where it was I did things a little differently by opening up my books and showing them where the money had gone. I still have that list of expenditures, and I’ll publish it here to help you understand.

  • $115,000,000 – Money seized by the Department of Justice. I was committing a tiny bit of bank fraud, but it’s not my fault they chose to seize all my investors money is it? I didn’t think so, but the investors were very grumpy. Things can get rough in the lemonade business
  • $30,000,000 – Money loaned out to employees. So I loaned Phil Ivey a huge pile of money that wasn’t mine to give out. He’s good for it right? Again the investors were grumpy, acting like loaning money out to a guy with a craps problem was a bad investment and it was all my fault. Ridiculous.
  • $20,000,000 – Money disappeared completely. I don’t know where it went, how the hell am I supposed to know where every million goes?
  • $40,000,000 – Stolen by the guy who carried my cash. Little Danny Tzvetzkoff who lived down the street from me ran off with a bunch of cash, but what was I supposed to do about that? Anyone could make the mistake of hiring a thief and allowing themselves to be robbed blind for a year or two and then not attempting to recoup the money. It’s a simple mistake. Could have happened to anyone.
  • $15,000,000 – My salary. Did they think I was working for free? After I made them millions and provided the neighborhood with lemonade for a whole summer?
  • $35,000,000 – Staff bonuses. My staff works hard, and we decided they should be paid well for it. It’s not like I gave away the whole company and all my investor’s money, it was only thirty five million.


So now you can see how Full Tilt Poker was very much like my lemonade stand. We both lost $200,000,000 of other’s people money, and much like Full Tilt, I am looking for more investors to pay back my other investors and buy a stake in a company that burns through money like a California wildfire. And much like Full Tilt, I have talked with a bunch of investors who don’t seem interested. I guess they don’t know a good investment when they see one.