A little more than a week after alleged co-conspirator Chris Ferguson returned for the first time in six years to the 2016 World Series of Poker, former Full Tilt Poker front man Howard Lederer stepped up to the felt in the Rio in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Lederer put down his ducats to enter Event #16, the $10,000 Deuce to Seven Draw Lowball World Championship, on Satruday afternoon with other deep-pocketed pros (there were 100 entries in the re-entry tournament), the first appearance he has made at a WSOP table since 2010. It didn’t go so well in the beginning for the disgraced pro, who was initially eliminated by Benny Glazer. Lederer just happened to have had another bullet in his pocket, however (rebuys were available until the end of late registration), and that one was able to get him through the evening.
Lederer chose to pick on Stuart Rutter to build up a contending stack with his second bullet. He would make a 9-7 low that Rutter couldn’t best to move up to 70K in chips and, as the clock struck midnight. Lederer would double up again through Rutter when his 9-8 was better than Rutter’s 10-7. At 102K with two more levels for the night, Lederer looked as if he would be in prime position to strike for Day 2.
Alas, the final couple of hours weren’t as nice to Lederer. He would slowly let the chips slip through his fingers back to Rutter, who doubled up with his 9-8 against Lederer’s 10-9. By early Sunday morning, Lederer’s stack had dwindled down to just slightly more than 20K. Within the first 30 minutes of Sunday’s Day 2 slate, Lederer was eliminated at the hands of Brian Hastings far from the money.
It was inevitable that Lederer was ginning for his return to poker at this year’s WSOP. When Lederer provided fellow poker professional Daniel Negreanu with a statement to Negreanu’s Full Contact Poker blog, it was obvious that was Lederer’s intent. In that statement, Lederer took the responsibility for the demise of Full Tilt Poker, pointing out that “I should have provided better oversight or made sure that responsible others provided that oversight. I was a founder in the company that launched Full Tilt, and I became the face of the company’s management in the poker community. Many of our players played on the site because they trusted me.”
The statement from Lederer, the first comments he had on the Full Tilt situation since the debacle that was “The Lederer Files” in 2012, was an attempt to smooth over the situation with a still-angry poker community that had already shut down a previous attempt by Lederer to re-enter the poker community. But a funny thing happened while people were waiting for the disgraced Lederer to return to the WSOP.
Last week, Lederer’s partner in Full Tilt Poker (and another player who has received a great deal of blame for the Full Tilt fiasco), Ferguson, decided to try his hand at the $10,000 Seven Card Stud World Championship, where he failed to cash. He has since gone on to pick up two deep finishes – in Event #12, the $565 Pot Limit Omaha tournament and in Event #5, the $1500 Dealer’s Choice.
The ire of many in the poker community is still there regarding both men. A Vine has been making its rounds where someone gets Ferguson’s attention at the tables to issue him a vulgarity, and it is reasonable to expect that Lederer hasn’t gone anywhere near someone to have the same situation develop. It could be due to the factor that neither man wants to elaborate on what they did previously.
While Lederer might be given a pass on this (he DID try to apologize through Negreanu), Ferguson waltzed back in, expecting to have no issues. All Ferguson would do is state, “I’m just here to play poker,” before running away from press regarding the situation. Such actions haven’t bought much sympathy from the poker community, although poker pro (and former Full Tilt stablemate) Layne Flack has attempted to take some of the brunt of the rage against Ferguson on Facebook.
Whether this becomes a normal part of the 2016 WSOP or not remains to be seen. It also is readily known that the poker world hasn’t forgotten 2011.