In the five years since “Black Friday” hit the online poker industry, poker professional Daniel Negreanu has been one of the more vocal critics of the people that were in charge of one of the rooms involved in that situation, Full Tilt Poker. Now, more than five years later, Negreanu is allowing one of the culprits of that infamous day to issue his mea culpas, for reasons that are unknown at this time.
Negreanu opens his blog post discussing his own opinions that came from the “Black Friday” actions. “I don’t regret being vocal about it all, but I would have left out the talk of baseball bats (Negreanu once threatened “old school Vegas action” on the person we are soon to meet) and handled my response more responsibly,” Negreanu writes. He then goes on to introduce the disgraced Howard Lederer, who issued a statement to the poker community through Negreanu’s blog at Full Contact Poker.
In his longer-than-necessary statement, Lederer finally says the words that the poker community would have liked to have heard him say five years ago: he screwed up. He now understands that (and we’ll paraphrase for brevity here) he was trusted with people’s monies and that, as that person that represented Full Tilt Poker, he had a unique position that put him at the front of the firing line if there was a problem. He learned this after talking with a friend in 2014, who’s comments to him finally made him see the light. Finally, Lederer says, “An apology is not enough, but it is what I am able to offer to the poker community in the wake of a travesty that I should not have allowed to happen. I am sorry.”
Negreanu then offers his opinion on the statement from Lederer.
“I think this is the kind of apology people would have liked to read five years ago,” Negreanu starts by writing. “It may be too little too late for some, but it’s a far cry from The Lederer Files (the devastatingly awful series of interviews done in 2012 by Lederer with PokerNews.com in which Lederer tried to blame everyone other than himself for the downfall of Full Tilt Poker). Does it definitively answer all the questions surrounding what he knew and what he didn’t know? No. Does it change the fact that people who trusted Howard, both investors and customers alike, were let down? No. Does it mean that you should be any less pissed at him for what happened? That one is up to you, I guess.”
So why is Lederer coming out now to discuss the issue and offer to the poker world the grandest of apologies? Well, we ARE a couple of weeks from the start of the 2016 World Series of Poker and, it is fair to assume, that Lederer would like to be able to walk into a poker room again without feeling the scorn from every set of eyes that hit his face (this is a possibility also floated by Negreanu). Especially with some of the biggest tournaments and cash game action set to hit Las Vegas kicking into gear at the end of May, Lederer might like to get in on that action (it isn’t known just how much money he DID get away with from the Full Tilt fiasco).
Then again, it is also possible that the apology is a truthful one. Sometimes it can take several years for someone to see the error of their ways and set about trying to rectify the situation. While it is completely illogical to think that Lederer is personally going to go around and prostrate himself for everyone he’s wronged, this might be as close as he can get.
Negreanu also states this as he reaches the end of the post. “If anything, I think writing this statement is good for him (Lederer),” Negreanu says. “It’s the right thing to do…The choice to accept his apology is a personal one. There is no right or wrong way to receive it. For what it’s worth, I personally believe the apology to be genuine.”
What the poker community thinks…may be hard to define.