Guy Laliberté: “I Got Ripped Off” By Full Tilt Colluders

Three weeks before the start of the 2014 World Series of Poker, a billionaire high stakes player has made allegations of collusion on Full Tilt Poker.

In a recent interview with Le Journal De Montreal, Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Solei, claimed he was cheated out of millions of dollars by professional poker players on Full Tilt Poker.

Although the interview was in French, a French 2+2 poster by the name of Twooopair broke it down for English readers:

“He’s definitely talking about collusion. He’s light on details but explains that a couple of FTP players didn’t use ‘real’ money-in a sense where all their buy-ins were virtual – when playing against him. This access to unlimited funds allowed them to constantly push the action against him. He was basically facing all-in decisions all the time. Collusion is on his mind when he says “ils se mettaient à deux, trois” meaning 2 to 3 players were playing together to push the action up and force all-ins. Typical squeeze with multi-raises. Later on the story, after mentioning his new super rare Ferrari, the journalist asked him what was his most craziest expense. Guy didn’t mention his trip in space but ONLINE poker. Then – a special note for the haters – he says that he doesn’t care about the money he lost but he cares about the fact that he was ” bent over” by a couple of pros and was the one providing the lube.”

This isn’t the first time news of this sort has arisen. In 2011 Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow alleged that players were equity chopping ‘all-in’ pots when competing against Guy. 2+2 poster Mike Johnson stated that he had “heard a number of reference from people who feel Guy may have also been colluded against in live games as well.”

On the flip side, Canadian poker pro Haralabos Voulgaris believes that Guy’s claims are “a case of someone with an ego being embarrassed that he lost a fortune playing online poker and now attempting to save face.” Haralabos, who is said have played over 100 live sessions of poker against Guy, went on to say that “Guy basically was a huge loser the first week he started playing FTP, these guys weren’t playing with imaginary limitless money, they were playing for the most part with Guy’s money, and his opponents bankrolls kept on going up and up the more he played… Guy never even really had any upswings when playing live or online, the gap between him and the players he was playing against was that big… he was drawing dead.”

At present, we will have to wait for more details on the validity of Laliberté’s claims. In my own opinion, he was probably just outplayed. This is the same man who is estimated to have lost approximately $26 million playing online poker. I’ve watched him play online, and I’ve watched him play on television, and Viktor Blom he aint. What do you think?