Jonathan Little Loses Full Tilt Deal
Mar 14, 2008By: Jennifer Newell Only four months after being signed to a sponsorship deal with Full Tilt Poker, online pro, turned live tournament winner, Jonathan Little was dismissed from Full Tilt. The announcement was made on March 4th that Little would no longer be a member of the Full Tilt team, and his account had been closed.
The following statement was released on the Full Tilt Poker forum:
Despite having a great year on the WPT, Jonathan Little is no longer affiliated with Full Tilt Poker. He violated the terms and conditions of Full Tilt Poker by allowing other players to play his account. While we encourage our pros to play as much as they can, we do not allow them to share their account with any other players.
When a player on Full Tilt Poker plays against and chats with a red pro on the site, it is imperative that they be able to trust that it is really the advertised pro playing the account. Given that Mr. Little violated that trust, we have decided to sever his ties to the site and close his account.
Full Tilt Poker values the trust of its players and will deal with any violation of that trust swiftly. We apologize to any of our players who may have been misled during the past few months by Mr. Little’s actions.
Little, whose poker beginnings were in the online poker community, was recorded by Full Tilt as having played 1,227 sit-n-go’s during the first week in March. Not only is this an unrealistic feat, but he was also competing in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship during that same week. The assumption was that Little allowed other players to use his account, which is clearly against the rules of Full Tilt.
While Little’s motives are unknown, it should be noted that players on the Full Tilt team of pros are often given 100% rakeback in the games that they play on the site in addition to a $35 hourly rate. This seems an unlikely motive due to his accumulation of over $2.5 million in live tournament winnings in only a few years – he is only 24-years old – along with monies earned from a successful online career as “FieryJustice.” In any case, the mistake can be chalked up to any number of factors – youth, immaturity, inexperience.
Little has yet to release any type of personal statement about the actions of himself and Full Tilt. The most recent opinion from Little was found on his blog regarding the NBC Heads-Up event, where he stated that the ultimate champion Chris Ferguson engaged in a “100% classes celebration” upon winning. No one else attending the event has been willing to confirm his assertion, and it seems more that Little’s beef was with Full Tilt – Ferguson just happened to be a seemingly appropriate target at the time.
It should be noted that Full Tilt not only detected and researched the activity, but once it was deemed deceptive, the site took immediate action and exposed the cheating. It seems the security team at Full Tilt is paying attention and taking a proactive stance.
