Phil Ivey, a poker player considered by many of his fellow players to be the best in the world, has announced that he will be suing Tiltware LLC, the majority owners of Full Tilt Poker. It is the same company that formerly sponsored him for a number of years. He has played many thousands of hands on the site and amassed millions of dollars while doing so. However, it seems as though those days are over, at least for now. Neither Ivey nor any of his public relations team has commented specifically on the nature of the lawsuit, but they have made it clear that it relates to Full Tilt’s withholding of poker players’ funds.

Phil Ivey has stated on 6/29/11 that he will withdraw his lawsuit if he believes Full Tilt Poker is taking the right steps to re-pay US players their money.

Full Tilt has indeed held on to player’s funds without paying them back ever since the occurrence of “Black Friday” on April 15. Black Friday, as it’s come to be known, is when the United States Department of Justice made an aggressive move to crack down on all poker sites that were offering their services to U.S. citizens. The most notable of these sites were PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and the Cereus network. PokerStars, considered worldwide to be the gold standard for online poker rooms in terms of security and customer service, had the foresight to keep all of their players’ funds in separate bank accounts while the money was online. Full Tilt, unfortunately, did not take this measure of precaution. As such, they’ve been withholding their players’ money ever since the crackdown. This includes all accounts, ranging from people with just a few dollars laying around, to people well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and possibly even a few that went into the millions.

This has understandably caused a lot of stress and frustration among the players who held some of the bigger accounts on the site. Ivey himself maintained a substantial balance on there, although he hasn’t disclosed the exact amount. Mr. Ivey has also stated that he will not be playing in the World Series of Poker this year to show support to others who can’t play because of Full Tilt’s problems.

Here is the actual lawsuit filed by Phil Ivey.