Full Tilt Poker Signs Stevie Wonder
DETROIT, MI – Seeking to counter Pokerstars’ signing of relatively high-profile stars, including Boris Becker and Mats Sundin, Full Tilt Poker made a splash announcing Grammy Award winning performer Stevie Wonder as their newest red pro.
Though many were convinced that Full Tilt needed to make a celebrity signing to respond to Pokerstars, this comes as somewhat of a surprise as Wonder, 58, has been blind since birth. Wonder is no stranger to cards however, having played in some of the higher stake games Michigan had to offer. “Everyone was always intimidated by me,” said Wonder, “Ray Charles once said I had the best poker face he’d ever felt.”
Wonder made his first appearance on the virtual felt sitting in on a1/2 NL game. The wait list almost immediately topped 100 players, and the chat box was filled with railbirds and well-wishers. He subsequently timed out before he could post his blind, and every 5 minutes there would appear a jumble of letters in the chat box that gave the indication he just pounded on his keyboard. He was then removed from his seat for missing too many orbits.
“We’ve taken a lot of flak for signing a blind man to play online poker,” said Full Tilt Co-Owner Chris Ferguson, “but come on, he can’t be any worse than Beth Shak.”
Some of the flak, oddly enough, came from Ferguson’s partner, Howard Lederer. “He’s a freak and a very blind dude,” said Lederer. “I think we should stay away.”
From the non-poker world, Full Tilt has taken obvious heat due to not only the fact that they hired a blind man to play online, but because they almost appear to be mocking the very man they signed. For instance, every avatar comes with four different emotions: happy, confused, angry and sad. Stevie Wonder’s avatar only comes in one: confused. They have insisted that this is merely an oversight and an error, but this has done nothing to quell the outrage.
Their pros have had mixed opinions; while some lick their chops at the idea of playing a handicapped man, some are convinced that Wonder will use his blindness to an advantage. Notorious rules nit, David Singer, is one of the latter. “He can play HORSE and ‘not see the post button’ and sit out of whatever games he doesn’t feel he has edge in,” said Singer. “This is angleshooting, and I expect Full Tilt to compensate me every dollar I ever have or ever will lose on this site.”
When it was pointed out by a third party that Singer himself has often been accused of that very angleshooting, Singer glared menacingly, whined for about 40 minutes, then had that man’s Full Tilt account closed..
