Howard Lederer Faces Poker Player Blacklist
November 16, 2012 3:21 pmIn October, after an absence of 18 months from the poker tables, Howard Lederer made an appearance at Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio and the Aria casino, where he proceeded to play high stakes cash games with such pros as Doyle Brunson, Eli Elezra and Nick Schulman.
Howard Lederer is currently embroiled in a $40 million civil dispute related to the Full Tilt debacle, in which millions of US players are currently out of pocket to the tune of $200 million. Consequently, such was the unpopularity of Lederer’s appearance at the Las Vegas casinos that security guards had to be posted in front of the high-stakes tables, with the Aria also threatening to ban anyone taking a photo of Lederer.
Now, it seems like the poker community are preparing to take their own stand against Lederer after a group of the casinos’ players, headed by cash grinder Nick DiVella, have organized a petition requesting Lederer be banned from the Aria poker room. As DiVella explains: “We believe the casino has a moral and ethical obligation to bar Howard Lederer from playing in the poker room and should Aria casino fail to take immediate action we, the poker playing community, will be forced to boycott the poker room.”
Nick DiVella says he has already received overwhelming support for his petition via twitter, although other players, such as Daniel Negreanu, question whether it is the casino’s responsibility to involve itself in such disputes. The Aria poker room would also seem to concur with that opinion with a manager at the Aria poker room, Leon Wheeler, saying the issue has nothing to do with them.
As a result, Nick DiVella now faces opposition from the Aria and was prevented from circulating his petition while at the casino. Nevertheless, elsewhere public sentiment against Lederer continues to grow, and as DiVella said on Twitter: “He doesn’t deserve to play. Maybe this will be the start of a poker black list.”