Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson Back In Action At WSOP 2016

Former Full Tilt Poker Director Chris Ferguson has not been seen on the tournament circuit since 2011 when “Black Friday” forced the shut down of the site, leaving thousands of players unable to access their online accounts. Now that the majority of players have been reimbursed and Full Tilt has merged its traffic with sister site PokerStars, the scandal has mostly been consigned to the history books, and on Saturday, 4th June, Ferguson finally returned to the WSOP arena.
Chris Ferguson immediately entered the $10,000 buy-in Seven-Card Stud event at the Rio Casino, and it seems that his presence, while surprising, was generally accepted by other players in the competition. As Brandon Cantu tweeted at the time:
“I truly hope Chris Ferguson wins the Stud. Good Luck”
Another top pro coming out in support of Ferguson was 6-time WSOP bracelet winner Layne Flack who explained:
“Chris Ferguson has done a lot of great things for poker. He’s a standup guy, and all the decisions made by Full Tilt Poker don’t fall on him. I firmly believe he didn’t take one dime from anybody. It’s just not in his nature. It’s more in his nature to give everything to everybody, than take anything from anybody, and that’s a fact.”
Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson first cashed at the WSOP back in 1995, and in 2000 famously won the $10k main Event for $1.5 million. The 53 year-old has since gone on to amass a total of 5 career gold bracelets, as well as $8,281,927 in live earnings, of which $5.4 million is derived from the WSOP. This time around, however, Ferguson’ stay was a short one and just 90 minutes later he exited the tournament, before swiftly departing the playing area.
Ferguson’ return paves the way for another former Full Tilt director, Howard Lederer, to also put in an appearance at WSOP 2016, although Lederer’s reappearance is likely to be somewhat more controversial as throughout the scandal he was blamed for being largely responsible for much of the woe that befell the site’s beleaguered customers.