If you haven't heard the news, former Full Tilt Pro and WSOP Player of the Year Erick Lindgren appears to be in deep financial trouble. From the IRS to high stakes fantasy football players to Full Tilt itself, Erick seems to owe money everywhere.
If you want to read more about Erick's situation, you can read this cliffs notes thread on 2+2, or you can read the original thread about the matter.
Many were shocked and even saddened by this news. A lot of people seemed to have held Lindgren in high regard -- as an ethical, responsible type of poker pro, and especially one that would never owe people money for long periods of time while ignoring their requests for updates and payments.
I have played with Erick Lindgren a few times. I know who he is, and he knows who I am. But that's about it. To be honest, I barely know the guy.
But I've heard a lot about him.
The original 2+2 thread was calling out Lindgren for owing money for losses in a fantasy football league -- in some cases amount as low as $2,800. From the text logs posted, it seems clear that Lindgren was avoiding this guy and making false promises to pay him. At one point, Lindgren calls himself "cash poor". Eventually others chimed in, all with stories of being owed money by Lindgren for fantasy football.
While many were surprised by this news, I wasn't in the least.
That's because I heard the exact story four years ago, and that was while Lindgren was reportedly getting some $250,000 per month in Full Tilt ownership distributions.
In 2009, a friend approached me for advice about Lindgren's fantasy football debt to him. The debt was substantial -- something like $25,000, which was to be split among my friend and his fantasy partners. At the time, I was pretty taken aback. How could Erick Lindgren, a guy receiving a quarter million dollars per month for literally doing nothing, not be able to pay a 25k fantasy loss? I'm not going to name this friend, but many of you reading this know him, and it's someone I'm no longer friends with. You can figure it out.
I advised this friend to be a "gentle hassle" for Lindgren. That is, don't get threatening or overly confrontational, as that would turn it into a battle of egos. Rather, I advised him to be the squeaky wheel that repeatedly contacts him, thereby likely being among the first to get "greased". In the world of poker debts, it's the persistent people that always get paid first. My friend did just that, but for awhile it did no good. I advised him to step up the pressure, telling him to send messages to Erick implying (but not directly threatening) that he'd take this public. While Erick at first responded angrily in a "I don't care what you do" sort of manner, my friend got paid shortly thereafter. I'm not sure what changed for Erick. Perhaps he hit a big score in some form of gambling. Perhaps one of his many stakehorses hit it big. Perhaps he decided it was finally time to use some of that Full Tilt money to pay off his fantasy debts. Whatever the case, my friend finally got his money.
Erick Lindgren's situation is surprising to many for a few reasons.
First, he is seen as successful. He has well over $8 million in tournament cashes.
Second, he is known to be one of the biggest stakers in the tournament scene. Erick has been known to have provided generous 6-figure stakes to other tournament players, including ones that don't seem to be producing. This would imply that he would never be a risk to welch on a $2800 debt.
Third, his character has been built up in the media by respected people like Daniel Negreanu. While Negreanu has very publicly denounced unethical members of the community such as Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson, he has heaped nothing but praise upon Lindgren. Even Phil Hellmuth had wonderful things to say about Lindgren.
Finally, while Lindgren's tendency to gamble with wild prop bets was no secret, this was viewed by the public as more of a "fun" part of his personality, rather than the symptom of a much larger gambling problem. Erick comes off as straightforward, mature, and clean-cut. You just don't picture him as financially irresponsible.
However, the reality was very different. Lindgren was long rumored to have a crippling mega-stakes sportsbetting habit, and his free-spending ways in other areas (such as backing lots of high stakes tournament players) was a recipe for disaster, even with lot of poker winnings and $3 million per year in Full Tilt income.
Erick Lindgren no longer has that Full Tilt income.
And then there's this, which was uncovered by a wannabe internet detective on 2+2:
Suffice to say that these fantasy players won't be seeing their money any time soon.
But can you really feel that sorry for them? Surely they've known about his questionable ability/desire to pay since this has been going on since at least 2009.
Expect to hear a lot more stories like this in the coming months.
Poker players are typically as bad with money as most NBA players. And just like many NBA players at the end of their careers, many poker players that were surviving on sponsorship or site ownership money are going to be facing a very different lifestyle very soon.
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