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A book about online poker payment processor turned US Government informant Daniel Tzvetkoff is due out soon.
The title is “Alligator Blood” and will be published by Simon and Schuster.
Tzvetkoff ultimately helped bring down two of the world’s largest online poker rooms – Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker. A third site, PokerStars, would eventually settle with the US Government and take control of Full Tilt Poker. To this day, players from the US are still owed money from FTP.
Author James Leighton lives in Cardiff. Following a legal career, he became a full-time writer.
Leighton recently offered up a synopsis of the book:
Daniel Tzvetkoff was just another Brisbane teenager working for peanuts at Pizza Hut. That is until he discovered the lucrative world of payment processing for online poker companies. Soon the Australian whiz-kid was living the American dream raking in as much as $3m a week! Revelling in his jet set lifestyle of fast cars, luxury yachts and VIP nightclubs, he embarked on an epic rollercoaster of champagne fuelled excess which mirrored that of the extraordinary world of online poker, where hot shot college students won millions from the confines of their dorms, and fortunes were won or lost in seconds.
However, Tzvetkoff’s move to the neon splattered under world of Las Vegas would soon see him facing the abyss. Owing millions to the poker companies, and with the FBI hot on his trail, the tarnished boy wonder needed to pull an ace from his sleeve to keep from busting out. And when he did, it resulted in a day that sent a seismic shock through the world of online poker and saw him take the blame.
The book doesn't only cover Daniel Tzvetkoff's life, and involvement in online poker, it also contains chapters on important moments in online poker history where I have been fortunate enough to gain exclusive interviews with some major stars. These chapters include Moneymaker, the UIGEA, the AP and UB cheating scandals, the rise of Ilsildur1, Black Friday, the collapse of Full Tilt and Greg Merson's epic WSOP win.
In order to research this story I traveled the globe and conducted interviews with almost everyone involved. I was also given exclusive access to thousands of emails, contracts, meeting notes, court documents and photographs. The book has gone through a vigorous fact checking exercise and is primarily based on documentary evidence, verified by interviews, and checked by lawyers.
“Alligator Blood” is due out this summer.
- Nagesh Rath, Gambling911.com
