The Online Poker Expert

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According to online poker news site PokerNews.com, a federal judge in Manhattan recently sided with Phil Gordon, former Celebrity Poker Showdown commentator against television producer Tony DeRosa-Grund. Gordon had been approached by DeRosa-Grund four years ago to act as host of a holdem poker strategy show DeRosa-Grund claimed he was developing for CBS.

To free himself for the CBS show, Gordon hired a lawyer to extricate him from his Celebrity Poker Showdown contract with Bravo. Gordon then signed a contract with DeRosa-Grund to host 26 episodes for $340,000. Nearly half — $150,000 — was supposed to be paid 15-days after signing the contract. Unfortunately, Gordon found out soon after that DeRosa-Grund did not have a deal with CBS or any other television entity. Gordon may have hoped the show would be another WSOP or High Stakes Poker, but it wasn’t meant to be.

In December of 2006, Gordon sued DeRosa for fraudulent inducement and breach of contract. DeRosa fought the suit by using the specious claim that the contract wasn’t enforceable anyway because Gordon had portrayed himself as a Full Tilt Poker consultant instead of as an acting director of the company. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote didn’t buy it and said in a 2007 decision that DeRosa failed to prove that Gordon had a conflict of interest.

Gordon was subsequently given a summary judgment in January 2008 but DeRosa-Grund tried to fight it by coming up with other arguments the judge chose to ignore. DeRosa-Grund then moved to Texas and filed for bankruptcy to avoid having to pay Gordon. But Gordon isn’t giving up on his efforts to collect. According to a statement he made to online poker news site PokerNews.com, Gordon said, “He has moved to Texas and filed for bankruptcy to avoid dealing with the consequences. He’s tried to use the judicial system to his advantage all the way, but we are not going to stop until this is settled.”

Image of Phil Gordon interviewing Phil Hellmuth from Wikipedia.

Note: Phil Hellmuth has nothing to do with the lawsuit mentioned in this article.