Ray Bitar celebrated “amazing million dollar wedding”
A few months back, the news that former Full Tilt Poker CEO Ray Bitar – who had supposedly been suffering from chronic heart failure and edging close to death - had married his new wife Jackie Lucas hit the poker community.
The last anyone had seemingly heard of Bitar’s situation before that, was via the keyboard of well-respected pro Allen Cunningham back in 2014:
“To all the conspiracy theorists, according to my sources, Ray Bitar is unlikely to live more than a couple years and is nearly penniless,” said Cunningham. “He didn’t get away with anything.”
Two years on from that statement and by the look of some of his wedding photos, Bitar seems to have pulled off a minor miracle on both counts – “dying” and “penniless”.
No one knows if he managed to get the heart transplant he allegedly needed, or if he even required one in the first place, but Bitar certainly looks like a man in good health nowadays:
“The bride was carried in on a gold float surrounded by musicians and belly dancers who performed the Zephra, a dance well-known in the Middle East and by Bitar’s family”, said wedding photographer Marla Rutherford. “It was an amazing million dollar wedding.”
Bitar managed to escape a lengthy stint in jail for his role in Full Tilt’s debauchery and the Black Friday aftermath due to “extreme ill health”. He did plead guilty to two federal charges however, paying a $40 million fine in 2013 before he was allowed to walk away a free man.