These past couple of days have been pretty hectic throughout the poker community with lots of talk surrounding PokerStars bid to buy Full Tilt. Now you may already know that, for the past several months, Groupe Bernard Tapie had been pursuing a deal with the US Department of Justice to buy Full Tilt Poker for $80 million.

However, the big problem with the deal was that GBT wasn’t prepared to spend/didn’t have the money to pay player deposits back. Eventually, this hangup caused any potential deal to fall through because the US Department of Justice wanted player deposits paid back within three months of the purchase. After all, nobody wants to see a Full Tilt Poker scandal part II.

In any case, the absence of Groupe Bernard Tapie now means that PokerStars is stepping in to fill their shoes, and potentially purchase Full Tilt. Much like with GBT, their biggest obstacle will be negotiations with the US DOJ. But it’s also very likely that PokerStars actually has the hundreds of millions of dollars to pay players back worldwide.

If they can complete the deal, Stars stands to add another huge chunk of players to their already massive base. Remember, FTP was the world’s second largest poker site (behind Stars) before the US DOJ’s actions started their downfall. And if PokerStars can acquire this player pool – along with the FTP software – their product will only be that much better.

Of course, one big thing to keep in mind here is that a PokerStars-Full Tilt deal probably won’t be completed any time soon. The US DOJ is dealing with a totally new buyer now, so it’s a good bet that they’ll prolong the process for a few months just like with GBT. Hopefully this time the deal goes through though.