Black Friday Anniversity

On Friday April 15, 2011, one year ago, I was at my local pub drinking beer with some friends when they were telling me how awesome this weekend was going to be when I completely tuned them out when i heard the report on the news.

The federal government had shutdown the major three online sites and put them under investigation for money laundering and illegal online gambling.  I froze up, did they just say they shut down full tilt poker!?! I had been playing on the site everyday for the last few weeks.  I freaked out the first thing I did was call my dad to let him know. I cried to him.  It felt like poker was dead.  Online poker is so big that its death could affect poker in general.  I thought that the WSOP was going to be canceled and my career as a poker player was gone with the wind.

Wow was I wrong! The WSOP last year set record numbers.  Everyone went from playing online to going and playing live.  Live poker has never been better.  I thought there would be less than 3000 players in the main and they still got the third largest prize pool to date.  Not only did the WSOP set record numbers they had the highest T.V. ratings by filming live coverage updated only 30 minutes later while showing hole cards.  This is unprecedented and will change the way of televised poker in the future.

Now there are some things that online poker has done to hurt poker.  The main one is the frozen accounts of Full Tilt.  I lost a few hundred but some lost millions.  I have a friend who lost hundreds of thousands and moved to Canada to play there.  Quite a few people had to move out of the country to continue making money the only way they know how (online).  A lot of others learned to play live and filled the high stakes games in rooms such as the Bellagio.  Another disappointment was the cancellation of several of the best T.V. shows.  The Big Game, Poker After Dark, and High Stakes Poker were all great shows sponsored by either Full Tilt or Poker Stars were shut down because the Sites in America were now banned.  They lost their funding and did not want to be associated with the illegal sites.  And of course there was the Full Tilt Scandal that has Ceo Ray Bitar as well as others like Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson stealing money from the accounts of users in an alleged ponzi scheme.

A year later many things have changed all do to the indictment of the poker sites.  Some good but many bad.  Let’s not forget that faithful day one year ago that changed poker forever.  Never forget!