Home / Poker News January 2012 / A Last Look at 2011
A Last Look at 2011
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2012-01-03 11:23
Just as 2006 was made memorable for every online poker player and industry member on account of the infamous anti-poker law passed then, 2011 is pretty much guaranteed to go down in poker history as the year of Black Friday. Black Friday marked the point when US authorities went from empty saber-rattling in regards to the legal status of online poker to actual deeds: they shut down the poker industry and they drove the biggest online poker sites from the US market for good. Armed with information spat by notorious money laundering and bank-fraud mastermind Daniel Tzvetkoff, the DoJ unsealed a complaint against 11 of the top online poker executives.
Other poker events did occur too though and some of these events deserve a second look as well. We’ve organized these events/protagonists in two columns, “+” and “-“.
PokerStars are definitely in the + column. Not only did the largest online poker site repay all its US players and retire from the US market, it virtually shrugged off most of the negative consequences of Black Friday and set several world records afterwards, by sticking to their schedule and delivering on all their promises. They even managed to get some of the high stakes pros to move out of the States to play.
The WSOP is definitely in the + column as well. It shrugged of the boycott of players like Phil Ivey and generated bigger than ever starting fields in several of its events. All-in-all, despite the adverse circumstances, the 2011 WSOP went down as a massive success.
The “-“ column is highlighted by Full Tilt Poker. Unlike PokerStars, Fill Tilt flunked the Black Friday test badly, leaving its players high and dry and with slim hopes to ever recover their monies.
The US Government itself graces the “-“ list too: the DoJ made its Black Friday moves in total disregard of US players’ monies, and without any sort of damage control plan regarding player funds.
