Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 20 of 22

Thread: Black Friday: 10 Years Later

  1. #1
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
    Reputation
    10110
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    54,626
    Blog Entries
    2
    Load Metric
    65658877

    Black Friday: 10 Years Later

    A Literal Awakening

    On April 15, 2011, I was taking an afternoon nap, and my girlfriend came barging into the room.

    "I heard something big just happened! I think you want to see this."

    It hit the news that the Department of Justice busted and shut down three major US poker sites: Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and UB.

    At the time, I ran a site called donkdown.com (which had some similarities to this site, as well as some of the same users you see today), and we immediately started an "emergency radio show" to discuss it. The show was an instant hit. I broadcasted along with Bryan Micon and Brandon "Drexel" Gerson, and we did our best to evaluate the situation, and had on a wide array of guests to chime in with their opinions.

    After about 4 hours of this, Micon became tired of it. "I'm going to play digital poker, there's not much more to say right now", said Micon. With that, he turned off the show, and we signed off.

    Quadjacks, a small site which had unsuccessfully been trying to make a name for itself, saw an opportunity. Realizing that we had walked away from a large and eager audience looking for answers, they picked up the ball and ran with it. Marco Valerio and the others got on and broadcasted for several days straight, with some taking a few hours to sleep while others carried on, and suddenly they were on the map.



    Where's Our Money?

    Back in poker land, everything was chaotic. Full Tilt had a message up that our money was safe, but was it really? Pokerstars continued operating, but shut out US players. They also promised we would get paid. UB was just down. What was happening? Were our online poker bankrolls gone?

    The answer was: "Sort of."

    Indeed, the US government finally cracked down on the three largest online poker sites -- UB, Pokerstars, and Full Tilt -- after 4 1/2 years of them clearly breaking the 2006 law ("UIGEA") forbidding the deposit or withdrawal of real money for internet gambling. However, the government wasn't interested in keeping our money. Their plan was simple: Force the sites to stop accepting American customers, have these customers get paid their balances in full, and reap the rewards of gigantic fines that these successful sites would pay to keep themselves up and their principals out of prison.

    Unfortunately, there was a small problem with that plan: Two of the three sites were broke.



    Full Tilt lies... and lies... and lies

    Pokerstars fairly quickly took responsibility. They made a rapid agreement with the DOJ to leave the US market and pay all customers. They even agreed to convert the players' frequent player point (FPP) balances and pay that out, as well. While the FPP payouts weren't quite as generous as they seemed, and were actually somewhat of a Superman III style scam, Pokerstars did indeed fork over the money for the balances. In fact, the money hit our bank accounts very quickly.

    Unfortunately, Full Tilt was a different story. Despite repeatedly claiming our money was safe, and continuing to operate in the rest of the world, something was definitely wrong. They weren't presenting the proof of funds, weren't paying any Americans, and were being strangely evasive regarding all questions. It turned out that Full Tilt had stolen nearly all of the money on deposit -- hundreds of millions of dollars -- and were operating the site somewhat like a Ponzi scheme. Full Tilt had naively believed that a day like Black Friday would never come, so they figured they could appropriate all money on deposit, as long as there was barely enough around to cover cashouts. It also didn't help that Full Tilt was having issues with finding a payment processor, so they were allowing people to "deposit" without actually debiting their bank accounts -- with plans to get a processor and do it later. For Full Tilt, Black Friday was partially bad timing, but more about egregious theft. It took many months before Full Tilt admitted that the money was gone. Board member Howard Lederer did an embarrassing interview with Pokernews, where he just made himself look more guilty.



    UB was even less forthcoming. The site just vanished. It also became even more clear that the supposed "new ownership" which took over after the 2008 cheating scandal was just the same ol' cheaters -- something which was long suspected. Like Full Tilt, UB also stole all the money. For the second time, UB had blatantly cheated its customer base. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me! This made new site ambassadors Joe Sebok and Prahlad Friedman look especially foolish, as they had spent the past several months loudly swearing that the "New UB" was honest and trustworthy. Sebok eventually apologized for his role in the whole thing. Prahlad never did.



    After some time passed, and the smoke cleared, it became certain that we weren't getting our money from either site, unless a miracle occurred.

    And what would happen to online poker in the US? Would it die? Would the remaining smaller sites be busted? Would it somehow be legalized? Nobody knew... at least not yet.


    END PART 1

    STAY TUNED FOR MORE

     
    Comments
      
      splitthis:

  2. #2
    Platinum garrett's Avatar
    Reputation
    29
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    east coast
    Posts
    4,259
    Load Metric
    65658877
    For me I actually Vividly remember Black Friday, and where I was when I learned it was happening...

    It was kind of a sick burn too because I was about Top 30 or so in the 1pm $5.50 BIG field MTT on Pokerstars. I started to see in the trollbox, on the rail everyone yapping about how we shouldn't close the site, if we are Americans we will never be allowed to play again. Keep in mind im top 30 or so, in a solid $5.50 Pokerstars MTT, which is pretty much all I did back then play Big Field MTTs often. After a bit and the amount of people now in the trollbox saying it I realized it may have had some merit. And did some real fast preliminary searching and saw something was going on. And low and behold here we are now 10 years later, and other then when in NJ I have not still played since then, on Pokerstars (Global) and that is kind of amazing because back then Poker and Stars was a very big part of my life at the time, College and big feild MTTs is all I did. I played on the Pokerstars name 'DublingUp' if your wondering.

    interesting actual memory there for me of black Friday for me, and actually I remember those moments and the trollbox crying about it and to not log off, so well still actually.

  3. #3
    Gold Shizzmoney's Avatar
    Reputation
    457
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    2,451
    Blog Entries
    1
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Good interview with former PokerStars CEO Isai Scheinberg on P5s:

    https://t.co/NX2fJQB9kG?amp=1
    http://www.miraclecovers.com

    "Donk down, that’s what you say to someone after they have lost 28K straight?" - Phil Hellmuth, online

  4. #4
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
    Reputation
    10110
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    54,626
    Blog Entries
    2
    Load Metric
    65658877
    PART 2

    Enter Groupe Bernard Tapie

    The DOJ seized Full Tilt, and the owners surrendered it to the US government as part of a plea deal. What interest would the US government have in a defunct and disgraced poker site?

    It was perceived that the site still had value -- such as for the software and userbase -- and might be worth selling to a bidder which agreed not to run the site for US player.

    The problem was finding a buyer. The US government stated that the proceeds of the sale would possibly be used to pay back the US players. But was anyone really interested in buying it for anything but bargain-basement pricing?

    In early 2012, some hope was found in a French investment firm called Groupe Bernard Tapie. They had openly expressed and interest in purchasing Full Tilt. However, there were lots of issues. Among them, Groupe Tapie announced that several pros owed millions to Full Tilt, including Erick Lindrgen, Phil Ivey, Layne Flack, David Benyamine, and Barry Greenstein. Tapie was attempting to get the pros to agree to pay back this money prior to their purchase, which never made sense from any practical standpoint.

    These revelations also caused some embarrassment for these pros, as the previously wealthy and charitable Barry Greenstein had to address "broke" rumors, and it came out that Lindgren was accidentally double-loaned $2 million, when only one $2 million loan was intended -- and he paid back neither! The pros refused to cooperate, and nothing was paid.



    It turned out to be a lot of hot air. Groupe Tapie backed out of the negotiations, and Full Tilt still had no buyer.



    Pokerstars to the Rescue!

    Pokerstars still had their own case to resolve. They had a desire to enter the US market, and they also wanted to appear cooperative so as to reduce the chance that the company's executives would be aggressively criminally charged.

    While CEO Isai Scheinberg did not surrender, Pokerstars did agree to a $750 million purchase of Full Tilt in July 2012, which was much more about making peace with the US government than actually acquiring their former competitor.

    That $750 million went into a fund to pay back US players, and while the process was mismanaged and took a long time (as well as screwed anyone who was a site pro or affiliate), most players did get paid back in full.

    There was plenty of money left over, and even though the government indicated chances were slim that it could be used to pay back UB victims, indeed that's what happened. In 2017, six years after Black Friday, UB victims of the 2011 shutdown were able to make claims on their money.



    The Aftermath

    This may sound like a happy ending and all ended well, but there were many ways poker was harmed by Black Friday.

    It instantly caused a huge contraction in funding within the community, as the lucrative online sites, which had been driving much of the poker media and sponsoring lots of players, were no longer much of a factor.

    More importantly, many online poker grinders were "out of a job". Without Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and UB -- the three sites providing most of the action for middle and high stakes poker pros in the US -- where could they play? There weren't many options. A few small networks still existed, most notably the Merge Network, America's Cardroom, and Bodog, but for the most part, the pickings were slim and the limits were much lower.

    This also hurt live cardrooms, as the online poker craze which inspired a huge expansion in live poker was no longer present.

    The future of poker seemed fairly bleak, and it seemed possibly destined to fall into pre-2003 obscurity.




    The 1961 Wire Act -- 50 Years Later

    Online poker was illegal due to two laws in the US -- one old, one fairly new.

    The newer one was the 2006 UIGEA, which made it illegal for gambling or monetary transactions to be transmitted over the internet, which was the basis for the 2011 Black Friday busts. However, this didn't make internet gambling explicitly illegal -- only to make it a crime to accept bets or funds if it's illegal in the state where the transaction is taking place. Theoretically, if online poker were to be legalized by the states, the UIGEA wouldn't apply in those states.

    However, the 1961 Wire Act also existed, and made it illegal to transmit information or money related to sportsbetting. While this would seem to be unrelated to online poker, the DOJ had interpreted it to apply to all gambling. This could have been a hindrance to online poker ever becoming legal in the US. Fortunately, in September 2011, very possibly caused by the attention brought to online poker after the Black Friday busts six months earlier, the DOJ re-interpreted the 1961 Wire Act, and decided it only applied to sportsbetting.

    Now the door was open for online poker to be legalized. The states just had to be interested in doing it.



    END PART 2

    PART 3 COMING LATER

     
    Comments
      
      splitthis: For the effort

  5. #5
    Diamond dwai's Avatar
    Reputation
    1653
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Posts
    7,855
    Load Metric
    65658877
    I remember the day quite well, I remember the DD marathon show, I remember being really worried then I remembered even in 2011 poker was faggot

     
    Comments
      
      Sheesfaced: lol

  6. #6
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
    Reputation
    10110
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    54,626
    Blog Entries
    2
    Load Metric
    65658877
    PART 3


    The Great Pretenders

    Some sites attempted to fill the void created by Black Friday, but it simply wasn't the same. In addition to the number of players and limits offered both being much lower, these sites had noticeable flaws, many of which their large predecessors didn't.

    The software wasn't as good.

    Customer support was terrible.

    Bots ran rampant.

    Worst yet, there were payout issues. Lock Poker was the worst example of this, evolving from a shady-but-growing site into an outright scam. Many poker pros, hungry for post-Black-Friday action, lost a lot of money to the Lock Poker scam. While CEO Jennifer Larson was the main person culpable, there was a lot of blame to go around within the community, as well. Formerly respected pros Annete Obrestad, Melanie Weisner, Bryan Pellegrino, Mike Mizrachi, and Eric Lynch all had various levels of culpability in promoting Lock after it was clear it was a scam, or making excuses for their obvious insolvency. While some like Mizrachi were mostly doing it out of ignorance or apathy, others like Weisner selfishly exploited the situation for personal gain, while poker room manager Lynch allowed his good name to be used to earn undeserved credibility for the site.

    Other networks such as Merge were less troubled, but still had their share of drama, and only had inconsistent action above low stakes.

    Bodog eventually became Bovada for its US market, and somehow they avoided being busted, despite their history in the illegal online gambling industry dating back to the year 2000. However, Bovada also introduced the new concept of anonymous tables and opaque player lobbies -- which turned off a lot of players. To Bovada's credit, they continued to process payouts with relatively few problems.

    Still, none of these sites re-created the experience seen on the bigger sites -- two of which had shuttered, and one of which (Pokerstars) was no longer serving the US market.

    They were all the Great Pretenders.






    Legalized Online Poker Comes to the US -- Kind Of

    In early 2013, an announcement was made, which excited the poker world:

    Legalized online poker was here. Ultimate Poker (not to be confused with Ultimatebet/UB) was about to launch in Nevada, and would be the country's first-ever legalized online poker site.

    There was much to be excited about. Even though the site would only exist for those physically located in Nevada, there were plans to expand to New Jersey once online poker became legal there, and perhaps to many more states soon enough.

    They spent $25 million to develop their own proprietary software, and hired a lot of longtime poker industry figures to manage and help develop the entire thing. The future looked bright for online poker once again!

    However, when Ultimate Poker launched shortly after their announcement, it became clear that there were issues -- and lots of them. The proprietary software was buggy, crashed, and lacked basic features. It was discovered that former UB cheater Greg Pierson's Iovation company was performing the identity checks for the site, which didn't sit well with the community. When this was brought to Ultimate Poker's attention, they flippantly told the community tough luck, until enough shame finally changed their course and they fired Iovation. The company was also slow to fix bugs, and instead put most of their resources into trying to rapidly develop new features and get ready for the New Jersey market.

    It turned out that Ultimate Poker was highly mismanaged. Upper management at parent company Stations Casinos were interfering in decisions made by longtime poker industry figures within the company, and apparently the employees weren't treated particularly well, either. Ultimate Poker lasted just over 18 months, from April 30, 2013 to November 14, 2014.

    Terrence Chan, who had once worked customer service at Pokerstars, was the head of customer service at Ultimate Poker. He released an interesting video after the site's closure, explaining many of the internal problems there.



    Ultimate Poker was an example of a company too focused on being first to market and on expansion, while providing a lousy product. It was a bad start for legalized online poker. But was there possibly any hope?



    Enter WSOP.com

    WSOP.com, which had long been simply the information website for the World Series of Poker, also stated a desire to get into the legalized online poker market. However, unlike Ultimate Poker, they weren't particularly worried about being first to market. Instead, they took their time, opening on September 19, 2013 -- about 5 months after Ultimate Poker.

    WSOP.com was managed by Bill Rini, who seemed on the surface to be a good hire, having worked as a software manager for several other online poker sites in the 2000s.

    WSOP.com also avoided the proprietary software pitfalls experienced by Ultimate Poker, as they simply bought the rights to lease software from established poker network 888. Two months after launching in Nevada, they also launched in New Jersey, on the day online poker was officially legalized there (November 21, 2013).

    Unfortunately, while the software on WSOP was more stable than Ultimate Poker, they had plenty of issues of their own. The 888 software wasn't particularly good or robust. Support was outsourced to foreign countries, and bordered on useless. The site was marketed very poorly, with weak promotions which failed to grab anyone's interest, and a VIP program seemingly lifted from Pokerstars, which didn't play well in a market where many players were only in town occasionally. Worst yet, manager Bill Rini turned out to be a terrible hire as manager, as he was both incompetent and incredibly thin-skinned. After being criticized on social media, Rini effectively shut down, protected his Twitter, and became unreachable.

    Another problem surfaced, and that was lack of interest in single-state online poker. Simply put, the player pool wasn't big enough, and games just didn't go that often. It didn't help that an incompetent jerk was running things, but WSOP.com was destined to be fairly dead no matter who was at the helm. The same lack of activity was apparent at WSOP New Jersey's competitor Borgata/Party. Despite what was eventually a monopoly in the Nevada market, WSOP.com languished with low traffic.

    Speaking of low traffic, WSOP also launched in Delaware in November 2013, but the site got almost no traffic because of Delaware's tiny size.

    The future of online poker looked grim for awhile. While other states either had little interest in online poker, or couldn't get legislation passed authorizing it, the three existing states were basically non-factors for legalized online poker. In fact, many online poker players from Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware chose to continue playing on the illegal sites still operating, due to higher activity levels.

    It also became clear that online poker at the state level wasn't very lucrative for anyone -- the state or the site operator. In fact, it's estimated that WSOP.com Nevada was losing money, while the New Jersey sites were only surviving because casino games were online as well, whereas in Nevada that wasn't allowed. Further expansion was looking less and less likely, though there was some hope that huge population states like California could change that. Also, perhaps if the player pools could be combined between states, that could also help.

    For the moment, it wasn't looking good.



    END PART 3

    PART 4 COMING LATER

     
    Comments
      
      splitthis:

  7. #7
    Diamond Walter Sobchak's Avatar
    Reputation
    1243
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Location
    Bowling Alley
    Posts
    8,875
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Quote Originally Posted by dwai View Post
    I remember the day quite well, I remember the DD marathon show, I remember being really worried then I remembered even in 2011 poker was faggot
    As do I. Micon always shut down radio too quickly even when there were interesting things happening. But there was some absolutely classic shit on NWP/DD.


     
    Comments
      
      dwai: yup he did shut it down

    SOBCHAK SECURITY 213-799-7798

    PRESIDENT JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

  8. #8
    Silver BlunderMaker's Avatar
    Reputation
    118
    Join Date
    Mar 2017
    Posts
    571
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Remember Cake poker?

     
    Comments
      
      DrPeters: yup

  9. #9
    Cubic Zirconia
    Reputation
    24
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    41
    Load Metric
    65658877
    To be fair, Micon didn't shut the show down because of digital poker. In fact, digital poker wasn't even available anywhere in Las Vegas at that time, as the fail tables had already been removed from Excalibur, etc. He was very much into bitcoin at that time, which everyone seemed to be facepalming him for, especially Druff. Also, the show was over 5 hours long and the fellas were starting to beat a dead horse with the speculation of the status of online poker going forward, so it was the right decision to end the show IMO. Also, Quadjacks.com was already a major player in the poker media scene, and they did not "blow up huge" because they ran with the ball that Donkdown dropped as Druff claims. The truth was that a "snake in the grass" at Quadjacks named Zak was coming to Donkdown as friend and ally for many months prior to this, but was stealing all of Donkdown's material and using it as their own on Quadjacks ! They would interview the exact same guests as Donkdown literally within hours (Iceman, Kathy Liebert, etc.) and even went so far as to "warn" potential guests on Donkdown radio that Brandon, Druff, and Micon were all bad guys and to not agree to go on their show. In fact, they even contacted an up and coming porn star by the name of Alicia Longennecker A.K.A. "Young Smooth" and convinced her not to appear on DD radio for that very reason ! Fucking snake in the grass.

  10. #10
    Cubic Zirconia
    Reputation
    24
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Posts
    41
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Also, one other poker site that was available for a short while after Black Friday was Heropoker.com It was run by a great guy named David Jung, who posted on Donkdown as "HeroPokerCEO" and was very a very generous sponsor of the radio show and supporter of the site. In return, Micon made the most embarrassing and cringeworthy radio advertisements for Hero Poker and actually thought they were of decent quality. LOL The radio ads were all backhanded insults at Hero Poker Pros and the mention of Gavin Griffin's crooked penis, all done with Micon's annoying autotune voice. It's a miracle that David continued to sponsor and support Donkdown as long as he did. Hero Poker eventually closed their business to US customers around the time that the internal feuding on Donkdown started, and that was that.

  11. #11
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
    Reputation
    10110
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    54,626
    Blog Entries
    2
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Quote Originally Posted by tbuck27 View Post
    Also, one other poker site that was available for a short while after Black Friday was Heropoker.com It was run by a great guy named David Jung, who posted on Donkdown as "HeroPokerCEO" and was very a very generous sponsor of the radio show and supporter of the site. In return, Micon made the most embarrassing and cringeworthy radio advertisements for Hero Poker and actually thought they were of decent quality. LOL The radio ads were all backhanded insults at Hero Poker Pros and the mention of Gavin Griffin's crooked penis, all done with Micon's annoying autotune voice. It's a miracle that David continued to sponsor and support Donkdown as long as he did. Hero Poker eventually closed their business to US customers around the time that the internal feuding on Donkdown started, and that was that.
    David was a nice guy.

    He also confided me at the time that Lock Poker (then on the Merge Network) was poaching his players with insane secret rakeback deals, and he was furious about it. He said that Lock was pretty much screwing all of the non-Carbon skins, and he was right.

  12. #12
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
    Reputation
    10110
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    54,626
    Blog Entries
    2
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Quote Originally Posted by BlunderMaker View Post
    Remember Cake poker?
    Oh, do I!

    The games were great there for awhile.

    It was on Cake where I had my best-ever 2-day performance in limit holdem, where I won $62k at 50-100, which is equal to 1240 big blinds!! This was in 2007. In limit holdem that's unheard of. I've never even come close to that before or since, in the same timespan.

    Unfortunately, the major fish in the game believed I was cheating him via collusion, and reported me to security. The one guy working security (yes, they only had one guy), named Tony, decided the fish was right, and they closed my account and stated the intention to confiscate my balance.

    I was sure I was fucked with no recourse, but somehow the idiot reversed his decision later in the week.

    The most baffling thing was to see Lee Jones leave Pokerstars and then join that Cake failsite instead.

  13. #13
    Inaugural Spring Classic Champion HoodedN's Avatar
    Reputation
    277
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Posts
    1,104
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Much like 9/11, every poker player remembers where they were when they received the news of the events regarding Black Friday. I myself was sitting in my car outside my ex girlfriend’s apartment, waiting for her to get home from work when my cousin called me with the news. I quickly raced home and attempted to log on, only to be greeted with the ominous image of:

    Name:  DBC5A24E-4824-4983-AE3E-A15E1FFE53BF.jpeg
Views: 335
Size:  55.4 KB

    Luckily for me, even then in my youth, I never kept much money on the site. Not because I didn’t trust them, but because I needed the money to support myself, so cashing out and depositing were very frequent for me. At the time the sites shut down, I had only ~$300 on stars and even less on full tilt. I never played even 1 hand of real money poker on UB. I realize others weren’t so lucky.

    To this day I wonder what my life would be like had Black Friday never happened. Sure I never stopped playing poker, and deposited on lock poker much like everyone else shortly after. But they didn’t have a sunday million. gg
    #ToddsPlan

  14. #14
    Diamond Walter Sobchak's Avatar
    Reputation
    1243
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Location
    Bowling Alley
    Posts
    8,875
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by BlunderMaker View Post
    Remember Cake poker?
    Oh, do I!

    The games were great there for awhile.

    It was on Cake where I had my best-ever 2-day performance in limit holdem, where I won $62k at 50-100, which is equal to 1240 big blinds!! This was in 2007. In limit holdem that's unheard of. I've never even come close to that before or since, in the same timespan.

    Unfortunately, the major fish in the game believed I was cheating him via collusion, and reported me to security. The one guy working security (yes, they only had one guy), named Tony, decided the fish was right, and they closed my account and stated the intention to confiscate my balance.

    I was sure I was fucked with no recourse, but somehow the idiot reversed his decision later in the week.

    The most baffling thing was to see Lee Jones leave Pokerstars and then join that Cake failsite instead.
    I was never a big online player but I enjoyed Cake due to the easy games. They also had that promo where they'd give you golden "cards" as a form of bonus points and you could use them to enter freerolls and whatnot.

    Get your slice!

    SOBCHAK SECURITY 213-799-7798

    PRESIDENT JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., THE GREAT AND POWERFUL

  15. #15
    Gold Cerveza Fria's Avatar
    Reputation
    448
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Location
    South Florida
    Posts
    1,793
    Load Metric
    65658877

     
    Comments
      
      Walter Sobchak: jazz rep

  16. #16
    Bronze d1sposition's Avatar
    Reputation
    73
    Join Date
    Sep 2015
    Posts
    359
    Load Metric
    65658877
    PFA POY once

  17. #17
    Platinum FRANKRIZZO's Avatar
    Reputation
    482
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Posts
    3,393
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Thread made me think back on lock poker. Biggest scumbag was Shane Bridges . Wonder what he is up to today. He showed off a huge engagement ring and got married last piece of news I heard from him. Years ago.
    Last edited by FRANKRIZZO; 04-16-2021 at 11:40 AM.

  18. #18
    Diamond TheXFactor's Avatar
    Reputation
    1199
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Posts
    6,934
    Load Metric
    65658877
    Imagine if this pandemic happened back in 2010 instead.

    Full Tilt Poker, UB, PokerStars would have made an even bigger fortune. So I'm really glad that didn't happen.

    Online poker will always be a failure in America.
    Why? Software sucks. You can't play with the rest of the world. It is more of a nuisance and will never become popular.

    Poker both live and online will never become as popular and fun as it was before Black Friday.

    Phil Hellmuth Jr still needs to answer for his continued support of UB after they scammed everyone. Phil and Russ Hamilton should have faced criminal and civil charges.

    Also, remember that the U.S. government kept all the unclaimed money from Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars which was tens of millions of dollars.



     
    Comments
      
      d1sposition: Fuck You Hellmuth

  19. #19
    Bronze d1sposition's Avatar
    Reputation
    73
    Join Date
    Sep 2015
    Posts
    359
    Load Metric
    65658877
    PFA POY once

  20. #20
    Bronze Daniel72's Avatar
    Reputation
    58
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Posts
    393
    Load Metric
    65658877
    @xfactor: you can kindof play with the rest of the world: on ACR - I see there all sorts of people from Russia to America

    Bfizz11 (turbokings on twitch) always grinds a full MTT schedule and lots of tables with only three rooms: Sportsbetting (sister site of Betonline), Americas Cardroom and Ignition
    Winner of the $555 freeroll

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. Black Friday deals
    By NaturalBornHustler in forum Flying Stupidity
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 11-24-2014, 07:54 PM
  2. Black Friday 2013
    By chinamaniac in forum Flying Stupidity
    Replies: 31
    Last Post: 11-30-2013, 03:00 AM
  3. Replies: 31
    Last Post: 11-24-2012, 05:31 PM
  4. Replies: 1
    Last Post: 11-24-2012, 05:30 AM