This time last year was one sad sad sad day for online poker in the U.S. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first found out, I doubt I'll ever forget it. It's kind of like when Elvis died, yeah I'm that old, or when Princess Diana died. I remember where I was and what I doing when I heard about those two tragedies too.
I was just starting to actually become a consistent winner at the game. On Black Friday I was getting ready to go out and run some errands and looked at my phone and saw an email from Lupe Soto and LIPS about the indictments. I remember throwing my phone on the bed a saying some things about it. I didn't realize the full extent of what was happening until a couple of hours later when I got home and saw all the talk on Skype, Facebook and Twitter and realized I couldn't register for any games on PokerStars.
I had over $4000 in my account and of course panicked a bit about that. I tried to make a withdrawal but later went back and cancelled it. One of my very first reactions, and this was way before anyone knew about the mess Full Tilt was in, was thank God my money is on PokerStars. I always felt that it was safe and that I would eventually get it. As everyone knows PokerStars came through and had everyone paid in a very short period of time.
PokerStars was starting SCOOP and I had already won a couple of satellite seats through the blogger freerolls and I was looking forward to the SCOOP games. It was the first time I was actually rolled to play most of the mid stakes games and I had great hopes of doing well. The ladies Sunday $55 had just started back up and I had final tabled 2 of the first 3 games and had gotten to play with Vanessa Selbst and Liv Boeree, I had even busted Liv in one the game and had gotten doubled up by Vanessa in another. These things like everything to do with Stars was over thanks to corporate greed, political corruption and government meddling in our private lives. Thousands of professional online players were out of work in the worse economy in decades. A billion dollar industry was shut down and all for what? I'm still trying to figure that one out.
Well that's the past, it's still sad but it's over and there is nothing we can do about it. On to the present, of course I'm still playing online and I'll continue to as long as there is a place to play. It's been a rough year with lots of poker ups and downs. I've managed to bust a bankroll more than once during the year but I had a good month in October and the last couple of months have been the best ever. Hopefully the DOJ will leave the remaining sites alone for awhile and things will continue on an upward trend. My game has never been better and it's improving daily. I have to say I don't think my game would be where it is without Black Friday. Making money on PokerStars was so much easier than it has been on Merge. For so long the competition was so tough there was no choice but to work hard on improvements. So I guess as they say every cloud has a silver lining and when one door closes another one opens.
Nevada and now New Jersey seem to be making great strides in legalizing online poker within their states and maybe this year we'll finally see some good federal legislation pushed through. We can continue to work for it and to hope but at least the states are starting to move in the right direction.
Well Happy Black Friday anniversary to everyone, such a sad day it was.
