Happy New Year and I hope Poker is good to you this year. This post is a quick collection of my thoughts in relation to poker in 2011. Last year will be remembered as the year online poker changed forever. 15th April 2011, or “Black Friday” as it is now known in the poker world was the day that online pokers golden era officially ended, although the real golden era was some years before that when many online poker players sat at high stakes games everyday when they should have been gambling it up much lower.
We begin 2012 noting that unfortunately Full Tilt Poker is still incapacitated with many players bankrolls still trapped. Many players continue to wonder whether their bankrolls will ever be returned to them although the Bernard Tapie Group (BTG) are still negotiating to purchase Full Tilt which offers some light at the end of the tunnel for those who have suffered losses. I hope this acquisition goes through and enables players bankrolls to be returned, it was not their fault that Full Tilt were badly managing their accounts so their money was not segregated. Nobody could have predicted that such a wildly successful and profitable company would come to such an abrupt end, however, this should serve as a lesson to us all about the volatility of the unregulated poker markets. Even if you think a site is secure in its status and its future, you never know. There is no guarantees, but at least go in with your eyes open and understanding what risks you are taking when you deposit your money.
On a more positive note Poker players from the UK continued to showcase their talents in live poker tournaments. The standout performance can from Sam Trickett from Leeds, who posted a win in the Partouche Poker Tour for 1,000,000 euros as well as many other great results that netted him total winnings of over $3.5 million for the year. I watched Sky Poker’s coverage of their online poker tournaments and when Sam was doing commentary in studio I have to say he was excellent. It is no surprise to me that he has done so well and he will be looking forward to the Aussie Millions this month. Jake Cody also had a great year, capturing the fastest ever Triple Crown and cementing his place amongst the very best live multi-table tournament players. Somewhat belatedly in my view, Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman also joined the live elite, securing winnings of $2.4 million in 2011 after dominating the online poker tournament scene for many years. Not as surprising that none of these players received a mention in the annual Sports Personality of the Year awards though!
Further afield, the high stakes live cash game arena held quite a few surprises, especially when Phil Ivey arrived in Macau to enjoy some of their crazy action after sitting out the WSOP in protest of the Full Tilt issue. He was later joined by Tom Dwan and there are regular reports on their progress on the larger poker forums. For now, there is not enough action online at present so the nosebleed games are being contested offline. Unfortunately railing their profit and loss is tougher because of the lack of tracking. If online poker makes a comeback in 2012, the action will hopefully go back online so the huge amount of railbirds have something to do! What for 2012 then? We await news on both the legal position in the USA in relation to poker and whether rumours of a Facebook real money client comes to fruition.
Stay tuned to our radio show for the latest news roundups every Monday at 8.30pm GMT with Mal (me) and LinuxGDog1666 (Gareth) and Happy New Year to you all!
