dj11
Legend
Silver Level
I'm almost surprised there was no fanfare.
5 years ago we were all in a tizzy to put it mildly. I soon got depressed.
We survived, well, some of us did anyway. I attribute a lot of the credit for helping us survive to CC. Have gone cold turkey several times in my life from a variety of constructs of my own devise, I was not prepared, nor willing to go cold turkey from OLP. CC was several thing to a lot of us then.
It was a place to vent, and boy was there a lot of venting going on!
Over the early months, we were scrambling to find any real money poker gaming. At that time every other site beside PS or FT was a little operation. OK, Party was pretty big, but they had pulled out of the US long ago, so really they didn't factor into our equation.
At the time, Merge was almost viable, but so discombobulated that while money in was no problem, money out was. Even thru their dis-discombobulation (WTF???) that really hasn't changed much. They had the games we needed at a schedule that served us pretty well.
bodog was changing, as was Cake, and all the associated skin.... the whole OLP landscape was in shambles.
A very large portion of the US OLP player pool just gave up. Based on published numbers (from the DOJ and Stars) and a recent guesstimate of current OLP player counts saying that 90%+ of the old players gave up is probably no stretch at all. Add in an improving economy, and that number wasn't the economic catastrophe it might have been if BF had happened 3 or 4 years earlier.
It is my opinion that the US players who persevered were the better players, capable of carrying on a tradition of US domination on a global stage. Problem being that we really no longer had that OLP global stage.
I like reading comments from non-US players hoping for a return of the US players like we are the missing fish in their ponds.
Does it look like we will ever return to those heady days? No.
I can not think of any other human activity that is as unregulated yet restrictive as OLP. Almost every other product in the world can be purchased online, across borders, with little hassle. Hell, buying military weapons across borders is probably easier!
5 years ago we were all in a tizzy to put it mildly. I soon got depressed.
We survived, well, some of us did anyway. I attribute a lot of the credit for helping us survive to CC. Have gone cold turkey several times in my life from a variety of constructs of my own devise, I was not prepared, nor willing to go cold turkey from OLP. CC was several thing to a lot of us then.
It was a place to vent, and boy was there a lot of venting going on!
Over the early months, we were scrambling to find any real money poker gaming. At that time every other site beside PS or FT was a little operation. OK, Party was pretty big, but they had pulled out of the US long ago, so really they didn't factor into our equation.
At the time, Merge was almost viable, but so discombobulated that while money in was no problem, money out was. Even thru their dis-discombobulation (WTF???) that really hasn't changed much. They had the games we needed at a schedule that served us pretty well.
bodog was changing, as was Cake, and all the associated skin.... the whole OLP landscape was in shambles.
A very large portion of the US OLP player pool just gave up. Based on published numbers (from the DOJ and Stars) and a recent guesstimate of current OLP player counts saying that 90%+ of the old players gave up is probably no stretch at all. Add in an improving economy, and that number wasn't the economic catastrophe it might have been if BF had happened 3 or 4 years earlier.
It is my opinion that the US players who persevered were the better players, capable of carrying on a tradition of US domination on a global stage. Problem being that we really no longer had that OLP global stage.
I like reading comments from non-US players hoping for a return of the US players like we are the missing fish in their ponds.
Does it look like we will ever return to those heady days? No.
I can not think of any other human activity that is as unregulated yet restrictive as OLP. Almost every other product in the world can be purchased online, across borders, with little hassle. Hell, buying military weapons across borders is probably easier!