Black Friday. Do you remember

dudemanstan

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Do you remember what you were doing on Black Friday? Were any of you in the middle of a game when it happened?

I wasn't around then, but I would think it would be a memory that would stick with you.

So tell me your story CC. What were you doing? What was it like? Thanks.
 
zEric7x

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I didn't know that online poker existed then. I only started getting interested afterwards. My dad played at full tilt and poker stars and I remember him complaining about getting kicked out.
 
Propane Goat

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I had no idea it even happened. I had watched some wsop coverage in 2005 and was really intrigued, and a couple of people in my office were donking it up on FTP play money then but I never looked into it any further because I was too busy.
 
Enzo1089

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I got into online poker about 2 months ago, and being in the US I never really knew how good pokerstars/FullTilt was before the events of Black Friday.

I do hope that the whole deal with the Atlantic City casino Resorts goes through so that PokerStars can get back into the US market. Maybe then the people who haven't ever played on PokerStars for real money can finally see what all the fuss is about.
 
absoluthamm

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I do hope that the whole deal with the Atlantic City casino Resorts goes through so that PokerStars can get back into the US market. Maybe then the people who haven't ever played on PokerStars for real money can finally see what all the fuss is about.

If the Pokerstars/AC deal does go through, it won't really bring them back into the US marketplace. At least not in any way resembling how it used to be. At the max right now they might be able to allow intrastate play, but you'll likely end up having less people to play against than you would if you were playing on one of the current US accessible sites.
 
WVHillbilly

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I was working and read about it here on CC.

Relive all the fun here if you dare: https://www.cardschat.com/forum/poker-news-events-63/

I tried to cash out from FTP and spent my 200k points there on random things I thought I could sell. Of course the cashout was never processed and all my points purchases were refunded.

Really shitty day all around.
 
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TeUnit

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yes i remember it well, was horrible day in history for poker players
 
BigCountryAA

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I was sleeping. I woke up and went to log onto FT....no good...then PS.....no good...WTF. SO i went to their websites and seen the DOJ splash page and knew the shit had just hit the fan.
 
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DunningKruger

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I was online and on 2p2 most of that afternoon along with pretty much the rest of the universe.
 
dudemanstan

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I was working and read about it here on CC.

Relive all the fun here if you dare: https://www.cardschat.com/forum/poker-news-events-63/

I tried to cash out from FTP and spent my 200k points there on random things I thought I could sell. Of course the cashout was never processed and all my points purchases were refunded.

Really shitty day all around.
Thanks. I'm going to read this while I eat my cereal :)
 
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I read in a email sent by some poker forum, so, I went to the FTP site and saw that was true. Even not being so affected now, I wish that poker could be like the old times.
 
daredeviljo

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I read in a email sent by some poker forum, so, I went to the FTP site and saw that was true. Even not being so affected now, I wish that poker could be like the old times.

Likewise, I am from canada so it did not affect me too much, but I rememeber when reading upon the forums I came across this. What was interesting was the fact that the American playing took up a big percentage of poker players previous to Black Friday and It did not come across to me thta none of them were playing real money tables. Full Tilt. Just screwed me over with the money situation but other than that it wasnt as bad for me.
 
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I came home after class and logged on to Full Tilt. I was excited because I received my 1st rakeback payment and it added almost $2 per hour to my earnings. I thought to myself "self, a few more buy ins and you will be rolled for $100nl :) ." I then loaded three Rush poker $50nl tables, and played maybe five hands. Everything locked up and my hopes for online poker were crushed forever. :<(
 
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This was a terrible day in online poker---
all my accounts were canned- pstars, ftp, and AP-- it was a terrible thing--

I was not playing when it happened, but a couple of days before it happened I won a bit of money in a stars tourney with some 30K people registering-- I never see so many entrants anymore in any tourney--- those big ones were fun

but im glad most of my bankroll was with stars-- easy "forced cashout"

come to think of it, I dont even know how much I had on full tilt, but it was less than $100---

Is there any way to find out how much I had and or try and get that back?-- I know its really nothing much compared to some other poor souls, but I would rather get it back-- Robbed of my freedom is bad enough
 
cardriverx

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first things first.. DOJ page hit FTP and PS.. the sites were still up though at the time. i was on way to gym reading everything on smartphone. got home and FTP was down for US players.

Also remembered US players could continue to play on FTP as long as they never got the new FTP update.

Was ridiculous cause 2 days before black friday i finished 3rd in a $11 Rush Sng for $370ish or so and was really excited as I thought I was coming around on this poker thing.

oh well
 
SofaKingCrazy

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I started playing hold'em for the 1st time September 2010. Started from $0 on pokerstars learning as I played the PSO games and any other freeroll. Built up a roll of $50+ and was working 4/15 when the DOJ shut stars down but 4/16 was my birthday. Homeclubs on pokerstars were out for a while by then and I had set up a game in my club that I and several others had already reg'd for a week prior.

That was probably the most somber game ever played knowing that we would never play for cash on pokerstars again but I guess since we had already paid and reg'd for it we were allowed to still play.

I immediately went out and found other sites to once again start over. Watched a few of them disappear as well such as Minted, Feltstars, Doyle's Room (they came back a year or two later but I never did) and most recently Ironduke which Merge Gaming sent my funds to my Carbon account so that actually went fairly smooth considering it's Merge. (they're slow to respond)

Lesson learned, never keep all of your eggs in one basket.
 
vinnie

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I remember getting off of work and getting home. I did some normal household routine stuff and then sat down for my normal Friday poker session. I couldn't play on any of the sites. I checked their webpages and saw the notices. I was completely freaked out. I didn't have a ton of money on the sites, just a few thousand. But, I had been building up from $0 across the sites and was finally getting to the point where I could make some decent side-income from playing. It was devastating.

I spent the entire weekend on my computer, reading the news and forums for any and all information I could glean. More than anything, I remember Monday.

Every Monday, my aide and I would talk about our weekends. She would inevitably ask me how my poker had gone, because that was essentially my life on the weekends. The usual conversation would start with, "I made a few hundred." Or, "I had a bad weekend and lost a X amount of money." I remember that she asked me and all I could say was, "On Friday, I lost over $3,000 dollars without even sitting down at a table."

I had money across all three sites that went down, plus some money on Merge. I withdrew everything except $200 on Merge (just in case they were next). At least, I got that amount off. I never got any money back from AP. And, we all know how Full Tilt went down. I got my Stars money.

I kept playing on Merge, but I shouldn't have. I was on life-tilt. The $200 I had on there was as good as gone. I went from playing 6-12 tables of 25nl-50nl to 4 tables of $4nl. I just couldn't believe how low I had sunk. In a couple months, I had spewed off the remainder of my Merge money. I had money to go play live, but I lost the confidence to do that. So I stopped playing except for occasional play money games online with friends (who had never played real money anyway and didn't understand).

I remember feeling like it was all over for me. I loved poker. I had played since I was a kid. I had believed it was going to be something that would bring me extra spending money and allow me to live a better life. The day I accepted that it might never happen is the day I took $5,000 out of my "poker" account and spent it on a fence for my yard. It's a damn fine fence, but it also reminds me of how I gave up.

After a few months off, I eventually decided to get back on the horse. I played a few freerolls and worked on grinding the money back up. Didn't have much success until last December. Bovada was giving out $10 without any deposit or play requirements. I signed up and started building again on there. I am currently back up to 25nl and hope to get to 50nl soon. I know the break was probably good for me. I spent a lot of time working on non-poker related parts of my life. But, I still imagine where I would be if that hadn't happened.

I guess we'll see what happens in the future. I realize now that it was always a gamble. I had just assumed my bankroll was only at risk when I sat down with it on a table. Now, I am a little more cautious and realistic about the possibility of losing it all again to something I can't control.
 
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I was actually playing a SNG at FTP that night - or maybe planning to play. I can't remember for sure, but I was definitely on FTP that night. There were players talking about it in the game chat, so I did a Google search and think I landed on this site. The shut-down apparently occurred in chunks, as some players had already lost access, but I could still get in.

I was pretty bummed, because I felt like I was just hitting my stride. I had settled into playing single table SNGs almost exclusively and was beginning to build a little bankroll. I was also just started playing the Steps tournaments, trying to win a seat to the Main Event. I had two Step 3 tickets at the time the site shut down.

I was originally sympathetic to Full Tilt, thinking they were the victim of a misguided DOJ that was hassling the poker community at the expense of more pressing issues. Now, I hope every one of those thieves at FTP rots in prison.
 
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Yeah I remember I was working that day and when I got off that afternoon I was expecting to go home and play in a few online tournaments at poker stars and maybe some home games. I was shocked when I couldn't login and had to read the forum just to find out what happened. It made it harder to find a good place to play.
 
zveri666

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I remember that day. The first time I played online poker was on Fulltilt and until black friday I havent played anywhere else. I remember trying to log in and it did not work. Then I went on the fulltilt website and it said "Servers under maintenance" or something like that, with no mention of where its gonna be back up. So I wanted till the next day then opened up a stars account :). The closure didn't affect me much since I had under 20$ on my account.
 
luckytvguy

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Oh,I did not know what had happened.I just found my Fulltilt account was blocked.Then I searched on the net,and known the bad thing.
 
sam1chips

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I can remember trying to fall asleep, and hearing it on ESPN!
 
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I remember that I read it pokernews . And try to go my FT account ....
 
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Gukeriporu

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But now these memories are gone, as we can now use great FT again ! And money is back, thanks to PokerStars !
 
Himanshu

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i was not playing poker at that time so i don't and full tilt is such a good site to play now.
 
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