On April 15, 2011 the Online Poker Boom went to the Online Poker Doom. If you were not playing online before then you have no idea what you missed.

I've been playing online since 2004. I was discussing this with someone the other day. You like freerolls (I do) back then you could play 7 to 10 Forum and Affiliate freerolls a day. On the weekends even more. Wasn't unusual for me to have 4 or more different poker sites open at one time playing freerolls. The sites themselves had many free tournaments also.

Not only that, but tons of freeze out tournaments or tournaments with 1 hour late register , not 3 or 4 hours like now. Tournaments with no re-buys were available also. All these tournaments had all different levels of buy-ins.

So be grateful (I am) that CardsChat has stepped up and provides us with many free tournaments.

Take care !!!!!

That was bitter pill to swallow that day. Never got anything back from UB and AP. Wasn't until about 5 years ago the FT settled up. Really soured me with online poker. Never felt the same about it ever since that day.

Nice to see CardsChat doing things to thrive in what was a death sentence to majority of the forums. Nice post Wagon!

I have to say that online poker was so much better before black friday, a lot more players and better tournaments than today. I also used to play in several poker rooms at the same time, and there was a lot of good rooms (not like is today). After Black Friday, I even stopped playing online poker for couple of years, only came back one or two years ago.

The world had a problem with poker players making 400k a month but not other athletes making millions for their craft per year. Lol the irony

Originally Posted by wagon596

I've been playing online since 2004. I was discussing this with someone the other day. You like freerolls (I do) back then you could play 7 to 10 Forum and Affiliate freerolls a day. On the weekends even more. Wasn't unusual for me to have 4 or more different poker sites open at one time playing freerolls. The sites themselves had many free tournaments also.

Not only that, but tons of freeze out tournaments or tournaments with 1 hour late register , not 3 or 4 hours like now. Tournaments with no re-buys were available also. All these tournaments had all different levels of buy-ins.

So be grateful (I am) that CardsChat has stepped up and provides us with many free tournaments.

Freezeout tournaments were the norm back then. Rebuy tournaments were not as common back then, and I tended to stay away from those anyway. I still prefer the freezeout format myself, though I will, when I feel it's +EV, rebuy.

I totally agree with you - freerolls were a dime a dozen - my favorites were the ones on Full Tilt, especially the "specific country" freerolls, and then they had HORSE freerolls too - I learned how to play those games through them.

Who also remembers the WSOP fantasy pools on FT where if you did well enough, you earned an entry into a private freeroll where you were practically guaranteed to cash.

Ahhhhhhh, those were definitely the days.

Originally Posted by MrPokerVerse

That was bitter pill to swallow that day. Never got anything back from UB and AP. Wasn't until about 5 years ago the FT settled up. Really soured me with online poker. Never felt the same about it ever since that day.

Nice to see CardsChat doing things to thrive in what was a death sentence to majority of the forums. Nice post Wagon!

That sucks that you never got anything back from AB/UP, but at least you got your FT $$$ back eventually. I can understand why you'd be sour about online poker, but I like your perspective, in that CardsChat has really helped out (especially) American players, who lost Full Tilt and PokerStars specifically.

I still remember that day very well. I'm in Canada, so I'm luckier, but I remember firing up Full Tilt and seeing how people were going absolutely nuts, that the DOJ took control of Full Tilt and PokerStars' websites, and as the next few days showed, people who were on the FT client (I played 95% of my online poker on FT at the time) were saying to NOT shut down your FT client, that if you did, the software would automatically update, and then it would shut you out (if in the USA) from accessing your real money account.....quite an eerie few days to say the least.

Originally Posted by Cooking

I have to say that online poker was so much better before black friday, a lot more players and better tournaments than today. I also used to play in several poker rooms at the same time, and there was a lot of good rooms (not like is today). After Black Friday, I even stopped playing online poker for couple of years, only came back one or two years ago.

Yes, larger player pools back then, when the games were softer, if you were a good player, you could be a winning player. But, now with Hold'em being so widely studied, it narrowed edges that were once there, and it's got to the point where you either had to catch up, or you'd fall behind. I didn't play for a living, so it didn't matter to me. But, if I wanted to play games where I felt like I wasn't such a huge underdog, I had to learn other games. So, I did, and even I took off a couple of years from regular playing, though lifestyle choices pushed me away. But, now with the pandemic, I was drawn back to poker, and in my short time back, I've been playing a fair bit, and figuring out some things, and I've had some success in the CardsChat games, and even some non-CC games too.

This is a great thread, thanks for starting it. Hopefully others will share their stories as well.

I played for some time before black friday and really there were literally tons of sites offering online poker and freerolls. It was completely unregulated and there were commercials for online poker all over the TV and internet so everybody having barely any idea about the game except rules (i was in this group also at that time) was playing and trying to earn money. Anyway this time will not return so if we want to be good players we need to adapt to the tougher fields now with regulated market and much slower development.

Originally Posted by wagon596

On April 15, 2011 the Online Poker Boom went to the Online Poker Doom. If you were not playing online before then you have no idea what you missed.

I've been playing online since 2004. I was discussing this with someone the other day. You like freerolls (I do) back then you could play 7 to 10 Forum and Affiliate freerolls a day. On the weekends even more. Wasn't unusual for me to have 4 or more different poker sites open at one time playing freerolls. The sites themselves had many free tournaments also.

Not only that, but tons of freeze out tournaments or tournaments with 1 hour late register , not 3 or 4 hours like now. Tournaments with no re-buys were available also. All these tournaments had all different levels of buy-ins.

So be grateful (I am) that CardsChat has stepped up and provides us with many free tournaments.

Take care !!!!!

I had yet to play a single poker hand by Black Friday (in fact I did not for years after either) but can imagine what a traumatic event it was to go through.

I understand the government wanting to address the legal gray area which on line poker was operating in but the action was draconian, ill conceived and left numerous parties under severe financial and mental strain. The authorities knew the blunder they had made and in fairness ultimately worked with various parties towards financial redress for individual players.

But what a different world we would live in of the government had decided to look at the issue, implement oversight and then legitimize the industry.

and there was rakeback
now it is almost gone

Thanks to our community, and our freerolls, many players have already significantly improved their skills and built a bankroll. Obviously, our community is the best place to learn the game.

I'll never forget waking up to play that day, only to be met with the sight of the FBI emblem/seizure of Stars notification. Collin and I had very recently moved to Vegas, and he had kindly upgraded my whole grinding setup. We ended up going to the Aria that night to play and also because I really wanted to talk to people in the poker community in person to see how everyone was taking it. It really was surreal.

As a result of it, I wound up playing way more live poker than I otherwise would have. I also got to go live in Mexico which wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Yes,it was much better before,there were so many poker websites and forums that offered private buy-in tournaments and even more freerolls at many online poker rooms and now most of these websites and online poker rooms don't exist anymore.Everything is worse now because of governments of many countries that are literally blocking many online poker websites that also offer sportsbetting,so there really aren't many of them to play at,unfortunately.

Originally Posted by FoxMS

Thanks to our community, and our freerolls, many players have already significantly improved their skills and built a bankroll. Obviously, our community is the best place to learn the game.

This sounds very encouraging. As someone relatively newer to poker, I'd like to hear how I can best get started - especially with USA players not being able to play on Pokerstars/Full Tilt etc. I'd be grateful to hear opinions in these two forum threads of mine:

https://www.cardschat.com/forum/poke...-where-462513/

https://www.cardschat.com/forum/poke...pzilla-461532/

Originally Posted by Katie Dozier

I'll never forget waking up to play that day, only to be met with the sight of the FBI emblem/seizure of Stars notification. Collin and I had very recently moved to Vegas, and he had kindly upgraded my whole grinding setup. We ended up going to the Aria that night to play and also because I really wanted to talk to people in the poker community in person to see how everyone was taking it. It really was surreal.

As a result of it, I wound up playing way more live poker than I otherwise would have. I also got to go live in Mexico which wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Wow, thanks for sharing your experiences Katie. As someone who didn't experience the 2011 "Black Friday" directly, just reading about it feels "surreal" to me. When I hear you describe it in the exact same way with "surreal" (as you were directly impacted by it), it gives me kind of an eerie sick feeling about how events unfolded that day.

How long did it take you to feel "mostly recovered" from this? I know many online poker players say they still haven't looked at online poker the same way again.

Originally Posted by Phoenix Wright

Wow, thanks for sharing your experiences Katie. As someone who didn't experience the 2011 "Black Friday" directly, just reading about it feels "surreal" to me. When I hear you describe it in the exact same way with "surreal" (as you were directly impacted by it), it gives me kind of an eerie sick feeling about how events unfolded that day.

How long did it take you to feel "mostly recovered" from this? I know many online poker players say they still haven't looked at online poker the same way again.

I can't speak for Katie, but I can share my answers to that. I had started from freerolls years before and was working my way up. I was right at the end of 25NL and moving to 50NL when it happened. I was very conservative with my bankroll, having built it from nothing. So, I had several thousand dollars spread across 4-5 sites. In total, I think it was close to $10k online.

The night before, I was playing on FTP. I was playing Rush and had a pretty horrible session. I think it was $250-$300 down. I forget if it was 25NL or 50NL. But, I definitely remember that is was nearly $300. I think it was 50NL, only because I remember telling myself that it wasn't that bad, only variance. One of my biggest issues, moving up, was adjusting my mentality to the new buy-in amount. Losing 6 buy-ins at 50NL and losing 12 buy-ins at 25NL is the same amount of money, $300, but it shouldn't mean as much at 50NL because of the size of the game. Still, even a 12 buy-in swing could have been possible. I was four-tabling Rush and playing for hours at a time, so the number of hands would have been up there.

Before I went to bed, I told myself that I was going to take the next day off. Just to mentally reset. So, I didn't get online early. I remember being on some poker forums, and seeing people say that the sites were down. At first, I didn't really understand. I thought maybe there was some issue, but it would be temporary. But, soon I realized that it wasn't temporary. As soon as I was able to, I fired up all the sites I had money on. Absolute Poker [down], PokerStars [down], Full Tilt [down], Poker Nordica [up] (this is a now defunct Merge skin), and I forget if there was another. But, those were the big four. Those were where almost all my bankroll was.

Nordica had around $6,500 on it. Fortunately, it was probably the biggest chunk of the money I had online. That network was really weak and I ran well on it. I remember frantically trying to figure out the fastest way to cash out. I had to break it down into several transactions because of cashout limitations they had. The rest? Nothing available. I lost way more while I was sleeping than I had during the bad session the night before. To say that I was sick from it is an understatement. To make matters worse, this was a serious side-hobby/hustle for me. I was supplementing my income with these game and it was what I spent my free time doing. Suddenly, I had no hobby and no side-income.

It took me several months to get the money off Merge. I left $100 or $200 on there. It was an amount I was willing to write off and lose. PokerStars was quick. They got my money back early. Full Tilt took years. I never saw any of my Absolute money. I took all the money offline, and shoved it in a checking account. At first, I used it for live play. But, eventually most of that got spent on real life expenses.

I still don't feel the same way about online poker. It doesn't help that I am still in the US and can't be assured that my funds are safe. It is very hard for me to consider putting/keeping the bankroll online that I had before Black Friday. It was horrible. I was totally fine with losing money because I chose to put it on a table, but not fine with a site just shutting down and my money going with it.

I've played online since. I just keep very little money online. Because of that, I rarely play above 10NL, and usually stick to 2NL and 5NL. And, it is impossible to compare the current games online to what it was like before Black Friday. To say the games were soft is an understatement. The play back then was horrible. I wasn't even a very good player, but I was easily making a profit in those games because the rest of the field was so horrible. The comment about the commercials on TV is true and totally played a role. People would be drinking, watching TV, see a commercial, and decide to load $20 or $50 on a site. And, if you have $20, why not sit at the $25 table? If you have $50, sit at the $50 tables. You would have random people sitting at all sorts of tables with no idea what they were doing. It was an amazing period of time to play.