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.
