What if Black Friday never happened?

Not great, because the fish would be eaten alive due to solvers and other advancements, and without fish it would fizzle. Yes, online poker thrived because poker had mainstream appeal and was easy to access, but there also was a chance for even subpar players to bink tourneys or even go on cash game heater. That would be next to impossible today.

Why do solvers prevent heaters from recs? Makes no sense.

Based on the comments here in the blogs etc games would be better because yankees are still awfull. Also there would most likely be more sites and bigger competition than now.

American professionals were at the top of online poker pre Black Friday. Had Black Friday never happened, they would have been able to continue to play a large volume of hands and improve their game. Pretty silly to think they wouldn’t have grown if given the opportunity.

it would probably just be where it is now.

Online poker was better in America before Black Friday, but it was already a bit on the iffy side due to the UIGEA. More interesting question is if the UIGEA was never passed, and online poker had much more of a chance being accepted federally. I think with the UIGEA in place, but no Black Friday, these sites would still operate dubiously and carefully and it would not feel like boom times.

Since the entire point of poker sites is to take money from their customers it would be closer to busto. Since you hypothecate these are honest sites as opposed to the reality of what they were and what current sites are I imagine the interesting point is when do they(both the sites themselves and the serfs working at the sites while someone else gets most of the profit) that cheating is profitable and for the serfs the only way to make big money.

FTP would've still gone under because they were committing other crimes(granted you said on the up and up but still)

The NAPT would likely be thriving right now.

The PCA wouldn't have gotten ****ed over in honestly what I consider scummy circumstances in the wake of a hurricane

The better their opponents are the less likely recs are to go on a heater. Is it possible for a rec to go on a heater? Sure. But it was way more likely in 2010 than it is today.

People don't realize how difficult it was to get money into online poker from late 2006 till Black Friday for the average joe schmuck.

When UIGEA passed almost all of my friends who were recreational players couldn't figure out how to get money online and slowly lost interest in the game.

Had that law never been passed there would be a lot more people hooked on the game for the following decade or so and poker would have been much more mainstream culturally and practically.

Sure Black Friday was the dagger to the heart but UIGEA was the cancer in the system rotting the action away.

If neither event happens poker is probably as big right now as a mid major sport like golf or tennis.

Black Friday had nothing to do with the pyramid scheme FT. Black Friday exposed these problems. FT, et al, might h@ve figured out their problems and shut those down. Unlikely but maybe.

But online play would still have most of the issues of today: bots, RTA, AML regs, etc.

If Stars and FTP had been "operating on the up and up" (sic), there would have been no boom, because there would have been no grey-market unregulated online poker sites operating in the USA throwing gasoline onto the fire. There wouldn't even have been an amateur player satellited into the 2003 main for a two-figure buy-in.

Stupid hypotheticals are stupid.,

Operating on the up and up had no spelling or grammatical errors so the (sic) is unnecessary as the quotes are sufficient to indicate you had quoted it.

Just so I understand, you attribute the poker boom to “grey-market unregulated online poker sites operating in the USA throwing gasoline onto the fire” rather than the major sites and their extensive marketing efforts?

Full Tilt was the 3rd biggest reason for the popularity of poker behind hole cams and constant coverage of WSOP on ESPN. They advertised so much and tried to make it look as appealing as possible, especially to the type I want to be coming to the table.

They stole quite a bit of money from me and most of you. However, not really having just cable TV for 80% of the 300 million Americans where they run into poker channel flipping several times a week makes a big difference.

I believe this wouldn't completely shift the landscape in 2024 if this never ended, but it's safe to assume it's been 20 years and a lot can change re: trends in American culture.

Overall, I feel online poker would be better off but not to some insane degree. Poker was getting more difficult by 2011 as it was and a lot of friends/recs had lost interest as they had hit their 30s/40s and pursued other avenues in life.

Those major sites were the gray market in US

Bigger tournaments.

Oh ok, so I guess I get what he’s referring to now but I still don’t know how he figures they were operating in a gray area and how that gray area somehow contributed to the boom rather than the business itself contributing.

Yeah, that struck me as well – so much so that I had to read your post a few times to see if I missed something. You know, sort of like the classic

This is especially true at higher games. When UIGEA hit overnight there were a lot less bigger games running bc it was so hard to get enough money on to play. And obviously most of the people willing to jump through a bunch of hoops to deposit tended to be winning players.

LMFAO. Sure buddy you and the other yankees were so good ROFL.

I was playing via VPN for a bit after black friday and I can tell you that this is 100% true. the minute black friday happened and lobbies opened up, you saw ok players sitting higher.

It was an immediate change

Ah yes, the days of sending deposits via Western Union to some random person with a Spanish name located in some remote part of the world.......

I loved by Bodog withdrawals from Quezon City in the Philippines !

Can’t address why he believes operating in a gray area contributed. In fact I won’t even conclude that is the claim.

But that pokerstars, full tilt, etc. were operating in a gray market is obvious. They felt UIGEA did not apply to poker. Note party poker did which is why pp left the US market years before and was not sd on Black Friday.

Also remember, pokerstars was not charged with diverting player funds and not being able to repay. In fact 10 days later, ps got their domain back, after agreeing to not offer games in the us, and began repaying us player accounts.

That they were operating in a gray market is evidenced by the fact that the feds did successfully shut them down and until authorized by states, there were no real attempts to reboot operations. Remember, it was the fact that NY under state law defined online poker as illegal gambling that enabled the feds to piggy back a UIGEA violation. The fed laws did not clearly specify online poker was illegal so the associated bets were not necessarily illegal under Fed law. This was the loop hole FT, PD, et al we’re using to operate. That is also once a state authorizes online poker, there is no longer an illegal bet under UIGEA.