The Black Friday Poker Destruction – Players Will Never Forget!

Being a poker player back in 2011 when the online poker landscape was thriving proved to be a successful occupation for many. Poker websites were growing like mushrooms due to the immense interest of professional and amateur players. Numerous tournaments and appealing game types marked a peak of an era that wasn’t supposed to collapse. However, just like in the financial crisis back in 2008, whenever there’s a peak, you can expect а bubble to burst. The truth is that nobody saw this coming and there were no speculations about it even from the biggest critics of the poker industry. Everything was going perfect, but all it was needed was one day to shock the poker world!

15th April 2011 – Game Over!

Hundreds of thousands of poker players woke up in the morning with the intention to continue their sessions in the pursuit of a bigger bankroll through the thrill of poker excitement. PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker were the three biggest operators at the time, and they were all blocked from user access. Imagine what it felt like for a player not being able to withdraw his funds or check his account at all. But where did such a restriction come from? The Black Friday online poker had to experience was caused by none other but the US government in the face of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Such a forceful stoppage of operations has its legal reason to it – a breach of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, signed by George Bush back in 2006. This act prohibits online payments for unlawful internet gambling. Although this legislation doesn’t technically prohibit US players from playing, it doesn’t regulate online poker either, and the effects were severely felt by all players.

The Damage Has Been Done, But What’s Next?

PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker had to stop operations for US players but continued operating for players outside of US territory. However, the three poker sites responded to this huge blow in different ways. PokerStars was the only company willing to fully comply and work together with the DOJ. This proved to be a winning strategy since it regained back its domain name and paid the blocked money to its US players. PokerStars came out of poker Black Friday pretty much unscratched, paid its fine to the US government and resumed operations out of its territory.

On the opposite side, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt decided to stay in a different lane which was way different and shocking. Four years before the Black Friday both Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, which are part of one company, were involved in scandals, related to unloyal poker practices such as cheating. It’s no wonder that when poker Black Friday occurred, Absolute Poker decided not to comply and never paid back its players. Full Tilt Poker had a similar fate due to its failure to resume non-US operations. Furthermore, its international licenses were also invalid after the DOJ operation, so its international players were also unpaid. However, as of today, almost all Full Tilt players have been paid, since the operator was bought by PokerStars. What’s more interesting are the further investigations on some of the operator’s executives, Chris Ferguson, and Howard Lederer – two very successful poker players, who were accused of running a “Ponzi” scheme.

The Full Tilt Scandal and Was Chris Ferguson Really Sorry?

In September of 2011, Full Tilt Poker was further scrutinised by the Department of Justice following some serious accusations. The Ponzi scheme proved to be pretty simple – Full Tilt claimed that all player funds were safe, while at the same time executives were withdrawing money, leaving their players short of close to $340 million dollars. Therefore, Full Tilt CEO Raymond Bitar was arrested after he handed himself to the authorities. But where do Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer stand in all of this? Since both of them were faces of the company, Ferguson and Lederer’s careers took major blows. However, they were both accused of stealing $40 million dollars each throughout the years.

Both Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson paid their fines and were pretty much left unscratched, at least from a legal standpoint. Howard participated in the seven-series interview The Lederer Files with the idea of answering questions in regards to the fall of Full Tilt Poker. This resulted in a true catastrophe and had a backfiring effect on Lederer, damaging, even more, his reputation (if possible). On the opposite side, Chris Ferguson remained silent, until 7 years later when he put out a video apology for the events which occurred back on 15th April 2011. Needless to say, Ferguson’s attempt to apologise wasn’t sincere at all due to the fact that he was obviously reading his speech and seemed pretty emotionless, even for a poker player. The poker world lashed out and heavily criticized Chris Ferguson’s video, which put the poker pro in an even worse position.

Current Legal State of Online Poker in the USA

After the devastation which the poker Black Friday caused, things went back to normal, although only PokerStars is currently operating from the three websites. Certain regulations and amendments have been made so online poker can be legalized. However, only a handful of states have legalized online poker- Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. For the time being, the USA is slowly but surely making steps in legalizing online poker in more places, but yet there are still states, such as Washington, Louisiana, and Utah which consider online poker as illegal. Check out some free poker websites if you would like to practice your skills or just to play for fun. So far, the future of online poker in USA is currently unknown, but one thing is for sure – regulations have kicked in and everybody should be aware of them!