players whom I followed on Twitter were silent about the developments. The strategy forums buzzed with speculations and rumors. Even the news articles held inconsistencies. Within a few days time the truth came forward, followed by an ominous Department of Justice seal on the PokerStars website that marked its ultimate doom. Once the gravity of the situation finally took hold of me I was left with a single question that permeated to the core of my being: “Now what?”
I worked my way through a plethora of negative emotions and life-altering decisions in the months that followed Black Friday, finally arriving at some solid answers. As a mental health professional, I found myself in a unique position to not only garner the needed resilience to combat this monumental setback, but I also discovered some conclusions that may help guide others through this current psychological mine field.
This concise manual contains four sections that I believe are of equal, but different value. The first section contains some detailed advice as to navigating through the current poker landscape. For those interested in some more heuristically-oriented pointers to improve your approach to the game, the second section is for you. The third section highlights some playing strategies that I have learned over my previous experiences with online poker warfare. You might find them useful as well. Lastly, I have provided some candid commentary with a sprinkle of humor for the fourth and final section.
See you at the virtual felt!
Kris Anderson, MS, LMFT, CSAYC
July 2011
THE AFTERMATH
So now what?
Black Friday was a nightmare for anyone who enjoyed playing online poker. For some, online poker was their sole source of income and perhaps a viable avenue toward a corporate sponsorship. For others, playing internet holdem was a recreational pastime, a serious hobby, or a stepping stone to bigger and better things within their poker career. Regardless of the role that online poker has played in our lives, Black Friday has taken a peanut-laden, greasy shit over all of our passions and aspirations. In the midst of our great discouragement and dismay, however, we need to gather our resources and cowboy up. This is not the time for emotional floundering. It is the time for effective plotting and scheming. I have had to work through the aftermath of the most dismal period in the history of modern poker and I believe that I have found a solid course of action as a result.
In the wake of the Department of Justice stripping us of our freedoms to play a game of skill with likeminded individuals, there are only three possibilities of where the future will lead. The online poker landscape will either stay exactly as it is right now, things will improve, or the situation will worsen. Here is my analysis of these three possibilities.
A) The current online poker landscape stays just as it is right now.
This is by no means the ideal outcome for any us, but it is a circumstance that can be dealt with, provided that the appropriate adjustments are made. As I will later detail, the online poker community is down but not out. Several online poker sites remain alive and operational. Although the three best sites for American players have been annihilated, along with their massive player pools, sexy interfaces, and bonus programs, there still remain several secondary sites that are ready to seat you at their virtual tables.
B) Things will improve.
If you follow the poker blogs or the Twitter feeds of poker professionals, you will hear several of them predict that online poker will soon be legalized in the United States. They argue that the poker industry is far too profitable for the government not to regulate and tax—especially within the context of our current economic meltdown. This may very well be true. However, I personally believe that a good portion of the arguments to legalize online poker are parallel with those to legalize marijuana. And I do not foresee weed becoming decriminalized anytime soon. With that being said, I think that the true ray of hope lies within the land based casinos.
If any land based casino wanted to start their own online gambling sited during the height of online poker they would have been met with stiff competition in attracting customers away from the likes of PokerStars or Full Tilt. Now that these companies have been erased from the equation, the industry is left with a lucrative void—a void that these land based casinos could likely now fill. After all, some of the most vociferous antagonists against previous online poker legislation proposals were the casinos themselves, simply because they were losing business from poker players opting to play online instead of inside their brick and mortar establishments. Being that this is no longer the case, it is possible that these casinos can now use their massive wealth to lobby their way through Washington and legalize a market segment that they can now profitably enter.
C) The situation will worsen.
It seems peculiar to me that the three online poker sites that were shut down by the federal government controlled much of their operations from overseas, whereas many of the much smaller U.S.-based online poker rooms have remained seemingly untouched. This could feed into the theory that the land based casinos are priming the pump to make a move into a market that was previously dominated. Or it could just be coincidence. Whichever the case, make no mistake that if the feds can shut down behemoths like PokerStars and Full Tilt, they sure as hell can also close up whatever bootleg poker site that you are currently playing on. Your black market online poker account can easily be seized, your funds confiscated, and your online poker playing days can be over with at the next whim of the government. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that all online poker sites, big or small, may be inoperative within the near future. In addition to praying to the poker gods that this scenario does not ever happen, there are steps that we can take to prepare ourselves if it does.
With all of this risk and uncertainty, wouldn’t it be better to just sit back and wait to see what happens?
Just as you have to make adjustments to your game when sitting at the table with dynamic opponents, so too must you make adjustments to your poker career to adapt to the changing landscape. The new, young gun professional poker players did not rise to stardom by playing or training in the same manner as the old guard did. Rather than sticking to the tried and true methods of hours upon hours of casino play while implementing ABC poker strategies, the current generation seized the learning opportunity that the internet provided. They played more hands, implemented fresh tactics, and developed a whole new breed of poker player. In short, they evolved to become meaner, faster, and more effective than their competition. Now many of the old guard players have been antiquated with only a few of them clinging on with their tired strategies that have proven ineffective against their internet player prodigies.
No one knows what the future of poker will bring, but rest assured that a year or two from now we will be in a different spot then we are today. For that reason, we must continually be prepared. So our options at the present time are to either give up on online poker and retreat back to our home games and casinos… or… pick up the pieces that we have available, use them to our advantage, and adapt to the environmental pressures that are upon us.
Given the previous analysis of the three possible outcomes of the fate of online poker, allow me to outline the consequences of our decisions within the context of the options to either throw in the towel and quit or to plod forward and keep playing at one of the smaller, and possibly riskier sites that still remain open to Americans.
A) The current online poker landscape stays just as it is right now.
YOU QUIT PLAYING ONLINE: Your skills stagnate, you do not progress or prepare yourself for the future, and you resort to wasting
