It’s the end of the year, so that means it’s list time! 2011 was by far one of the most interesting years in poker history, though it was unfortunately for mostly the wrong reasons. Today, we’re going to take a look at the year’s top ten surprises in the world of poker. They weren’t necessarily the biggest stories (though some are), but they were the ones that probably dropped the most jaws.
10) Police Receive Gambling Funds – Apparently, even though law enforcement agencies want us to believe that gambling is bad, they are more than happy to accept a big check derived from gambling funds. In June, the Anne Arundel County (Maryland) Police Department was awarded almost half a million dollars by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, all of which was seized from online gambling companies after ICE HSI ran an undercover sting operation to catch the companies making illegal gambling transaction. This money wasn’t taken from the coffers of the companies themselves – they were funds on deposit from U.S. players.
9) NFL Says “No” to Charity – Around 30 professional football stars were forced to watch a charity poker tournament from the sidelines in February when the NFL prohibited them from playing in the event at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. The NFL, despite getting a fantasy sports exemption in the UIGEA, has publicly opposed the legalization of all things gambling, an opposition that apparently goes so far as to forbid players from playing in a legal tournament in a legitimate casino to raise money for the Starkey Hearing Foundation and Pros for Africa. Interestingly, Adrian Peterson, one of the football players trying to participate, hosted a celebrity charity tournament two days before the Super Bowl.
8) PartyPoker Eliminates Tourney Fees – Many poker players, maybe even the majority of them, view online poker rooms as greedy entities who just want grab as much rake from our hard-earned pots as they possibly can. But PartyPoker went the other way this summer, eliminating entry fees for multi-table tournaments for a limited period of time. The cynic in me says this was just a loss leader strategy to attract more players and funnel them to cash games, but my inner eternal optimist wants to say PartyPoker was just being cool. And the poker room is doing it again in January.
7) Emmitt Runs Over a Pro – It seems like there is a big upset in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship every year, and 2011 was no exception. This year, the NFL’s all-time rushing leader, Emmitt Smith, defeated David Williams in the first round. The fact that an upset happened isn’t surprising, it’s just that the football Hall of Famer has never been viewed as a celebrity who might be at all skilled at poker. Other upsets have been produced by avid poker playing celebrities or at least by amateur qualifiers, but Smith was seen as basically a celeb who played for fun while not really knowing what he was doing.
6) Greg Raymer Leaves PokerStars – PokerStars, in addition to being the largest online poker room in the world, has perhaps been best known as the home to several World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champs. Of all of them, 2004 champ Greg Raymer was arguably the most respected, viewed as a legitimately skilled poker player and the most well-spoken advocate for the game. People associated Raymer with PokerStars and PokerStars with Raymer. They were joined at the hip…or were they? In late January, the two went their separate ways. While Raymer addressed the situation on Two Plus Two, he never gave a specific reason for the decision.
5) WSOP Alive and Well – Many thought the combination of Black Friday and the struggling worldwide economy would break the World Series of Poker. Not so. As it turned out, the 2011 WSOP set the record for most entrants (75,672) and total prize pool ($191,999,010). The Main Event was the third largest ever; with 6,865 entrants, it ranked behind only 2010 (7,319) and 2006 (8,773).
4) Phil Ivey Takes a Break – Arguably the best poker player in the world, Phil Ivey stopped playing poker for the bulk of 2011, highlighted by a self-imposed boycott of the World Series of Poker. Frustrated by how Full Tilt was treating its players after Black Friday, Ivey announced that he did not feel right playing in the WSOP when so many Full Tilt customers could not because their funds were tied up at Full Tilt. Ivey returned to the tournament poker scene in November at the Asia Pacific Poker Tour Macau.
3) Kyl Softens on Poker – It isn’t quite the same as Megamind becoming a good guy, but Senator Jon Kyl, probably poker’s public enemy number one on Capitol Hill the last couple years, seemed to soften on poker in April. On his website, he wrote that he would consider carve-outs in the law to allow for online poker as long as prohibitions against other forms of online gambling remained in place. This coming from a guy who wanted the UIGEA provisions enacted so badly that he held up President Obama’s Treasury appointments.
2) DoJ Reverses Course – Even though the Fifth District Court ruled in 2002 that the Wire Act of 1961 only applied to sports betting, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) didn’t seem to care and has always viewed online poker as illegal. Just before Christmas, the DoJ changed its mind, announcing that the Wire Act does, in fact, only have to do with sports betting. What this means for online poker is still up in the air, but there is hope that this could serve as a boost towards federal regulation and legalization.
1) Full Tilt Stole from Players – Black Friday was obviously the biggest poker story of the year, but to many it wasn’t all that shocking that the other shoe finally dropped on some poker rooms (though the extent of the carnage was probably a big surprise). Out of all the lunacy since April 15th, the biggest face melter was the revelation that the owners of Full Tilt Poker stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the site’s customers. In September, the U.S. Attorney’s Office called Full Tilt “a global Ponzi scheme” and alleged that between April 2007 and April 2011, Full Tilt owners and Board members received almost $444 million in payouts from the company. Much of this money has been alleged to come from player funds, not company operating funds. At the time of the Black Friday indictments, Full Tilt owed players worldwide over $300 million, yet continued to accept deposits from players outside the U.S. Internal e-mails by Howard Lederer and Ray Bitar were brought to light that showed ownership knew that the company only had a few million dollars on hand after April 15th and even though it had no ability to pay its customers, it continued to accept funds from them, telling everyone their funds were safe.
