2011: Not A Very Good Year

[jspill]

Was thinking of putting together a collection of images summing up every upset, scandal, and detriment to online poker in 2011. Got a bit lazy as there's so much to cover, but here's what I came up with so far. Anyone else have any ideas?


1. The most obvious and iconic one. No description necessary...




2. Suddenly an industry-leading poker giant, with household-name sponsored pros and TV commercials during Football games is rebranded in international news as a 'ponzi scheme'. I kept expected my parents to call me up and tell me 'I told you so, it's all a scam'.




3. One of my favourite players disappears from the poker scene. The mystique of Ivey is shattered as we discover he has $15M in gambling debts, and was loaned $10M from FTP. Were the nosebleed games he crushed online essentially for play money? Was his lawsuit vs Full Tilt an attempt to hide his involvement? How much did he know about FTP's corrupt business operations?




4. A silver-tongued kid manages to convince professionals that he's a poker prodigy despite never revealing his screen-names, or meeting them in person. With ulterior motives to develop a protege, Haseeb 'INTERNET POKERS' Qureshi and other notable pros vouch for him. Signed as a coach for Pokerstrategy, he gains the trust of a skype group of HS pros, then is caught cheating them out of tens of thousands of dollars in Teamviewer sweat sessions.




5. Bots are discovered beating MSNL on Ongame, Ipoker and Party. They destroy 5/10 6max NL for close to seven figures. Gone are the days when bots were a minor nuisance at microstakes, exploitable losers before RB.




6. Sites begin to implement software measures discriminating against winning players, citing 'network liquidity', and narrow-minded logical arguments about winning regs being a detriment to the site, fish's deposits the 'only source of rake'. Everleaf outright bans players who win more than €750 per month from playing.




Here's to a better 2012!

[travz21]

LOL WHAT?! Is that last one really true? Wouldn't that just kill the site's business? Who is going to play poker if they can only win a certain amount of money?

[jspill]

sadly yeah. there's a couple threads on it on 2+2. two reps from different skins commented:

Minted are in no way attempting to justify this decision however we are bound by the rules of the network and will embrace this change for better or for worse.

there are strong reasons behind the introduction of these rules (as they were explained to me by Everleaf's staff), and they only did what they had to in order to protect the Network liquidity. Sometimes sharks must take a break from feeding with the fish, to let them reproduce and multiply. If sharks eat all the fish, we may end up with an empty ocean.

The same applies in poker. There are skins that work hard to bring fresh players into online poker by investing in offline advertising, and other similar things. If their players lose their money too quick, those skins end up losing and stop bringing new fish. In order for winning poker players to be able to win, there must always be new fish, and those who bring the fish want some sort of protection, in order to be able to stay afloat. I hope that my comments would help you better understand the situation. Sometimes we are forced to accept things that we don't like, in order to protect our ecosystem.

kind of amazing really


they only did what they had to in order to protect the Network liquidity.
they only did what they had to in order to protect the Network liquidity.
they only did what they had to in order to protect the Network liquidity.
they only did what they had to in order to protect the Network liquidity.
they only did what they had to in order to protect the Network liquidity.

[travz21]

Wow .

[Sandviper23]

6. Sites begin to implement software measures discriminating against winning players, citing 'network liquidity', and narrow-minded logical arguments about winning regs being a detriment to the site, fish's deposits the 'only source of rake'. Everleaf outright bans players who win more than €750 per month from playing.




Here's to a better 2012![/QUOTE]

Pretty sick imo. So just grind til you win 700 that month, then spend the rest of your time paying rake on other sites.

[Sandviper23]

Phil Ivey gonna sign with PokerStars soon?

[grimReaper]

Everleaf's decision is pretty interesting. If less fish are depositing, they need to subsidize them. Take the massive rake generated by the regulars and allocate some of that towards bonuses (which are less than the rake they produce) to the fish. They effectively redistribute the wealth by raking the fish less, but the fish don't generate a lot of rake anyway.

And they're going to get false positives results from this program. For example, I wouldn't mind going there to collect my free $750, which makes me a new depositor, but I'm definitely not going to be a high-volume player. Who knows, maybe that's what they want, a larger player base regardless of volume.

[jspill]

Phil Ivey gonna sign with PokerStars soon?

Can't see it happening, he doesn't seem to want any limelight until FTP players get paid back. Hopefully FTP2 launches in the first quarter of 2012 and he can head a totally new team of sponsored pros (keep Ivey, Antonius, Dwan and Gus to start with imo) on a newly managed site, full of fish and running tons of promotions to win players back

Take the massive rake generated by the regulars and allocate some of that towards bonuses (which are less than the rake they produce) to the fish. They effectively redistribute the wealth by raking the fish less, but the fish don't generate a lot of rake anyway.

Yeah I don't understand why no poker sites do this anymore, it's a great idea imo. It only ever happened back in the day on PartyPoker when they had a new bonus every week it seemed. The sites still profit as players have to rake 3x the value of the bonus to clear it or more, but it keeps the fish happy and thinking they're being 'paid to play'.

Party still has more frequent free, random bonuses than any other site I've played on but on nowhere near the same scale they used to

[scottc25]

How about some good news instead of all bad.

Seidel awesome year
Mercier doing well

Just to name a few...

[grimReaper]

How about some good news instead of all bad.

Seidel awesome year
Mercier doing well

Just to name a few...

If that's the only good news, that makes 2011 more depressing.

edit: little slow, i get it now...

[grimReaper]

Could it be Everleaf is insolvent?

[jspill]

So now that Everleaf was shut down to US players by the government, the 750 Euro cap on weekly winnings has been removed.



Quite interesting, the limit was obviously in place to prevent Americans from taking too much money from recreational EU players, to keep the non-pro players happy and depositing for the good of the 'network liquidity'.

[FlipCoach]

for the good of the 'network liquidity'.

For the greater gooooood.

greater_good_hot_fuzz.jpg

[FlipCoach]

6. Sites begin to implement software measures discriminating against winning players, citing 'network liquidity', and narrow-minded logical arguments about winning regs being a detriment to the site, fish's deposits the 'only source of rake'. Everleaf outright bans players who win more than €750 per month from playing.




Here's to a better 2012!

Pretty sick imo. So just grind til you win 700 that month, then spend the rest of your time paying rake on other sites.[/QUOTE]

I didn't know about this one either.. that's insane. The whole world is going crazy...