Hey Guys,I was playing semi-pro poker for a long time and was transitioning into a new career at the time (multimedia - not as rewarding fincially but way more enjoyable for me) when black friday hit. I bowed out of my poker career without to much of a fight because of this. I have really lost touch with what is going on so I have a few questions. How is the action? How are the games (softer or harder)? How are the promotions? Are all the big names still around or have a lot of them dropped out? What did a lot of the players transition into? I really have no intention of playing again, I'm just ineterested in the effects of black friday from an economical standpoint.Thanks everyone,-PumaEDIT: Are there any good resources for following whats going on with fulltilt player funds being returned to US players? .
www.subjectpoker.com for news on FTP related stuff, been the most relevant and reliable news source for it so farI'll revisit the other questions if/when some other responses are up.
Seems like some of the big names have been getting jobs as traders. Action is slower and games seem to be tougher for US players who are stuck on Merge and other smaller sites. But it's not super bad.
Thanks Rypac. Hehasrisen, how are the games outside of the US? Softer?
My general impression talking to people playing on PokerStars is that the higher stakes might be a bit tougher, but is certainly less populated post black friday.At the lower and mid stakes I've just heard the same range of replies and haven't noticed anything different being reported from how it was pre black friday (some people might say "omg impossible games" others are very happy with the game state, there's still plenty of guys crushing, etc.).Oh and the hypers being added has obviously changed some things up some (less action in regular speed and turbos), but that's not really a US playerbase variable.
Sorry man i can't help you out with anything outside the US. I'm a US player... But it looks like Rypac took care of it above.
But right after BF it was a goldmine on Stars. Before a lot of guys had relocated and while there was a bunch of uncertainty, the games looked amazing. Pre BF you would almost nevr catch a random fish opensitting $1k and even though it was only very rare occasions I would check the husng lobby (bc MTT's were also a goldmine at that time), I caught random fish on several occasions open sitting the higher stakes. As rypac pointed out, the higher stakes seem very filled now. Esp when a lot of the FTP only regs have been foprced to move across, it seems the games lower though run pretty frequently still.
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To Mjw006,Seems a little wierd that Pokerstars would get softer as a result of Black Friday. You would think the opposite. According to PTR (don't know if the original thread was here or not) the U.S. is by far (3x the next country) the biggest losing country. Don't know how long the stats were tracked for but I think its about 4 years. US players lost 336 or so million playing cash games online. Granted, some of the biggest names in poker were from the U.S. but overall so were the biggest losers. The average player lost 10$/100 hands in cash games. I doubt the US faired any better either in SNGs or in tournaments.
Stars may have had the best US players, remember and FTP and UB also could've had some of those fish you're talking about (Bodog too). Combined with the actual games and stakes being relevant (remember, while games like hu cash were dying, husngs were/are booming, so it's really difficult to make a generalization across the board).That said, it does seem a little weird, I agree.