The world of poker has seen its fair share of scandals over the years. Some have had a huge impact on the game, while others just temporarily grabbed our attention.
While it’s fun to write about the latest big tournament winner or to break down massive cash game pots, nothing beats a good scandal.
The media loves a controversial story. It gets the community going and can create a kind of traction that no story about the Main Event winner ever could (save for Chris Moneymaker , maybe).
It’s worth mentioning that this list of the biggest poker scandals isn’t numbered by magnitude, as depending on how they affectected someone, every player will have an opinion on which is the most significant. 1. Black Friday
Although it’s been covered extensively in countless blogs, articles, and op-eds, you can’t write about major poker scandals without mentioning Black Friday.
In my opinion, this is easily the biggest scandal the poker community has ever witnessed, and it affected countless players all over the globe. Its aftermath also had huge implications on the overall development of the game.
Most of you have probably at least heard the story if not experienced it first hand.
On April 11, 2011, the US Department of Justice unsealed indictments against three of the largest poker sites at the time: PokerStars, Absolute Poker / Ultimate Bet, and Full Tilt .
Accusing them of violating the UIGEA, the DoJ seized the sites’ domains, leaving the entire poker world in a state of shock. Players were cut off from their funds, and the weeks and months to follow were a very difficult period for many professional players who had their bankrolls stuck on one of these sites.Robbed of their money and without access to the games, the future looked bleak.PokerStars was the first and, as it turned out, the only room to actually recover from this blow. The rest of the world players were soon able to access the site and their funds, and it was business as usual.However, US players had to wait quite some time to get their money back, but PokerStars made everyone […]
Click here to view original web page at www.casino.org
