The biggest poker stories of 2019 - part 2
We conclude our look at the most memorable stories of the year with a WSOP POY error, a shift in the world of sponsorship and the infamous 'Postlegate'.
We continue our look back at the stories that made poker in 2019, if you missed the first part you can read it here.
Yang endorses online poker
Lot's of positive steps for poker in America this year including PokerStars launching in Pennsylvania in October.
However, the most memorable moment of the year for US poker players was this tweet:
Online poker is legal in 4 states. The state-by-state rules are variable and push many players to offshore sites. We should clarify the rules and make it legal in all 50 states. US players and companies would benefit and new tax revenues could be used to mitigate addiction.
— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) October 26, 2019
Yes, that is US Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang lending his support to the poker community, something that should earn him tens of thousands of votes if he gets close enough in 2020.
The Triton Million
We may have had the 2nd biggest WSOP in 2019 but even more notable records were broken by the Triton MIllion back in August.
The £1,050,000 invitational was the biggest buy-in in poker history and it awarded the biggest prize in poker history, £16,890,509 ($20,563,324).
That was actually the 2nd place prize for Bryn Kenney after a heads-up deal with eventual champion Aaron Zang, who won £13,779,791.
Kenney also topped the All-Time Money List, overtaking Justin Bonomo, as a direct result.
Sponsorship changes forever
In 2019 PokerStars parted way with a large number of ambassadors including Jaime Staples, Jeff Gross, Kevin Martin, Igor Kurganov, Jake Cody, Barry Greenstein and Randy Lew.
They also said goodbye to three ambassadors most people would assume had a gig for life in Liv Boeree, Maria Konnikova and Daniel Negreanu.
Staples, Martin and Gross all joined partypoker as streamers, and there were a lot of other moves in and out of the major poker rooms in 2019. Negreanu found a new home at GGPoker. PokerStars turned their attention towards lesser known grassroots Twitch streamers.
It is clear to say that the sponsorship strategy at PokerStars drastically changed in 2019.
Player of the Year oopsie
Some better news for Negreanu as for the third time in his career he won the WSOP Player of the Year title. Congrats to him for that.
Or at least that was the case for a few days, as after he had given his victory speech it was revealed that there was an admin error and it was in fact Robert Campbell who had won. Not only that, had the error been caught earlier, Shaun Deeb could have possibly won.
The plot thickened as a lot of high profile players speculated that Negreanu may have known and kept quiet about the error all along.
One thing is for sure, we can expect a major overhaul to the POY system in 2020.
Postlegate
If you don't know who Mike Postle is by now, you are probably going to go down a massive rabbit hole for the rest of this year.
This story captivated the poker world perhaps like no other, no doubt because they all played a part in it.
The very short cliff notes was that a player is alleged to have cheated during a series of cash game live streams with an almost impossible winrate. The poker community (led by Joe Ingram) studied hundreds of hours of footage and found a remarkable backlog of evidence, enough that this has become a multi million dollar court case that will play out in 2020.
We really can't do it justice here, so either go down the rabbit hole or give it a wide berth. Needless to say it was the only thing anyone in poker talked about in the second half of 2019.
What were your biggest stories of the year? Let us know in the comments:
