Column: Where Were You On Black Friday?

Barry Carter looks back on the most infamous day in the history of poker 12 months on, and comments on how far the poker industry has come since the events of Black Friday.

You know something has left an imprint in history when you can legitimately ask "where were you when it happened?" In poker, the question is always going to be "where were you on Black Friday?"

It is hard to believe it has been a year since poker players around the world were faced with those infamous FBI warnings. In some ways it seems like yesterday, in others the poker world has changed so much in 12 months that it seems like I can't remember how things were before.

My own Black Friday story is a pretty interesting one for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was the day jaredtendler and I released a book together. If you want to talk about Black Friday run-bad, I reckon we must have claim to one of the unluckier cases, releasing a poker book on the single worst day in the history of poker.

Where were you when the FBI warnings went up?

The famous FBI warning

But, personal gripes aside, I was in a very interesting microcosm of poker when the FBI warnings went up. I was at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham, working on the televised PartyPoker Big Game. I guess it is a good sign that the industry has survived when you think that at the time of writing, Dusk Till Dawn is hosting a £1 million guaranteed event, and the PartyPoker Big Game is thriving at its new home of the Montesino at WPT Vienna.

The poker room was packed, and slowly but surely a quiet whisper became a loud constant chatter of "have you heard?", "is this real?", "are you serious?" etc. There was a bemused sense of disbelief around the card room, not angry, worried, sad, or anything else - just completely surprised.

One of the fascinating things about it was being surrounded by PartyPoker staff all weekend. On paper, these were the guys who stood to gain the most from all of this; they were the biggest poker room unaffected by the DOJ seizures. While the future was looking grim for many, it was surely party time for Party?

I must say that, to their credit, there were no celebrations, no jokes, no grave dancing, and no champagne corks being popped by the staff at PartyPoker that weekend. I think everyone realised this was going to be bad for the industry as a whole, and that many people they worked alongside were going to be negatively affected by what was to come.

The bearer of bad news

Dusty Schmidt

Perhaps the most surreal part of the day for me involved PokerStrategy.com coach Dusty leatherass9 Schmidt. I'm actually quite good friends with Dusty and although he may be the hardest working grinder in poker, he is not known for his punctuality. He was scheduled to do co-commentary with Jesse May and he was late, as usual. The show was about to go live and I was tasked with having to find him and get him to the green room ASAP.

The problem was that Dusty was also a Team PokerStars Online pro at the time. So when I finally found him, I had to both rush him to the green room and also tell him probably the most devastating news I could tell him in the same breath. I will never forget saying "Hey Dusty, you are needed right now in the green room, and by the way, the FBI has just shut down online poker in the US". He took it well, presumably because it was so much information to take in at once he didn't properly process it all as I rushed him to the commentary booth.

There were quite a few Full Tilt pros in attendance that weekend, and in hindsight, I wish I had took more time to talk to some of them about it; none of us could have predicted what a major plot twist was going to unravel there, however. I remember at one point seeing Mike Matusow talking to fellow FTP pro Andrew Feldman over in a corner, and neither man looked very happy as they stood wearing their soon to be demonised Full Tilt patches.

Desperation for answers

Matusow at the Big Game on Black Friday

As the weekend unfolded, the prevailing memory I have is just how desperate people were for answers, and not just answers - they wanted immediate answers. Alongside fear and uncertainty, there was an odd sense of impatience from the poker players I spoke to over the next few days.

I had players coming up and asking me all weekend what was going to happen. I was working on a live stream and the linked chat box had somewhere near 4,000 messages just asking about the DOJ seizures (not the Big Game itself). Probably the most depressing and memorable moment of all for me was when a poker player asked of me, in all honesty: "just tell me what I should be thinking right now".

Twelve months on, I can't even begin to imagine what that player must be thinking with so many questions still in the air. To be honest, like many of us, I imagine he has developed much more of a patient, critical interest in how poker is regulated. The biggest change I have noticed in poker since Black Friday is how much transparency players insist upon now. Poker news is these days dominated by industry and regulatory news; I am not sure what I used to write about before April 15, 2011. I think we all demand so much more from the people we trust our money with now, and I would like to think most poker players would no longer ask me to do their thinking for them.

At the time, many of us said that the industry would probably be better off for having had this happen; I still think that is true, but a year on it is quite alarming how much more uncertainty has unfolded. I am proud of the job PokerStrategy.com has done in bringing you up-to-the-minute news in the last 12 months, and I think things can only get better for poker, but I really wish we still weren't talking about Black Friday like it was last week.

Share your story. Where were you on Black Friday?

by Barry Carter