Updated on 23 Feb 26 by
Barry carter
Poker Expert

The poker industry reflects on Black Friday

At the ten year anniversary of the day that almost ended poker, some of poker's finest took toTwitter to reflect on the last decade.

Twitter poker legend KevMath got us started with how most people were made aware of what was happening on that day:

The industry was very different back then:

Bet Raise Fold documentary producer and Deucescracked founder Jay Rosenkrantz was one of many people with reflective Twitter threads:

Short and sweet for Cardrunners founder Taylor Caby:

Danielle Andersen became one of the faces of Black Friday after her appearance in Bet Raise Fold:

It wasn't all bad, our friends at pokerfuse literally launched on Black Friday so yesterday was their 10th birthday:

Indeed, a lot of people now realise that for whatever reason, Black Friday was the best thing that had ever happened to them:

And it was at least the reason for the greatest joke in poker Twitter history (for context, Galfond owned two New York penthouses with a slide running between them at the time):

Our friend Robbie Strazynski hosted Mike Matusow, Steve Ruddock and Eric Hollresier for a roundtable reflecting on Black Friday.

He also hosted Daniel Negreanu and James Dempsey for a second round of reflection:

If you are interested, yours truly also started a Twitter thread looking back on that fateful day:

There were lots of lessons to learn from Black Friday, but this simple reminder about not keeping your entire net worth in any one place seems to be the most important one:

Though maybe we learnt nothing from the last ten years at all:

And if nothing else, those of us still in poker can reflect on the fact that we all survived a seemingly industry ending event:

Finally, one hell of a scoop for Lance Bradley of PocketFives, who managed to interview PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg on Black Friday and life after it:

What were your memories of that day? Let us know in the comments:

Barry carter
Poker Expert

Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, Poker Satellite Strategy, PKO Poker Strategy, Endgame Poker Strategy, GTO Poker Simplified, Mystery Bounty Poker Strategy and Beyond GTO. In 2025, he won the Global Poker Awards for Best Book and Twitter Personality of the Year.