2011 Poker Year in Review

In this article you’ll read the entire years highlights, all in less than 500 words! So, for the sake of brevity, let’s get right to it.

2011 was quite a year in the poker world. From the very outset of the year we saw a new emphasis on Super-High-Roller tournaments, with $100k events taking place at both the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) tournament series and the Aussie Millions tournament series. The Aussie Millions took the idea of a Super-High-Roller even farther by offering a $250,000 buy-in tournament, which 20 players entered.

The success of these tournaments also saw the creation of the Epic Poker League -an exclusive poker tour where players would have to earn Epic Poker League tour cards in much the same way golfers earn PGA cards-and the announcement of the Full Tilt poker backed Onyx Cup, a series of $100,000 – $250,000 buy in tournaments.

And then just as it appeared that poker was going to another level, on April 15, 2011 the poker world experienced what would become known as Black Friday. 2011 will likely be remembered as the year of Black Friday in the poker world, despite all of the other achievements, accomplishments, and stories that took place. When poker historians look back at the year 2011 there will be two major stories: Black Friday, and the fall from grace of Full Tilt Poker (which was precipitated by Black Friday).

There really is no telling whether Full Tilt could have continued to survive, or for how long, with the mismanagement that was taking place internally, but Black Friday simply sped up the process, highlighting the company’s shortfalls.

Basically every big story (away from the felt) has Black Friday as its genesis: whether it’s the Phil Ivey vs. Full Tilt poker feud; or the potential sale of the ailing company to Groupe Bernard Tapie; or Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst getting added to the Department of Justice’s civil suits; everything that happened in the poker industry this year has at its core Black Friday.

So since nothing will trump Black Friday, here is a look at the other big events of 2011 in bulleted format:

• The reemergence of Erik Seidel as a top player
• US poker players moving abroad to continue to play online poker
• Jake Cody and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier join the Triple Crown Ranks
• Pius Heinz and Martin Staszko’s epic WSOP duel
• The debut of the Epic Poker League, and the controversy surrounding their standards and conduct committee
• Sam Trickett and Chris Moorman continue the UK’s poker dominance
• Phil Hellmuth’s FOUR runner-up finishes at the WSOP (three in tournaments and one in the player of the Year race)
• Ben Lamb’s dominance at the WSOP
• PokerStars 10^th Anniversary celebration
• The World Series of Poker “live” coverage is a success