Poker 2009: The Year In Review

April 2009
PokerStars kicked off their inaugural shot at a spring-ish version of the WCOOP, cleverly titled … the SCOOP, or Spring Championship of Online Poker. j.thaddeus ($963,338) took home the big money for his win in the high buy in version of the SCOOP Main Event. PokerStars sent players mixed messages on the issues of datamining and results scraping. PokerStars may or may have not been on a list of 200 websites that the Minnesota Department of Public Safety attempted to block in a brief and ill-fated maneuver.

Bodog got their domain name back. Party Poker got Mike Sexton back. Durrrr got his bankroll back (albeit temporarily).

Mitch Garber returned to the world of online gaming; the former Party Gaming head was snagged by Harrah’s to head up an interactive division, or something similarly named. He was hired to do online stuff, let’s put it that way. Dusty Schmidt launched a million dollar golf/poker challenge that found zero takers and would, months later, lead to the loss of his amateur status. NBC leaked word of a new poker show called ‘Face the Ace’ and PokerStars decided that ZeeJustin had spent enough time in the cold, harsh world of live poker / online poker that wasn’t at PokerStars and unbanned him.

May 2009
The WSOP got underway near the end of the month, and the final table for the special 40k buy in NLHE tournament event was set Negreanu set in motion what would become a favorite storyline of the 2009 WSOP for many by blogging about his prop bets. While the WSOP started, FTOPS sputtered – low player numbers forced Full Tilt to make up more than 200k of the prize pool for the main event.

Payment processor woes began with the news that poker sites could be stuck as much as $30 million to failing company Intabill. Minnesota’s attempt to block access to online gaming sites began to crumble, while Gowen’s lawsuit against Full Tilt failed completely. Live, legal poker in Texas suffered a similar fate.

Lee Jones parted ways with Cardrunners and moved on to a position at Cake Poker. Luke Schwartz ran his mouth some. The New York Times predicted rough waters for Frank’s attempt to regulate online gambling.

G4 released details of a new, online-poker-centered show called ‘2 Months, 2 Million’.

June 2009
The WSOP dominated poker news. Ivey won two bracelets. Brock Parker won two bracelets, both in six max events. Roland de Wolfe made a bit of poker history by becoming only the second person in history to win a WPT event, a EPT event and a WSOP event (Gavin Griffin being the other).

The PPA announced their plans for National Poker Week, one of several events put together by the group with a high public profile, or at least aspirations for a high public profile. The Utah Transit Authority clamped down on people gambling online while using the UTA’s wifi (or maybe just while using the UTA, that was never really made clear). Doyle publicly proclaimed his belief in Amarillo Slim’s innocence on charges of child molestation.

Krantz continued his omnipresence in poker on the small screen with the release of the first installment in his ‘Busto to Robusto’ documentary series focused on online poker players. Dwan battled back and erased Antonius’ lead of half a million or so to pull back even in a single session of the durrrr Challenge. Full Tilt offered amnesty to multi-accounters.

The US Government seized $30 million in payment processor funds intended for player cashouts.

July 2009
The WSOP rolled on, and Phil Ivey made the final table of the Main Event. Rumors put the amount he could win in side bets if he took down the title at or above the amount he’d actually receive for the win. Fellow November Niner Jeff Shulman presumably wouldn’t have minded the payday, but he did make it known that he’d have nothing to do with the bracelet if he won in protest of Harrah’s handling of the tournament.

The legality of Facebook poker came into question, and iMEGA attempted to cause the same for the UIGEA with an ongoing (ultimately failed) court challenge. Laura Lane was announced as co-host for ESPN’s experiment with a weekly online poker news mag (a poker news mag online, not a mag about online poker) that viewers would come to know as Inside Deal. Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho were id’ed as competitors on the upcoming season of Amazing Race.

Tom Dwan announced plans for a live version of his online durrrr Challenge and the key participants in the original Rounders crew were reportedly mulling a sequel as well.

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