Full Tilt Boogie: The UIGEA and You

[BTPT1]

Full Tilt Boogie: The UIGEA and You
The author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full joins Grantland for a look into the online scandal

By James McManus

Until Black Friday, April 15, Americans had about $16 billion per annum in action on PokerStars, Full Tilt, Absolute Poker, and a few smaller Internet sites. Moms, cops, doctors, pizza deliverers, soldiers from Korea to Afghanistan — more than 2 million citizens all told — were playing our national card game online. Most played for fun, losing or winning a few hundred bucks a year. Maybe four or five thousand made a living at it, depending on what you mean by "a living." The most successful pros were also paid long money — as much as $10 million a year — to rock the logo of one online site or another, though everyone was careful to use the .net of the play-money sister sites, not the .com, where real money would be at stake. Online poker had been in legal limbo since October 2006, when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was signed by President Bush, so people were hedging their bets.

Meanwhile, NBC and ESPN continued to broadcast in prime time multi-million-dollar tournaments, including the World Series each summer. The tougher, more sophisticated cash games of High Stakes Poker also scored decent ratings for GSN. All of these programs were sponsored at least in part by the online sites, with some pros regularly appearing on both the shows and in the commercials. Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Antonio Esfandiari, and Doyle Brunson couldn't walk through a mall or down a concourse without being asked to stop for pictures and autographs. Brunson's craggy visage, always topped by a Stetson, was the one-headed Rushmore of poker. The impish, outspoken Negreanu was more famous both here and in his native Canada than all but a few NHL studs.

On Black Friday, our government shut down the three most popular online poker sites. Instead of access to their favorite tables, American players were confronted by the seals of the FBI and Department of Justice: "This domain name has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation." Not just the domain name, either, but access to each player's account balance, some of which reached well into mid-seven figures.
James McManus on Full Tilt poker and Black Friday - Grantland