Black Friday, 15 April 2011
Game Theory's story starts from the day US online poker stopped. Here is what happened, from the case record.
The case
On 15 April 2011 the indictment in United States v. Scheinberg was unsealed. It named the three largest sites serving US players and charged 11 individuals with four crimes each.1
| Sites named | PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Cereus (Absolute Poker / UltimateBet) |
|---|---|
| Domains | Seized on 15 April; control of PokerStars.com returned to the company on 20 April, which let players withdraw |
| Bank accounts | About 76 accounts in 14 countries frozen |
| Player deposits | Roughly $500 million accepted by the three companies |
All figures from the Wikipedia summary of the case.1
Full Tilt's players
| Date (2011) | Event |
|---|---|
| 15 May | Date by which Full Tilt had promised to repay US players; it missed it. |
| 27 May | One unfrozen Irish account held more than a third of the more than $100 million owed to players. |
| 30 June | European investors agree to fund player repayment in exchange for a majority stake. |
| 29 Sept | The Alderney Gaming Control Commission revokes Full Tilt's licence. |
Source: as above.1
In the series
Nakhai told PokerNews that after Black Friday he worried about poker's image in the media and saw poker programming being cut, so he made the show deal directly with one player's fallout from it.2