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So now what?

Black Friday was a nightmare for anyone who enjoyed playing online poker. For some, online poker was their sole source of income and perhaps a viable avenue toward a corporate sponsorship. For others, playing internet holdem was a recreational pastime, a serious hobby, or a stepping stone to bigger and better things within their poker career. Regardless of the role that online poker has played in our lives, Black Friday has taken a peanut-laden, greasy shit over all of our passions and aspirations. In the midst of our great discouragement and dismay, however, we need to gather our resources and cowboy up. This is not the time for emotional floundering. It is the time for effective plotting and scheming. I have had to work through the aftermath of the most dismal period in the history of modern poker and I believe that I have found a solid course of action as a result.

In the wake of the Department of Justice stripping us of our freedoms to play a game of skill with likeminded individuals, there are only three possibilities of where the future will lead. The online poker landscape will either stay exactly as it is right now, things will improve, or the situation will worsen. Here is my analysis of these three possibilities.

A) The current online poker landscape stays just as it is right now.

This is by no means the ideal outcome for any us, but it is a circumstance that can be dealt with, provided that the appropriate adjustments are made. As I will later detail, the online poker community is down but not out. Several online poker sites remain alive and operational. Although the three best sites for American players have been annihilated, along with their massive player pools, sexy interfaces, and bonus programs, there still remain several secondary sites that are ready to seat you at their virtual tables.

B) Things will improve.

If you follow the poker blogs or the Twitter feeds of poker professionals, you will hear several of them predict that online poker will soon be legalized in the United States. They argue that the poker industry is far too profitable for the government not to regulate and tax—especially within the context of our current economic meltdown. This may very well be true. However, I personally believe that a good portion of the arguments to legalize online poker are parallel with those to legalize marijuana. And I do not foresee weed becoming decriminalized anytime soon. With that being said, I think that the true ray of hope lies within the land based casinos.

If any land based casino wanted to start their own online gambling sited during the height of online poker they would have been met with stiff competition in attracting customers away from the likes of PokerStars or Full Tilt. Now that these companies have been erased from the equation, the industry is left with a lucrative void—a void that these land based casinos could likely now fill. After all, some of the most vociferous antagonists against previous online poker legislation proposals were the casinos themselves, simply because they were losing business from poker players opting to play online instead of inside their brick and mortar establishments. Being that this is no longer the case, it is possible that these casinos can now use their massive wealth to lobby their way through Washington and legalize a market segment that they can now profitably enter.

C) The situation will worsen.

It seems peculiar to me that the three online poker sites that were shut down by the federal government controlled much of their operations from overseas, whereas many of the much smaller U.S.-based online poker rooms have remained seemingly untouched. This could feed into the theory that the land based casinos are priming the pump to make a move into a market that was previously dominated. Or it could just be coincidence. Whichever the case, make no mistake that if the feds can shut down behemoths like PokerStars and Full Tilt, they sure as hell can also close up whatever bootleg poker site that you are currently playing on. Your black market online poker account can easily be seized, your funds confiscated, and your online poker playing days can be over with at the next whim of the government. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that all online poker sites, big or small, may be inoperative within the near future. In addition to praying to the poker gods that this scenario does not ever happen, there are steps that we can take to prepare ourselves if it does.

With all of this risk and uncertainty, wouldn’t it be better to just sit back and wait to see what happens?

Just as you have to make adjustments to your game when sitting at the table with dynamic opponents, so too must you make adjustments to your poker career to adapt to the changing landscape. The new, young gun professional poker players did not rise to stardom by playing or training in the same manner as the old guard did. Rather than sticking to the tried and true methods of hours upon hours of casino play while implementing ABC poker strategies, the current generation seized the learning opportunity that the internet provided. They played more hands, implemented fresh tactics, and developed a whole new breed of poker player. In short, they evolved to become meaner, faster, and more effective than their competition. Now many of the old guard players have been antiquated with only a few of them clinging on with their tired strategies that have proven ineffective against their internet player prodigies.

No one knows what the future of poker will bring, but rest assured that a year or two from now we will be in a different spot then we are today. For that reason, we must continually be prepared. So our options at the present time are to either give up on online poker and retreat back to our home games and casinos… or… pick up the pieces that we have available, use them to our advantage, and adapt to the environmental pressures that are upon us.

Given the previous analysis of the three possible outcomes of the fate of online poker, allow me to outline the consequences of our decisions within the context of the options to either throw in the towel and quit or to plod forward and keep playing at one of the smaller, and possibly riskier sites that still remain open to Americans.

A) The current online poker landscape stays just as it is right now.

YOU QUIT PLAYING ONLINE: Your skills stagnate, you do not progress or prepare yourself for the future, and you resort to wasting away at the live games once more.

YOU CONTINUE PLAYING: Your skills will continue to develop in warp speed and you will proceed to evolve into a beast. You might even make a little money in the process.

B) Things will improve.

YOU QUIT PLAYING ONLINE: Your current repertoire of skills will have little value if and when you resume playing after the dust settles; your game will suffer tremendously from lack of practice. You will have to start from the bottom while those who continued forward will have long since passed over you.

YOU CONTINUE PLAYING: You will be far better than your competition who will either just begin playing due to the new availability of legal sites or those with rusty, diminished skill who have come out of hibernation.

C) The situation will worsen.

YOU QUIT PLAYING ONLINE: You are safe. You missed out on a few months of practice but your bankroll remained intact.

YOU CONTINUE PLAYING: You have yet another online account frozen and your funds are confiscated. You get salty again and start hunting down contacts for some local home games. However, when you return to the live games, you will be that much stronger.

Conclusion: call the bluff!

Given the implied odds of this particular pot of life, it would appear that continuing to play online as long as possible would be the best option in order to prepare ourselves for the uncertainty of the future. But clearly there are risks involved. So let us turn now to the next chapter and figure out the safest way to navigate through this potentially treacherous ground.