a personal look at Black Friday

[terrencechan]

Black Friday was actually Saturday for me here in Hong Kong; I woke up to Twitter, my IMs, and my phone going crazy before I'd even had a chance to make coffee. Now it's 10 PM here and my day is winding down just as poker players in North America are realizing that sadly, yesterday was not a bad dream

Comments

[anonymous]

Great writing Terrence. I share many of your viewpoints, especially when you said "I've never really been a fan of most young poker pros (despite having been one myself) but they certainly don't deserve to have their income legislated out of existence overnight."
This event of "Black Friday" doesn't directly affect me, because I rarely play online poker, but it literally does have hundreds or even thousands of indirect effects on me simply because I am involved in the poker world.
I enjoyed reading your article and hope to see you again at the WSOP.
-Joe Tehan

[anonymous]

it's hard for me to mourn the loss of jobs when the jobs are in the leisure/entertainment industry and even less when they are in the advantage-play industry. obv being an advantage player myself i sympathize and admire the young poker pros as most of them are sharper/smarter than i ever was or ever will be. but neither they nor i are entitled to high-paying-fun-no-boss-no-schedule-sucking-the-life-out-of-dumb-saps-while-contributing-absolutely-nothing-to-society jobs.

[terrencechan]

The contention that picking up garbage, flipping burgers, doing taxes or piloting space shuttles for a living is more noble than being in the "leisure/entertainment industry" is not one that I share. I mean advantage players we can get into another time, but seriously, you think say the job of a clerk at a hotel is worth less than the job of a clerk at some other desk? That's a bizarre stance.

[adam__selene]

Have your friend(s) send resumes to jobs -at- nemesis-dev -dot- com, I may have positions available in Escazú.

[deadmonywalking]

Isle of Man is in the general treaty with England. http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:yeH2psOIZ0kJ:internationalextraditionblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/isle-of-man.pdf+isle+of+man+extradition+treaty?&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShsvTTd9uPSGTlaMffz1DVAoeyhGPoD9OZYFYcITbt2vbD0UIexVTUcUFtLYTnqk6SvFF6-uEtaJ_UyISlpCX4yIeh4jMY1bougBOF_7g0R2pJMfHs1Wmg5i6VwNJ8KPccXVnao&sig=AHIEtbSJ5BzY9EP_ZHqWhJuEgVumSCX1bg&pli=1... )

[adam__selene]

The problem with that, is the charges of Bank Fraud and Money Laundering are crimes in the Isle of Man

except...

[ext_291352]

I don't know if you read the indictments, but there are some very serious fraud accusations being thrown around and I don't imagine they are being done without cause. Remember that you left Stars before they got huge and you can't be sure that getting so big didn't get to Isai's dark side(we all have one). I would totally be agreeing with you about the shutting down of poker and how they could have done this a different way if it weren't for the fraud accusations.

Re: except...

[tiltcity]

If I had to guess, it seems likelier to me that Stars and FTP did grey-area stuff where the legality is disputed by the US government as opposed to doing stuff that was obviously illegal. I don't know the main people personally though, so this is just conjecture on my part.

I'm curious about this fraud stuff... let's say you're a pro poker player, and someone asks what you do. If you say something like "I work online and I try to get in on +EV situations and avoid -EV ones" and the other guy says "Oh, you're a day trader?" and then you say "Not exactly, but I guess in a way it's *something* like that" are you being outright deceptive?

I wonder if things depend on whether there's a strong affirmative burden of disclosure to the banks.

Re: except...

[adb_jaeger]

The UIGEA doesn't have to be involved at all.

Bank fraud is bank fraud, regardless of the customer.