Online Poker Blog and Poker News

It took over a week for Absolute Poker or UB Poker to issue a statement regarding Black Friday, and with the site losing over 75% of its players despite still allowing US players at the table, the poker world’s faith in the company was shaken even more, having only heard from the site that one time.

While this is far from confirmed, according to an E-Mail first produced by the website HoldemPokerChat.com, and later picked up by MSNBC.com, the Cereus Poker Network of Absolute Poker and UB Poker will be filing for bankruptcy protection in Norway.

Today the “Annie Duke” poker league –which is still unnamed, and still without a TV deal—announced both the 218 players that made the cut, as well as the criteria they used in determining the players who would be eligible. Details are in this post.

With Black Friday basically stopping all US online poker players’ cold in their tracks, we are likely looking at the yearly results for any US high-stakes poker player in the list below, and all of the movement that will be taking place will be amongst the European and Asian players.

“Grinders” tracks the lives of a number of small stakes poker pros and it also looks into the day-to-day operations of the game at these illegal card clubs and Gallagher’s journey from outsider to part of the underground poker culture.

The guys over at OnlinePoker.org have put together a concise and accurate infographic which explains the online poker crackdown in laymen’s terms. I have embedded the graphic below so you can check it out or show it to your friends.

In a lengthy blog post, Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt goes into great detail on how the online poker community needs to be “cleaned up” beginning with creating an equal playing field for all players by banning HUD’s and other third-party poker tracking software and tools.

The poker world was expecting the 22% drop in online poker traffic reported buy pokerscout.com, and virtually everyone in the industry is in agreement that the World Series of Poker numbers will take a major hit thanks to the DOJ’s crackdown on online poker in the US.

More good news came out of the poker world on Tuesday afternoon as PokerStars announced that US poker players can now begin cashing-out their funds from the site, which should also bring a sigh of relief to the WSOP tournament staff.

Sportsbook.com and PlayersOnly.com, two of the largest remaining USA-friendly online poker rooms, announced today that they would be leaving the USA poker market. This move will go into effect May 1st, 2011, and will signal another major blow to the online poker market in the USA.