It’s been a busy year in the poker world, and with Black Friday and Full Tilt poker dominating the headlines we’ve decided to take a look at the 10 biggest stories of the year, some of which we almost forgot about ourselves with everything else going on in the poker world!

Here is a look at the FIVE biggest stories of the year (read #10-#6 here):

5. Pius Heinz vs. Martin Staszko

When the final table of the 2011 World Series of Poker began few people penciled in Pius Heinz and Martin Staszko as the two heads-up combatants. But not only did the unlikely duo reach heads-up play, they put on one of the best shows in recent poker history, battling back and forth for the coveted title. Heinz or Staszko would have been fitting champions, but in the end only one man could win, and it was Pius Heinz.

4. The Epic Poker League

For months we were treated to press releases and statements by the burgeoning Epic poker League, and then in August we finally got to see the “Pros-only” poker tour in action. While there have been a few bumps in the road along the way, the Epic Poker League is if nothing else innovative.

3. The WSOP Main Event goes “Live”

The WSOP did its own bit of innovating this year as well, as ESPN and the WSOP decided to broadcast the entire final table of the Main Event on a 15-minute delay. Perhaps the most long-lasting and potentially game-changing aspect of the live coverage was the “reveal” of players’ hole cards only at the end of the hand, giving the coverage a more “play-along-at-home” feel to it.

2. The Demise of Full Tilt Poker

After Black Friday the poker site that everyone thought was in troubled was Absolute Poker/UB Poker (which turned out to be correct as well) but nobody could have ever imagined that Full Tilt Poker would be in even worse shape! The quick and sudden downfall of the #2 online poker site in the world will likely keep online poker players weary and skeptical for years to come, and is another addition to the list of online poker sites that have screwed online poker players over.

The hoped of the poker community recovering their money from the site now rests on a potential to Groupe Bernard Tapie –which may very well end up as the biggest story of 2012!

1. Black Friday

Obviously Black Friday tops this list, considering mainstream news outlets like Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal now have reporters covering the online poker industry! Black Friday served as a wake-up call to the poker community that nothing is a certainty, and the still falling dominoes revealed a number of cracks in the industry. We can only hope that the old adage of “Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” holds true for the online poker industry.

Tags: Absolute Poker, Addi, Black Friday, Combatants, Demise, Downfall, ESPN, Full tilt Poker, Heinz, Hole Cards, Live Coverage, Minute Delay, Online Poker, Poker History, poker players, Poker World, Two Heads, world series, World Series of Poker, WSOP Main Event

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 24th, 2011 at 7:37 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.