The affair of the Black Friday domain seizures is said to be nearing closure, but while some poker sites have survived and even prospered, others have not been so lucky.
In April last year when poker players logged onto their favourite sites, many of them were greeted by the display left. The saga of Full Tilt has been documented here and elsewhere, and now it has been confirmed that it will be relaunched
by PokerStars once the formalities have been sorted out.
PokerStars is already the world's largest site, so that bodes well for poker players, apart from those in the home of poker that is, because American players are still excluded and will be for the foreseeable future as things stand.
Two other sites that were badly affected were Absolute Poker and UltimateBet.
Both quit the United States for good, and Absolute has long since gone down the tubes; its domain is gone, and the only place it can now be found is on the
Internet Archive's Wayback Machine,
here.
Its sister site UltimateBet continued for a while as UBNet. Now, this domain is
up for sale.
There is now a website dedicated to
Poker Shutdowns that is keeping track of these sort of developments. Hopefully it will not have much to report on.
The screengrabs below are all from the same tournament, a
RakeTheRake affiliate freeroll, which was played on UltimateBet early last year. They are in chronolgical order.
A screenshot from an affiliate freeroll on UltimateBet, early in 2011. One of the perils of slow playing aces is getting outdrawn by garbage hands, as happened here.
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A screenshot from an affiliate freeroll on UltimateBet, early in 2011. A horrible suck out for the guy with pocket 9s; flop a set at hold 'em and you'd normally expect to win the hand.
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A screenshot from an affiliate freeroll on UltimateBet, early in 2011. Another horrible scenario, after the turn the set is a big favourite, then wallop, the guy with pocket kings connects.
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