Today is always a tricky day for us at pokerfuse.
April 15th, 2011 is, of course, the date of online poker’s Black Friday: The day when PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker, at the demands of authorities, abruptly exited the United States.
It is a day when the online poker industry was decimated; a critical wound which—while far from fatal—still has lasting and lingering impacts today.
Yet for us at pokerfuse, it is also a day for celebration: April 15th is our birthday. Pokerfuse was launched on the day of Black Friday: A hasty one-page website we threw online to help the poker community understand the ramifications and the fallout from the actions of the Department of Justice on that fateful date.
Today marks ten years since these two events. A decade since the world’s largest online poker operators exited the United States. A decade that, despite a string of positive developments in regulation both in the United States and Europe, still leaves an industry heavily segregated, and much smaller than it once was.
But it is also ten years of our company. What started as a single web page has expanded to a network of sites that cover every facet of the online poker industry—from consumer-oriented online news here on pokerfuse, to industry-focused analysis on Poker Industry PRO, and gossip and community news on F5Poker.
When we first launched it was just me and my co-founder, Michael Gentile, doing everything. Today, we are a team ten-strong, and over the last decade we have published articles from over 50 writers in total.
We went from writing a handful of articles here on the site to some two dozen every week across multiple sites. Today, we engage tens of thousands of readers every day across our sites, newsletters and social media accounts with original content covering every aspect of online poker across the United States and Europe.
In that time, we have published around 15,000 articles across our three sites and over eight million words.
So today, and over the next week, we will be commemorating and reflecting on ten years since Black Friday: Reminiscing on the world that was; on how events unfolded through the eyes of the key people in the industry; on the events that have transpired since and where we are today.
But we also plan, if you permit us, to reflect on our own progress. From that single page website into one of the largest and most recognized site networks in online poker. We will look at some of our publishing highs, our key developments and some of the stories we are most proud of. We will also share some exciting plans we have—with one or two surprises up our sleeves.
Stay tuned. And here’s to ten more years.
