What Next For Online Poker?

The sense of excitement was palpable in the poker community when the news broke that disgraced online poker giant Full Tilt Poker was to be rescued by its greatest rival PokerStars.

The $731 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice will not only see all players with money stuck on the site eventually get paid — freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars into the struggling poker ecosystem — but also the resurrection of the site itself.

PokerStars will own and run the site in parallel (that is, competing) with its own poker site and speculation is as rife as anticipation is high about how the new brand will market and position itself.

What of the software? The high octane, high stakes cash games the site was famed for? The stable of high profile poker pros? The lauded TV shows such as Poker After Dark and Late Night Poker?

It’s too early to tell of course but the prospect of a renewed, reinvigorated and reinvented Full Tilt Poker, shorn of the baggage that brought it to its knees seems to be assuaging most players whose money was misappropriated by the old management.
The general consensus appears to be one of “let’s get this show on the road again already!” So roll on November, by which time the site should be up and running again, and we can shuffle up and deal.

No More Secrets

For all its high visibility, pre-Black Friday Full Tilt Poker was a secretive organisation. Its PR was prickly and unengaging. Defensive even. Often press releases would be issued days after the news had outlived its usefulness in the fast-paced world of poker media deadlines. Indeed lots of news-worthy material simply languished. Uncommunicated. Unreported. Unnoticed. Unloved. As an editor who needs to create a constant supply of engaging and useful content it was frustrating to see.

Contrast this with PokerStars whose sense of transparency and genuine passion for communicating with its audience through third parties such as magazines, websites, and social media remains a benchmark for the industry.

Of course, with hindsight, it’s easy to say that this was a symptom of the fact that Full Tilt didn’t really like to talk to its audience. It had stuff it didn’t want people to know. Serious stuff.

The company always operated in the shadow of its bigger rival. Happy to let PokerStars test the waters before being second to market in most things bar perhaps its technology. However this ultimately proved to be its Achilles heel.

Rather than recognise and play to its strengths within the rules, its insecurity at being second best meant that when it was squeezed it responded not with maturity but with naivety and a false sense of its own infallibility.

Soon we will stop talking about the old Full Tilt and start talking about its new incarnation and I, like many, will welcome the closing of one chapter and the opening of another in online poker. ♠