It all started with an innocent tweet:
Seth Davis
Pre-Black Friday, the PokerStars Sunday Warm Up $215 was $150k to win every week.
— "What is it now?" one user asked.
He was told that the first prize is now $12,000. The buy-in is now $109, and the guarantee is $50,000.
— " How many did you conquer?" Seth was asked.
— "Never won the Warm Up or the Million but I won the 2nd Chance twice. And a SCOOP Super Tuesday. Got 4th in the Million once."
Not all professionals weathered the US online shutdown as easily as Davis, but some found the transition particularly difficult:
— "I know I won that and the brawl, ftops 1k Mondays 1k Tuesdays 330 weds on stars, and after Black Friday I have yet to have over 50k live score. Crazy went from top 5 player on earth to dust. I get sad thinking about this," wrote a person who declined to identify themselves.
Well, maybe not quite typical – December 26th is, understandably, a fairly busy day on the poker calendar! Let's list some of the tournaments mentioned in the report. There were practically no more expensive online tournaments back then, so any major tournament would be many times, sometimes dozens of times, larger than the session load, or even the entire week's load.
- PokerStars Sunday Million – $215 Entry – 8,947 Entrants
Winner: Paige “pageh656” Harris – $249,054 - PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up – $215 Entry – 4,366 Entrants
Winner – proFile – $124,358 - PokerStars Sunday 500 – $530 Entry – 1,050 Entrants
Winner: diicman – $90,615 - PokerStars 109R – $109 Entry + $100 Rebuys – 1,155 entrants
Winner: Eric “highlite11” Nagel – $74,938 - Full Tilt 750k GTD – $216 – 3,955 entries
Winner: rob121986 – $140,046 - Full Tilt Sunday Brawl – $256 – 2,574 entries
Winner: Banana Skirt – $104,504 - Full Tilt Sunday Mulligan – $216 – 1,174 entries
Winner: Gaius Gracchus – $51,656 - Full Tilt $200k GTD with Rebuys – $163, $150 Rebuy – 624 Entrants
Winner: Jordan “Jymaster11” Young – $76,623
Noting that the history of flagship, large-field tournaments wasn't resonating with readers, Davis played his trump card:
"Every day back in the glory days you could win at least $10k in a $3/$5/$10 rebuy on PokerStars or a $26 freezeout on Full Tilt," Seth reminisced in another tweet.
— "Haters will say it's fake. Random Sunday from 2010," DegodHasslehoff posted a link to a report on the results of a typical Sunday of play.
And then the dam of memories burst. Seth tried to respond to every comment, but soon gave up – there were too many.
— "TBF there's $25 tourneys on GG with $10k up top on weekdays."
Seth – "That’s great. The ones back then were freezeouts though."
— "What about the PokerStars $20 180-man. 1st $1,080. The original bankroll builder 🐐 ran all day."
Seth – "Winning one of those was a rite of passage."
— "If I remember correctly all the MTTs you start with 1500 chips. No antes until later. Go to YouTube and search Poker X Factor and watch some of the old MTT training videos. Good times."
Seth – "That old Poker X Factor player is nostalgia in its purest form. Watching Johnny Bax vids on that thing. Those were the days."
— "That Pokerstars $3 rebuy launched a lot of careers. I won it twice in a month and dropped out of college instantly so I would never miss another one 😂."
Seth – "The dream."
— "The $1 and $3 rebuy on Stars were elite. Never had more fun jamming ATC every other hand."
— "The $3 rebuy was the greatest tourney on Stars"
— "If I recall correctly, weren’t the $3 rebuy tourneys $40k GTD prize pool?"
— "Those were the days! $3.30 rebuy with $15k up top! Every tournament was just juicy AF."
— "I won a 1r turbo on Stars for over $6k. 😂"
— "A few here for you mate"
Seth – "I promised myself I wasn’t gonna cry."
— "What has happened?"
Seth – "We lost our way brother."
— "Wonder what would happen if they removed the segregation so that all player pools would become connected into one giant pool. Why would a government regulation get in the way of economy and consumers in something that is by nature international?"
Seth – "Yeah it can never be close to what it was with how software has developed."
— "My first ever 5 fig score came in the 11r on Stars."
— "Won the Midnight Madness multiple times and had every other FT spot multiple times Vs drunk/tired players on the east coast. the softest MTT ever IMO"
— "They were what kickstarted me in my early poker days, winning a 26$ $42,000 GTD on a random Wednesday with like 99xx$ that started like 8 in the evening CET and took like 7-8 hrs. I remember it like yesterday. 11$ rebuys when rebuys weren’t raked were an absolute dream."
— "People who didn't live it have no clue... even the random daily $22 Horse at like 2pm EST had about 110 runners... legit would make my weekly partying money from 4 mid-afternoon daily mixed game tourneys..."
— "The Full Tilt $26s were my jam… 35k guaranteed for $26… ugh those were the days."
— "There are multiple 25$ freezouts with $20k-$40k GTD on GGPoker every day."
— "This is pretty nostalgic Seth. I shipped so many of those.. the ultimate bankroll builders."
— "I miss Stars weekly tourney leader board. Getting on there or winning it felt like an accomplishment. Stars always had a stupid low buy in 25k guarantee almost nightly I'm pretty sure."
