For me it was:

PokerStars would be full of a wide variety of games that would fill regularly. If you weren't there the minute the Hubble freeroll dropped you weren't getting a seat. Pretty much every sng would fill within a minute and there were a wide variety of low stakes tournaments that weren't just re entry, progressive super knock out or Hyper turbos. Jason Alexander and Orel Hershieser were sponsored players.

The WSOP was filled with big name players. You'd root for Ivey, Hellmuth, Esfandiari, Laak, Moneymaker, Matasow, Brunson or Hansen in most tournaments. You could listen to daily pokernews podcasts or 3 hour long weekly pokercasts about it. You'd get hour long weekly highlights on espn. First some pre lims and then many hours of the Main Event.

2+2 was a lively bustling place. Threads would get a hundred replies in an hour even if they weren't that good. People put effort into photoshops and parodies and memes. Beginner questions were truly beginner questions about whether you should have folded Kings because it turns out the other guy had aces.

Pokerstars.tv had loads of produced highlights for loads of Pokerstars events. There'd also be Gabe and AJ Benza on High Stakes Poker and Ali Nejad with some Poker After Dark cash games.

Live games would be filled with novice players who would shove with aces or fold ace King to a raise. I never made much money playing, but I lasted a while in local tournaments and had a fun time chatting to people as I did it.

I miss those days. Perhaps I'm just too old or too casual to keep up with what's going on nowadays but that's how I feel.

What we're the elements of your golden era of poker?

Isildur1

when that_pope bet KK into trup QQ

In a nostalgic sense, watching sbrugby, durrrr, OMGclayaiken playing nosebleeds on Fulltilt and dnegs throwing out the bricks in HSP.

In reality, I feel like I'm in the golden age now for a few reasons:
- Free, live poker shows + podcasts on youtube every day. Some of the best players streaming on twitch/youtube.
- Pokersite's have matured. Better software, support, rakeback deals overall.
- Training sites and solvers mean you can always improve fast with hard work
- Games/formats are more competitive, less bumhunting/butchering new players. Nearly every player knows the basics now.
- Internet connection is 99.99% stable, no more flopping quads and disconnecting

2008-2010 I guess because it was easy to make over half a mill every year

Rail bird heaven was the peak

Pokerstars ran a 500 FPP ($7,50 IIRC) satellite to the WSOP Main Event which handed out 20 packages. Pokerstars must have lost tens of thousands of dollars in that one, but it was worth it to them. A guy pot-calling 100bb on the river holding Queen high in PLO (my guess is he thought he had a full house). This was back in 2007 or so.

For me 2002-2007 was the golden age of playing. Before regulations and before Italy got segregated off (If you played online cash games before 2008 you know what I mean!). New sites were popping up everywhere and player numbers were exploding from people watching the TV broadcasts. Also training sites only came into play at the later end of that and there were no solvers or bots that were any good. Stuff like Pokertracker 2 existed but aside from a basic HUD it was a battle of intelligence, smarts and wits - not who had the best software. It was a wild west and the downside was you could easily be outright cheated (Ultimate Bet) or colluded against (this happened on every site, mostly in SnGs) but if you could navigate around that the potential for making money was large, and it was a glorious time to be a good player.

For railbirding the top was definitely Nov 2009 and Dec 2009. Isildur1 at his peak destroying everyone cannot be matched.

Overall taking everything into account, I think the 2006 WSOP main was the defining point of the poker boom.

2004-Black Friday. It was so easy to make money. So many bad players. If you had AK and raised pre flop and hit an ace and someone called you with A2 they were never going to fold and would call 3 streets. Even second pair hands would never fold in a lot of circumstances.

My first deposit was $140 on FTP in December of 2004. Within a month I had turned that into over 6K. It was so easy to do in those days. Did the same thing on Stars in 2006 I think. Turned a $25 deposit into 6K in just a few weeks. Now that was my downfall sometimes when I would play well over my bankroll but those were amazing times.

Sounds like Hustler Casino Live in 2023..

2003-2004 WSOP and WPT

Sit and gos on Party Poker

I lean towards 2004-2010 just from a "fun" standpoint. Americans were allowed on the big sites. Soft games. No solvers. Bots were minimal. The WSOP was still pretty big on ESPN. The poker players who were famous in this era are still the most famous poker players around. Guarantee you more people know Hansen, Matusow, and Chan than Addamo, Foxen, and Chidwick. The fragmentation of media has led to poker becoming more of a niche thing. Having a show on ESPN or Travel Channel wouldn't even matter as much in 2023 since a lot of people are just watching streaming content on their own schedule. But back then those WSOP reruns on ESPN were doing pretty big numbers and pulling a lot of casual players to the tables. You felt that on PokerStars. Lots of bad, bad recs punting off small deposits for fun.

Live games are still good, but everyone seems to agree that edges are thinner now in the popular variants.

A lot of the mystery and mystique around the game is gone. Rounders built up the idea of the unstoppable poker genius, which was a fun narrative to believe in. The reality is not as glamorous, even if there are a handful of players crushing the games long-term. The zero-sum aspect of it has squeezed out a lot of the mediocre "pros" who were really just floating on sponsorship deals. The reality is that "the same five guys" don't make the final table of the WSOP every year because short-term results are more about variance than skill. The idea of poker is not as sexy in 2023 because we know what the reality is.

If I had to pinpoint a specific year that it peaked, I'm just going to pick 2009. You still had thriving online games. Minimal scandals. Ivey making his deep run at the WSOP. durrrr being super fun in the nosebleeds and on HSP. The Isildur1 madness. Online qualifiers were packing the tables at the WSOP in their branded gear. EPT was thriving. That was a fun time to be playing.

Back in the day you could get 60% deals with dealt method. And being a prop player 120+ deals. No way deals today are even remotely better vs pre black friday.

Has to be when you could play 20+ tables at stars with simple theme and print by knowing if someone raised you postflop you were beat.

When there were no synchronised breaks for mtts �� you know what you had to do...

This was pretty lol, also everything started and was played to a finish without breaking for a day 2/3/4 whatever. Think one of the WCOOPS or some other big Stars tourney went for 20 hours straight.

right now

Hu at ftp, ps, ipoker.

Play w Julia, Maia, David123, antoniel .

The days when partypoker had freerolls that would give away multiple $10K main event seats as well as a $50k event ticket.

supernova days

2005 until when neteller sat down.
For people not around back then neteller was basically paypal for gambling. It was incredible. Once it shut down getting money online became a lot harder especially for people who want to play bigger. Losing players are far less likely to jump through hoops to get money on than winning players. I remember that overnight a lot of players who would lose10-25k a weekend on bodog playing 5/10 and 10/20 nl just vanished from the site which obviously caused a trickle down effect. We'd all love those 2009 games again, but the instant drop off in game quality was pretty big. Just by playing super tight I made a lot of money all 3 of those years. I mean I went from a college kid making 9 bucks an hour to having months where I made 20-50k in less than 2 years while all of my friends were applying for jobs that might pay 50-60k a year.

I knew this wasn't sustainable but it would have lasted even longer if the gov't didn't interfere.
personally for me my poker income dropoff was far bigger from before the neteller shutdown to after than it was from before black friday to after.

I played more live after BF and play almost exclusively live today so that's different for sure but bodog giving bottomless reload bonus where I was probably clearing 5k a month just in bonuses to play in absolute dream games will never be duplicated.

Pacific poker only allowed 1 table, had the worst software, the highest rake and 5/10 nl played like 1/2 nl live back then.

I remember paradise poker had really fun software and when the highest game was 1/2 nl averaging almost 40 dollars an hour per table (3 table max) for over a year.
Keep in mind this was 9 handed and that's per table hour not per 100 hands. Just great times to be playing.

Additionally back then online poker wasn't about mass volume for small win rates. People actually used to use chat back then bc they were playing 1 or 2 tables. And not for things like telling someone to **** themselves after a bad beat. Some of the funniest conversations I've ever seen or heard were in online poker chat back then.

Poker was EVERYWHERE.
You'd go to a bar or party and there would be poker.

i will never forget. 1/2 nl on bodog. this guy "tk2" was a horror show. He had about 1400 in 1/2 nl.

I raised preflop with aq probably to something like 25. went maybe 4 ways to aq4.
Got all in for 1400 vs his ace 8 offsuit and it came king king to chop.
Back then no uber eats or anything. I ran downstairs to the deli by me before it was going to close (was probably like 4am) to get food. And by the time I got back he had dusted it all.

I'm barely exaggerating when i say this-
I didn't really have to play turns the first year I played online bc people were just all in on the flop, and i didn't really have to play rivers for 2 years bc people would just be all in by the turn.

All of this small raise sizing, down betting, pot control, flatting to keep draws in etc that is common today.
**** all that. Back then raise sizes were huge preflop, flop bets were big and you were just all in a lot with good hands against garbage.

like back then you could have jacks on j73 two spades and someone bets into you. Today people often flat, keep draws in, let them keep bluffing etc. back then nope raise that **** stack ace 7, the flush draw, maybe pocket 9s or if someone has the case jack you get them too.


here's 2 more famous hands. action is approximate.

4000 deep in 5/10 nl. max 1000 buy in.bodog.
i raise probably to 60 with pocket queens.
3 callers.
flop q72 rainbow.

I bet guy raises someone calls, 1 fold, i reraise first guy sends it in 4000 effective, other guy calls,
I'm thinking i might have overset 2 people. Nope they both flatted with aa and kk.

I even turned quads so no river sweat and it was my first 10+ pot.
I was sitting right by an open window and I'm pretty sure if one of them had 2 outed me that laptop was going straight out the window to its demise.



Another AA KK hand on pacific poker. 2000 is effective. 5/10 nl

I raise 89 spades to 60-70 ish. one caller. min raise, a couple more callers. we go like 6 ways.

to 678 2 spades. I get all in 3 ways with AA (the min raiser) and KK (hood flaated the min raise ).
Somehow KK finds a not spade king, wins it all. Both AA and KK are berating me for being an idiot, and AA isn't mad at KK because "nothing you can do with KK vs AA. it's just a cooler."

+1

From just before the Moneymaker poker boom(when I first started playing) up until Black Friday. Oceans of fish at 50nl. Like taking candy from a baby.


Cheers!!!

Probably sometime between 2011 and 2014 for mine - no ban for Aus yet and getting to play all those Russian donkeys (and giving it to them on chat to which was great to keep me awake at those nosebleed early hours of the morning when I was near falling asleep).

the days where i would usually play 2 weeks to get broke, knowdays my deposits last a day ... games are just tuff