You summed this up perfectly . Poker after dark , high stakes poker , the wsop on espn . I could play 4-6 tournaments on poker stars with huge fields anytime . Used to love those 180 people sit and go’s that ran constantly

If you weren’t playing back then its hard to grasp. In 2009 the biggest sports superstar made a cameo playing Pokerstars in one of the biggest songs of the year by the biggest artists of the year. It’s actually kind of mind blowing thinking back that this actually happened.

This. It'll never be the same. Unless you got to swim in those waters, it's impossible to know how amazing it was.

The golden age for me was when men didn't give other men half nude massages at the table.

Or perhaps even bringing it to this forum's attention?

1980. Seven card stud at the Hacienda.

There was a regular in the Commerce 100/200 stud game 15 years ago who drove the action. The game would not start until he showed up. He would often get massages at the table. Invariably his shirt would become too cumbersome and he'd remove it partly, but not before warning the table that "It's about to get X-rated here." No one cared.

When Americans could still play online and fund their accounts from their bank account and get cash from the poker site direct deposited to their bank account in no more than one day after the request. After PartyPoker stopped accepting American money, I played on PokerStars. I wasn't as successful, but I did win a seat at the WSOP with their step program. Didn't attend, it was $12,000 free cash and I didn't want to take the time off work. One good thing about PP was that every few months you could change IDs, which would slow down the multi-table sharks a little who were using heads up displays. That all ended on April 15, 2011. I was sure it would come back, but it never did and probably won't.

Golden age of poker for me was around 2004-2007.

Funny story from around that time. I won a seat in an online Tournament for the Party Poker Millions cruise sometime around 2004. It was package which included a room on the cruise ship as well as a spot in the tournament. My wife who was my gf at the time came with me and she's not a gambler at all but hey it was a free cruise even thou I would be gone most of the time playing poker.

I gave her a few lessons on BlackJack and told her never ever lend money to the people at the table. While I was playing poker she sat down with her little blackjack cheat sheet and started to play. Someone beside her ran out of cash at the table and asked her if he could borrow some money. All she remembered was my voice saying never lend money at the tables so she said No. She heard this collective gasp from all around her and she looked around and all she saw was a massive amount of people watching the table. He told her his friend went to the safe to get money and he asked again and would pay her back. it was just the two of them playing. She felt pressured and the looks she was getting from everyone watching so she said ok and gave in. I don't remember the amount but it was significant to her, I think it was $300 or something.

Guy doubled down/split or whatever he did and won. Tipped the dealer and gave my wife an extra two hundred bucks and left. She immediately had a bunch of people including the dealer ask her did you not know who that was? You have to remember this was a poker cruise with a tournament worth a few million. The entire ship lived and breathed poker but her. She was just along for the free cruise. Even the dealer looked at her like she was some sort of reject looser.

Turned out it was Phil Helmuth and the rest of the cruise I was referred to as "that guy"

1835: pochen on a Mississippi steamboat

But if he lost does he pay?

You missed the part where I said I’ve been playing for almost 25 years…

I just think now is actually better and more of a golden age when you consider the amount of PLO games now versus then… This probably isn’t true for hold em.. but I’ve noticed when I play holdem most players are clueless and haven’t studied so I still stand by now being a golden age and with vlogs and live streams I think it’s a boom.

2004-2008

Covid, those lockdowns $$$$

Fulltilt pre-black friday

+1 for 2009. I miss those days so much.

Moneymaker winning wsop until party poker stopped allowing Americans

The golden age for me was around 2012. Grinding supernova elite on pokerstars battling chadders0 and skaiwulkur at $500 Hu hypers, we all thought we were crushers playing 25bbs deep heads up.

The creators today are happy, Doug Polk today "Hundreds of Thousands Watched PokerGo Stream" in 2004 around 2.5 million people watched the Final Table, the prelim and main event coverage before that were getting 1-1.5 million folks an episode watching. Not to mention those episodes were put in reruns for years, not to mention the views it got on YouTube and torrent downloads. When was the last time you tried to torrent a poker show? The stuff today is so boring that I don't even know if people bother to record it and pass it around. Millions of eyes were on the product from 2003 til ESPN left. Now people are willing to drop their pants and have people piss on them for 13k live views and 200k total.

2003-Black Friday

espn left long after people stopped caring about poker.

For me it was 03-06. The game was starting to explode in popularity and the WSOP on ESPN was appointment viewing. The Moneymaker to Gold years were filled with amazing characters. Starting in 07 (when Yang won) and each successive year, the main event became less and less fun.

Close second would be 09-10. The SuperNova Elite threads were super fun with tons of players chasing it in a wide variety of formats, tons of games running at any hour of the day, etc.

Everything got rekt in April 2011, and it hasn't quite been the same since.

Hard to say. Was playing a lot of 7stud before the moneymaker boom. I believe a lot of it was at the Trop in AC.


Then the Taj Mahal NLHE after moneymaker.....when there was barely any room to walk between the tables. These were good times. You could play super system poker and print. There was also like 12,745 home game tournaments that could be crushed.

Then there was some very good NLHE and PLO action in Charles Town, WV.......before DC/Md had casinos.

During all that time, Vegas poker was awesome.



Now, Texas poker is amazing. And we are in the Information Age of poker with solvers and such. Pretty cool time for poker.



So, it's hard to pinpoint what I'd call the "golden era." There's been tons of ups and downs and each phase has its own highlights.

it's right now, nothing like the present day...

yup. you could go to parties, 4th of July BBQs etc and there would always be some kind of poker.

I remember going to backyard birthday party of some friend of a friend. We ended up playing like 10 sit and goes top 2 get paid for 25 dollars each. In all 10 me and my friend came in first or second except for one. The people were horrible. play every hand passively overfold horrible.
We were accused of cheating a few days later since the other players complained to whoever's party it was. "All these guys are really good at poker they think you had to be cheating to win that much." Good times.

2004 up until black Friday. I remember winning $3 on a PokerStars freeroll and building it up to $800 before beginning cash outs. I use to get so excited for wsop main event episodes. When double or nothings were first created it was like printing money with so little thinking as you can master the game reading a 2 page article while like 30 to 40% of players were still playing them like traditional sngs. Using points to order full Tilt hats, hoodies, etc. and sport them around. Watching Isildur destroying the high stakes community for those couple of months when he was a mystery. Seeing Nananoko's poker graph continue go go straight up snd never take dips with over 2 million hands. Looking forward to Sunday High Stakes poker episodes on GSN. Requesting checks every few weeks from like it was just free money(I was just so happy making money playing $0.10/.25nl though I never challenged myself to move up which I kind of regret now. Everything til black friday.Friday.

Honestly with all the live youtube shows and vloggers though, I think poker is as good now as it has been since black Friday. Just sucks that online can never be the same again with everything out there