I had dinner with a Poker Academy friend tonight. We've played poker together for several years now, met a couple times in Las Vegas with the PA crowd, and visited when he has layovers up in the city. The conversations are always rewarding when we get the chance. And after a couple/three hours, we're talked out, perhaps because we cover a lot of ground, not all of it poker-related, and a good amount heart-felt. Guys can only handle so much of the latter, you know.
When I returned home, my wife asked me about my evening. I touched on the topics and somehow the PA Forums came up. To tell the truth, I hadn't given much thought to them since the PA plug was unceremoniously pulled.
"The forums are gone?" she asked. "All of the photos and stories from Las Vegas?"
A few PA players have found another site to play on with each other. It pales and is almost painful to play on the interface. The bots that seed the tables are absolute shit and play a fit or fold game with no calculations for pot odds. In short, it's a farce and I'll join a table only to visit with longtime friends. The contrast with what we had at PA makes me angry.
But the forums... Now I'm sad.
Fuck the owners of PA: Full Tilt. Sure, they stole money from their clients. Thieves. They also decimated a community. What does that make them?
The bots have been removed from all no-limit games
ReplyDeleteAs if we needed another reason to hate FT.
ReplyDeleteThe PA people had something special. When there was no money to be made, they pulled the plug, correct? Sad.
Anon - OK, better.
ReplyDeleteMojo - FTP purchased PA for some specific software features and a gaggle of developers. The PA name didn't hurt. That was some time back, and at that time they diverted resources (familiar pattern?) away from PA's further development, including the marketing of a superior product for the NL enthusiast/student. Still, we were able to play and stay 'together' as a community.
When the DOJ shit hit the fan and FTP lost their license, we all knew it was most likely a matter of time. Still, it wasn't exactly a matter of "no money to be made" where PA was concerned. They had very little invested in a product that could have made them money in a legitimate way. Yet, when the second shoe dropped (before this most recent third one did), and it became clear no one was going to get paid what they were owed, I suppose it made no sense for them to keep an office in Edmonton that might be later claimed as an asset in civil suits. Fuckers...