A New Year For Poker Players

So there’s another year over and a new one has just begun.

2009 was a great year for the game of poker, arguably the best year ever. Revenues for the game continued to grow in 2009 despite the economic situation in the United States, the game’s biggest market.

Poker players became household names, the online game moved slowly forward towards regulation in the U.S., and a social network called Twitter was a perfect fit to promote the lifestyle of the professional gamer.

At the 2009 WSOP the theme was multiple winners, and once again the record for the youngest WSOP champion was broken.

In 2009 our television screens had more professional poker players on display than ever before. Besides a wide array of poker shows, poker pros crossed over into mainstream media in a couple of big ways – the most famous being Annie Duke’s appearance on the hit show The Apprentice. Her feud with Joan Rivers captured some of the biggest primetime ratings of the year.

Appearing on another popular reality show were Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle. The two competed on The Amazing Race in an attempt to win a million dollars, but fell short of victory despite starting the show as one of the strongest teams.

The battle to rescind the Unlawful Internet Gaming Act of 2006 continued in 2009 and it looks like some progress is finally being made. Through efforts from the Poker Player’s Alliance and House Representative from Massachusetts Barney Frank, and other online poker advocates, they have managed to delay the implementation of the UIGEA a full year until December 2010. That will allow more time for the issue to be reviewed further, and the opportunity for the future of the game to take a different direction.

The 2009 WSOP saw multiple players win multiple bracelets as the pros made a stand this year, taking away lots of the hardware.

Phil Ivey won two bracelets and made the final table of the Main Event, Greg Mueller won two, John Brock Parker won two, and Jeffery Lisandro won three bracelets, all in a variation of stud poker.

The 2009 WSOP also saw the dawn of the Twitter era for poker players. The social network instantly became a way for poker fans to see what a day in the life of a poker professional is like, and poker fans followed their favorites in droves throughout the WSOP and the rest of the year.

2009′s WSOP Champion was a 21-year-old kid named Joe Cada. He beat out a field of over 6,400 players to take down the $8.5 million first-place prize, breaking previous year’s Champion Peter Eastgate’s record as the youngest person to ever to take that title.