April 15, 2011 is known as Black Friday in the online-poker world, the day the feds seized the assets and shut down the three biggest companies serving the American market — PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker.
Among the people affected: Walter Wright, a former Houstonian who was making a six-figure living playing online poker.
He’s now living in Costa Rica, where he can continue doing what he learned to do so well.
Village Voice Media writer Chris Parker takes a look at Wright and the rest of the online-poker subculture — a $2.5 billion industry — in “They Were Kings For A Moment,” this week’s Houston Press cover story.
This article appears in Feb 23-29, 2012.