Black Friday Victim Wins at WSOP

One of the regular Joes who suffered following the Black Friday crackdown on online poker in the US has recovered to win a bracelet at the 2011 World Series of Poker.

Bad News Becomes Good

Harrison Wilder is one of the 50,000 players the Poker Players Alliance says were stripped of their livelihood by the online poker shutdown, but his decision to enter the world of live poker paid off when he won the $1,500 Limit Hold'em event on Sunday night - the sixth of 58 events being played across almost two months of poker action.

There have been some other noteworthy bracelet winners in the first week of the WSOP and one unlikely feat. When Jake Cody, who hails from the small Manchester, England suburb of Rochdale, won the $25,000 Heads Up No Limit Hold'em championship on the event's opening day, nobody really batten an eyelid. But a few days later, unknown Matt Perrins - who also hails from Rochdale - won the $1,500 buy-in No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Lowball Championship, well and truly putting the industrial market town on the map.

Entry Figures Rise

In some fantastic news for the poker industry, players from the US and around the world have failed to be perturbed by the online crackdown, with attendance at events in the first week increasing to 8374 contestants, a 1.8 percent increase on the previous year.

Only three of the first nine events saw a drop in participant numbers, and even then the drops were almost negligible.