Thread by @pokerprojones

So this week, along with the regular content - of which we're still snowed under and have a large backlog, it's been a mad busy time and with PSPC starting at the weekend, it's not going to quieten down any time soon - we have been having some fun looking back at 2018.

We've done curations this week on our top 20 exclusive articles and top 20 longer-form features - both are in front of the paywall (but not the articles they link to - psyche!) so feel free to check them out:

- pokerindustrypro.com/news/article/2…

- pokerindustrypro.com/news/article/2…

And today I curated "Twelve Stories that Shaped the Year" - 12 rather opinionated picks by moi, one story for each month of 2018, that I think encapsulated a key theme last year. Or I just really liked the story.

pokerindustrypro.com/news/article/2…

I thought this would be fun to share direct on Twitter for Friday's twitter thread.

And as an extra special bonus, all links in this thread go behind the paywall so you can read the full content. You lucky sausages! Happy belated Christmas and all that.

Buckle up!

January: PokerStars gets the year started with forming the first French-Spanish player pool, ending some five+ years of regulatory back and forth. It is a market position it ends up enjoying for many months to come.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/9531-N…

February: With MILLIONS Online it is easy to forget that before all that online posturing, the first battlefront was in the live tour. The announcement of the €23 million Barcelona stop was a direct shot into PokerStars' EPT heartland.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/9605-I…

March: Before Australian acquisitions, before Skybet, TSG was still primarily an online poker company and its executives talked a lot about poker. In March, it could boast that poker was still on the rise despite regulatory headwinds in 2017.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/9661-M…

(Don't get me wrong, # were up in H1 too, but that talk has very much switched to sports betting, business synergies, US growth branding strategy etc etc.

A year ago it was all about those poker numbers)

April: The first of half a dozen exclusives we did on PRO in 2018 on upcoming new games and products. Here we revealed that PokerStars was working on two new poker games, setting the tone for the year of limited-time game variants.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/9719-e…

May: History was made when the WSOP, powered by 888's All American Poker Network, launched an online poker player pool that spanned all three regulated states of Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/9756-z…

June: PRO's burgeoning reporting arm pubs two new glossy reports to the delight of customers:
1/ The page-turner: "State of the Online Poker Industry: Summer 2018"
2/ The eye-opener: "The Online Poker Difference"

Limited digital copies still available.

pokerindustrypro.com/reports/

July: $4,700,000,000 changes hands when TSG buys UK online sports betting monster Sky Betting and Gaming, which the company says "makes it world’s largest publicly listed online gaming company" and then everyone has a good old moan over what that means

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/9894-p…

August: WCOOP is going to be even massiver this year! How much more massive? Incrimentally more massive.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/9945-i…

September: Distributed denial of service attacks are fairly distributed across all major online poker operators so no one feels left out.

This twitter thread is getting rather snarky.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/10022-…

October: 888 has a good old moan about how the competition was doing marketing and attracting their players which is just not cricket.

I think the snark level is inevitable when you're doing it at 10:20pm on a Friday night.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/10081-…

November: Unibet Poker, on the other hand, keeps going from strength to strength, but I must have been having a bad day because I ponder whether they really should be doing even more.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/10147-…

December: MILLIONS Online surprises everyone by not being a complete dumpster fire. In fact, it is really rather huge, and broke the record for the number of records that can be broken in one single poker tournament.

pokerindustrypro.com/prolink/10226-…

Phew! There we have it. 2018.

Twelve stories of somewhere around 450 that we published on PRO in 2018. If you enjoyed some of that, you should really get your company to buy a subscription:

pokerindustrypro.com/learn-more/

If you can't afford that, then at least do yourself the favour and subscribe to our newsletter. It's much like this except without the levity.

pokerindustrypro.com/newsletter/