If you’re a modern poker fan, we could excuse you for knowing nothing of the man called Larry Flynt, but for those of a certain age, Flynt comes to symbolize an era of poker that is etched in the very fabric of the game.  

With the late Larry Flynt’s controversial life often drawing headlines, we ask today whether his passing will have a positive effect on the game of poker.  

Often, referencing the inglorious beginnings of an industry can bring up unsavoury characters. Trading gold is the reserve of the mega-rich and upper classes today, but that wasn’t the case in the middle of the Gold Rush as nefarious characters panned, shot and hustled for the very future of their families.  

If anyone was a hustler, it was Larry Flynt, so it was perhaps fitting that his adult magazine was called The Hustler, a publication that at first courted controversy then caught like wildfire, selling millions of copies as America woke up to progressive freedoms that today seem quaint or ludicrous when viewed through a retrospective lens.