America's Cardroom rebrands to ACR Poker + upgrades software

On Wednesday, July 5, 2023, America's Cardroom went live with its rebrand to ACR Poker. The new website is www.acrpoker.eu. Users who type the old URL “www.americascardroom.eu” in their browser bars are automatically redirected to the new website. Besides just the name change, there have been major updates to the poker software.

ACR Poker is one of the foremost online poker sites serving U.S. customers along with users around the world. It is the flagship of the Winning Poker Network.

Graphical Changes

The old red, white, and blue theme of the America's Cardroom poker client is gone, replaced with a purple and green color scheme. This, along with the removal of the word “Americas” from the new name of the site, is likely an attempt to appeal to a broader international player base.

Purple and Green Predominate in the New ACR Poker Software

The logo too has been altered. It's now a monochrome “ACR Poker” text next to a stylized white star.

Old (Left) and New (Right) ACR Logos

The website has also been updated to reflect these new design aesthetics. Rather than a hamburger menu that opens up from the top-right of the browser window, you can now access different parts of the site from the top menu, which brings up links to individual pages when you click on a menu item.

New ACR Poker Website With “What's Hot” Menu Open

Cash Game Changes

The cash game lobby has been redesigned to separate all tables by stake level. They are also divided into four tabs at the top of the lobby: Hold'em, Omaha, 5 Omaha, and Other Games.

By default, you will see only those tables that have at least one player seated. However, each stake level has a “New Tables” button that you can press to bring up empty tables that you can sit first at if you don't mind starting a new game.

Cash Game Listing at ACR Poker

If there's a game of a certain type that has only a single individual seated, then you won't be able to see or join an empty table of that type. There's a button near the top of the lobby to toggle whether you wish to see full games.

Filtering Available

It's no longer possible to sort ring game tables by clicking on a column of the lobby. Instead, you must use the lobby filters, which you can access by pressing an orange arrow button near the top-right of the lobby.

The new filters are basically a reworking of the filters from the old version of the software. Although the placement and structure of the new filters is different, most of what you're used to is still there albeit in a new form.

Cash Game Filters

You can still choose to exclude certain table sizes and require a minimum number of seated players at the tables presented to you. Similarly, you can narrow down the game format to the betting structure and stake levels you prefer. Finally, if you wish to include or eliminate such variations as bomb pots and cap games, you can easily do so with the click of your mouse.

Waitlist Changes

You can choose to sit at any specific table you have your eye on by pressing the green “Join” button next to its listing in the lobby. However, it's no longer possible to put yourself on a waitlist for a particular table.

Instead, all tables of the same blind levels and format employ a singular waitlist. Whenever there's an open seat of that game available, participants will be directed toward it starting with the first person on the list. This is pretty much exactly how it works in live poker too.

Reasons for Adjusting Cash Games

Examining all the alterations to how cash games now work, we can conclude that these changes were made to protect recreational players. Preventing sharks from open-sitting more than one table at a time and implementing waitlists that each cover multiple tables makes it harder for pros to target their weaker adversaries.

Steps like these were probably necessary because the Winning Poker Network had earned a reputation for having some of the toughest cash games available in the U.S. online poker market. Hopefully, more fish and casual users will now be drawn to the virtual tables.

Tournament Lobby Revamped

If you thought the changes to the cash game lobby were vast, wait till you take a glance at the tournament section. It's now divided into three segments: Hot, Yours, and an unlabeled area.

The Hot section of the tournament lobby is basically for contests that previously were pinned at the top of the lobby. These are the featured MTTs that the room wishes to showcase to all users.

The Yours section contains all tourneys that you are registered for. Additionally, you can manually add a tournament to this part of the lobby by clicking on the plus sign to the left of the tournament listing in the unlabeled area of the lobby. The game will move to the Yours section, and you can remove it by pressing the minus sign located to its left.

MTT Lobby With Several Tournaments Added to the “Yours” Area

The unlabeled portion of the lobby is the “basic” tourney lobby showing all upcoming events be they important guaranteed tournaments or freeroll satellites or anything in between.

Filters Abound

You can access the tournament filters in much the same way as you can for cash games: by pressing an arrow symbol to the top-left of the lobby. However, the MTT filters are more elaborate and powerful.

The MTT Lobby Has Powerful Filters

You can filter by buyin, guaranteed amount, state of the tournament (running, completed, etc.), format, speed, and several other criteria.

MTT Sorting

Beyond the filtering capabilities of the software, you can also sort the results by clicking on a column in the tourney lobby. There are four criteria you can sort by: tournament name, starting time, buy-in, and number of players enrolled.

It's possible to activate up to three of these sorting options simultaneously. First, the games shown will be arranged according to the primary criteria you have chosen. Within any of the same value, the second selector will be used as a tie-breaker, and similarly with the third (if you have set one).

Use This Interface to Sort Tourneys by Your Preferred Criteria

Lobbies for Individual Tournaments

Just as before, there's a main tournament lobby showing the roster of games running and coming up, but each individual tournament has its own lobby too. Double-click on an event to see its specific lobby, which will pop up in a new window.

In a major departure from the industry standard, ACR has designed these lobbies as rectangular interfaces that are taller than they are wide. Different tabs can be opened up to view particular information pertaining to the tournament.

Here You Can Examine Info on a Single MTT

You can use a scrollbar to navigate up-and-down through each lobby. It's also possible to make the lobby window taller or shorter. However, you cannot expand or contract their width.

This new way of doing things could potentially make it easier for you to keep a tournament-specific lobby up on your screen without having to cover up more important windows. Nevertheless, it will take some getting used to.

Odds & Ends

The SNG lobby has been revamped to closely resemble the new tournament lobby. However, Jackpots continue with the old formula of choosing your buy-in level, how many games you wish to join, and pressing “Register” to get started. The staking feature at ACR, formerly part of the tournament lobby, now has its own tab in the poker software.

The actual poker tables themselves have not seen much alteration. They are a bit more square than the previous circular incarnations, but the player avatars, action buttons, and chatbox appear very close to how they looked before. The most noticeable modification is the new ACR Poker logo on the table felt.

ACR Poker Cash Game Table

The gaming lineup has not changed much either. The same varieties of cash games, sit-n-goes, Jackpots, and tournaments are still present. It's likely that network management didn't want to bite off more than they could chew and so elected to get the software upgrade straightened out first before experimenting with new game formats.

Player Reactions

So far, it seems like a mixed bag as far as player reactions to the new software are concerned. In cases like these, we believe that mixed news is good news because there are bound to be a bunch of issues with any software update this large, and we expect most problems to be resolved by patches in the near future. Comparing the comments from players after this latest upgrade to the reactions to WPN's last major update in May 2019, it appears that the developers have done a better job this time around.

Below are a selection of posts from real users regarding the July 5 software update at the Winning Poker Network:

Try the New ACR Software Today!

If you've been holding off on creating a new America's Cardroom account, then maybe this rebranding along with a nice new poker software revamp is just the push you need to give it a try. With our exclusive ACR promo code PRB10FREE, you'll get $10 free to check out the games and still qualify for a 100% up to $2,000 bonus on your first deposit. Click the button below to sign up:

To learn more about the site before signing up, consult this thorough ACR Poker review page. ACR has several sister sites, and they have all switched over to the new software. You can read our reviews of them here: Blackchip Poker, True Poker, Ya Poker (non-US).

For information about other internet poker possibilities for Americans, check out this guide to USA offshore poker.