Review of Big Weekend for US-Facing Sites!
US-based poker has been rumored to be dying or at least drying up to a large degree, but if the last few days are any indication the rumors of poker’s demise are greatly exaggerated as the 3 largest US-facing networks have made their presence felt with one in particular making a lot of progress towards the number 2 spot in the US and the other two continuing to stay strong as a world competitor.
Strong Weekend Propels US-Facing Networks
At Professionalrakeback.com we like to not fall into the traps of using extreme hyperbole, because we want to give you the best news, in the most accurate fashion possible. Taking that into consideration, you should know that when we say something was a huge weekend, it clearly was a big weekend. We previewed the tournaments happening on three of the biggest networks in the US earlier last week and those tournaments met the expectations of players and then some. 4 tournaments had over a $200,000 prize pool and the largest tournament on a US-facing network took place since Black Friday! All of these achievements combined to impress upon the poker playing population that they shouldn’t count out offshore US-friendly poker networks.
Big Sunday for Bodog, Merge and Winning Poker Networks
We have already detailed the big weekend that was for Winning Poker Network. It bears repeating though that they did host a $1,000,000 guaranteed event and nearly covered that guarantee. They are going to be attempting this again in April and many industry experts expect it to be even bigger when they run the event again, because of it being done successfully with minimal problems on the server side of things. They also had a $300,000 guaranteed event that did overlay by a fair margin, but was still well over $200,000 in actual prize money making it a very big tournament by any standards.
Winning Poker Network wasn’t the only network having a big weekend though. Merge Gaming Network and Bodog Gaming Network each had a $200,000 tournaments on Sunday (covering the guarantees on them) and other Sunday tournaments they hosted easily topped their guarantees. Bodog Network’s $200,000 wasn’t even a Main Event to a series like Merge Network and Winning Poker Network had, it was just a normal series tournament with a normal guarantee. It has been a long time since 3 networks each had $200,000+ tournaments on one weekend available to US players and even longer since 4 of them happened on the same day.
Sites Making Moves in World Standings
When the dust settled from the big weekend and things normalized a little bit some major moves had taken place according to GameIntel.com. Bodog is now the 4th largest network in the world while Winning Poker Network has climbed up to 3rd in the US and is closing the gap on Merge Network for the title of 2nd largest network in the United States. These gains are not just in tournaments though, as cash games have been on an upward trend as well. These changes are going to be interesting and important to watch over the next couple of months, but either way, what is most encouraging is that the 6 month trends for these sites are very positive looking.
Conclusion
There has been a lot of questions and claims about US-facing sites and if they are a legitimate option for players who want large tournaments or to grind big prize pools. This past weekend proves that these networks can and will have large tournaments and are only going to continue to get bigger. Winning Poker Network has said it wants to hold the Winning Millions 4+ more times this year, Merge Network hosts their OPS every quarter and Bodog continues to put more events into their series’ each time. This doesn’t include what Chico Gaming Network, Revolution Gaming Network, Equity Poker Network and other smaller networks are also doing in the US, which are good as well. Did you play in anything this weekend? Are you excited about the future of poker in the US, or do you think this is just temporary? Tell us on Facebook and Twitter!