Top Poker Rooms Pull Away from iPoker

A great deal of speculation and controversy surrounds the iPoker Network at the moment with talk that it could split into two separate networks. iPoker is the widely considered to be one of the world's largest independent online poker network along with Poker Stars and Party Poker. However, its top poker rooms were recently reported to be considering withdrawing their player pools from the network thus jeopardising this status.

iPoker is run by Playtech and currently consists of about 40 poker skins which include major brand names such as Titan Poker, William Hill Poker and bet365.

While no formal announcement has yet been made, the rumours are circulating that iPoker is apparently considering a proposal from the more influential poker rooms to split off from the rest. If approved, the changes could apparently be implemented within the next couple of months.

This limited implementation period sounds overly ambitious - especially considering the contractual obligations of network members. This has fuelled online gossip among players that perhaps these are not new discussions but have in fact been on the table for some time and have only just been publicly leaked now.

Poker networks such as iPoker are vulnerable to the larger members becoming weary of sharing their gains with smaller operators and thus wanting to break away as is the case here. Network members are effectively able to poach players from one another. Networks, in general, are inherently prone to generating internal conflicts with the more powerful threatening to abandon the network.

The move to split iPoker into two is likely to be harmful to the smaller, less well established poker rooms as they will have less liquidity and traffic and are likely to lose players. As a result, they may be forced to switch networks, or worse still, call it a day. Additionally, some players have already voiced their concern that it may limit the opportunities for big poker tournaments.

In the mean time, whether these radical changes to the iPoker network will in fact be made, and what will be the ramifications for poker players, remains to be seen.