Merge Gaming Network Opens to US Online Poker Players
The Merge Gaming Network appears to be daring to go where few other poker sites and gaming networks will dare to venture – back to the US Online gaming market!
While top poker sites like Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars are still trying to wind up their lawsuits with the DoJ and get out of the legal soup that they are in, it seems hard to imagine that there is actually a poker entity trying to worm its way back into the US gaming arena.
This gaming entity is none other than the Merge Gaming Network which recently opened its doors to customers from the United States. Since there is a dearth of good gaming sites for US players, it is quite likely that the Merge Gaming Network will meet with a lot of success. Initially, it was thought that customers from the United States would be hesitant to open real player accounts with any of the Merge Gaming Network sites as they would not be sure as to whether the site is operating on the right side of the confusing law that is the UIGEA. However, on account of the reliability of the Merge Gaming Network brand, that situation has been avoided.
The Merge Gaming Network will join with other small online poker networks such as Black Chip Poker, Pokerview, Carbon Poker, RPM Poker and Lock Poker who are also open up to US players.
The Merge Gaming Network closed its doors to players from the United States customers in the month of June, but allowed players to try its virtual games. There have been reports regarding the Merge Gaming Network accepting US players since the month of July, but all of these reports were based on rumours as Merge was still closed to US players even in August. Now that the Merge Gaming Network is open to US players once again, it is getting good traffic but has not yet issued any official statement.
As of now, the Merge Gaming Network is running quite far behind the iPoker.it and Entraction Poker network which have heavy player traffic, but now that it has opened its doors to the US, it should catch up.
After Black Friday, the Merge Gaming Network saw its numbers spike as players who left other online poker sites flooded the Merge sites and signed up. Eventually, the traffic became too heavy with a 79 percent jump in a single month and this made payment processing very difficult. As a result, Merge blocked new players from the US and continued with its existing customers.
Now that Merge has started accepting US players once again, it has already seen a 15% traffic spike and is now the number one poker site for US players. This position was occupied by Bodog Poker, which will be exiting the US market soon.
It remains to be seen whether the Merge Gaming Network will continue to be open to US players throughout 2011 and then on to the next year or whether it will cut and run once it gets enough numbers in its profit column.
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