Couldn’t help but notice this recent item noting the demise of the BigBetPoker room, a site on the Merge Network. No precise cause of death was given, but Merge is a US-facing network, and thus subject to the ongoing federal attacks being launched against pure poker eCom for the past year and a half. Of course, there could be any number of other reasons why the site has decided to pack it in: bad management, lousy marketing, making too many concessions to attract the wrong kinds of players… Or perhaps the fact that I said it would happen?
The year isn’t even a week old and already my year-end predictions are starting to come true. No, not the one about Mitch Garber getting a job, this one: At least one major poker company is killed by the cruel hand of the marketplace.
BigBetPoker may not have been a major poker room, but given that its death notice was published in the first week of 2011, it’s entirely possible that we could just be getting warmed up here. For the record, I believe we’ll see at least three – and possibly many more – poker rooms fold this year. A couple small networks might even succumb to their wounds. As for Mitch Garber getting a job, well, the timing on that one’s a little harder to predict. Depends how many brain cells key industry executives may have killed during the holiday excesses.
