Poker Websites Closed Down

Gambling is not legal everywhere in the world

The online gambling industry is one of the most fast growing, rapidly expanding businesses in the world. Every week, hundreds of new websites appear out of nowhere, whether we’re talking about online poker rooms, online casinos, online slot machine websites, or the whole series of satellite websites that revolve around the main ones and provide reviews, helpful tips and tricks, interviews and so much more, and that are equally a part of online gambling as the stand alone casinos and poker rooms.

As you can imagine, there’s only room for so many websites to be active at a time. Players cannot possibly be active on many websites, and no matter what website owners will do, they cannot possibly make players appear out of nowhere, so a line must be drawn somewhere. This line consists of shutting down and closing business for good, at least for some of the smaller websites.

And that, in fact, is the situation that we see in the online gambling industry today. Dozens of new online poker rooms that are appearing with lots of enthusiasm and hope that they reach the top. But they bring nothing new to the (poker) table, so, naturally, players don’t want to get involved with a new, anonymous online poker room. The only remaining option for the owners is to close the site down for good.

Let’s start off with one of the positive examples. Full Tilt Poker came into existence when the online gambling industry was already fully formed and saturated. There were online poker giants that drew in hundreds of thousands of players at one time, there were all the other smaller websites that gathered millions of players, so where could Full Tilt Poker have possibly taken a spot in this world? The answer came quickly: the top. Full Tilt Poker turned out to have great success, so much so that it is now one of the largest online poker rooms in the world. Its secret was its determination, and the team of poker pros that backed up the site, taking it to where it is now. That team of professional poker players is still active to this day, and it is composed of some of the finest poker players in history: Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon, Erik Seidel, Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Patrik Antonius, Mike Matusow, Andy Bloch and many others that have ensured that Full Tilt would become a success.

But that, as we’ve said, is one example that you don’t see very often. Most of the times, you will struggle to remember the name of that small online poker room that you once logged into, because it is lost into oblivion. And, sadly, that’s the fate of most of the small ones.

There is also another reason why online poker rooms closedown, apart from the player response: laws. One of the largest examples of this aspect is the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act, a controversial law that eventually scared off a lot of large online poker rooms, which were forced to close down their business in the United States, which meant that they lost a large portion of their players. This is why poker rooms such as Party Poker have lost millions of players, and, for Party Poker in particular, the title of ‘world’s largest online poker room’. While playing poker is not strictly prohibited, what is illegal is any banking transaction regarding online gambling. While there are some online poker rooms that are still active in the United States, most of the large ones have unfortunately shut down all business and moved to more exotic locations, at least with their headquarters.

Many of the smaller online poker rooms are part of larger networks, which allows them to share the larger player database and allows players to play against each other, even though they’re playing from different sites. And, sometimes, these networks choose to terminate all partnership with the smaller online poker rooms. While this isn’t always a huge problem for the network as a whole, it can become fatal for the small poker rooms, as they don’t have any players of their own, and they’re practically forced to shut down. This was the case for no less than 33 different poker ‘skins’, when poker network MicroGaming terminated the relationship between them. This happened back in 2008, and, despite the fact that some of the small poker rooms managed to catch a ride on a different ship, so to speak, most of them were doomed to close down.

Internet gambling is a very competitive industry, quite possibly one of the most competitive in the world. It’s no surprise, then, that we are witnessing such a fierce battle for supremacy. And, again, it’s no surprise that many online poker rooms are losing this battle, and are closing for good. So make sure to pick the best poker site and use the best poker bonus code when you sign up.