US online poker upheaval after Lock Poker leaves Revolution

For those of us that follow the US online poker industry it’s been an interesting couple of years since April 15, 2011, when PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were exiled from the US market, leaving a collection of smaller networks unused to being in the spotlight to fill the void.

Since Black Friday virtually every network has spent time as the most-trafficked US online poker site: Merge Gaming Network, Revolution Gaming Network, and Bodog. We’ve also seen networks rebranded, upgraded, and shutdown, with poker rooms jumping from network to network for a variety of reasons.

The latest shakeup is one of the biggest since Black Friday, as Lock Poker has announced they are leaving the Revolution Gaming Network, formerly known as the Cake Poker Network (which they joined in 2012 after a fallout with the Merge Gaming Network led them to Cake Poker) and will now go it alone, operating as an independent online poker room.

Needless to say the split has not been pretty. Lock Poker fired first, issuing a press release this morning detailing their decision, including a parting shot at Revolution:

Lock has elected to exercise its right to terminate the contract as a result of the numerous and ongoing breaches of contract by the network operator.

However, the story didn’t end there. As PokerFuse.com is reporting, players logging in to the old Lock Poker software on the Revolution Gaming are being redirected to a new poker site, PurePoker.com, which is claiming to be a longstanding online poker room:

Due to Lock’s ongoing financial issues, the poker service to Lock was terminated. We apologize for the inconvenience. Pure Poker is offering you a chance to redeem your Lock player balance immediately.

Lock Poker has denied these claims, issuing a statement to PokerFuse.com and other outlets, as well as detailing the transgressions they are accusing the revolution Gaming Network of which allows them to terminate their agreement with the network. Lock Poker is also extremely unhappy with revolution’s attempt to steer Lock players to a new skin according to the statement they gave to pokerfuse.com:

“This is clearly an attempt by the network to take Lock players and damage Lock’s business via a deceptive and misleading practice. The network operator has been given an opportunity to correct this and have refused to do so,” 

Obviously this story is far from over, and regardless of how it turns out the US online poker industry (the unregulated rooms that is) is likely going to be thrown into yet another period of tumult.

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