Written by Thomas | Sunday, April 17th, 2011

With the brutal “Black Friday” announcement that was thrown down on the USA poker-playing public on April 15th, 2011, the big question that many online poker players have after this epic debacle is pretty simple:

What poker sites are safe for USA players NOW?

Well, as much as it pains us to think that PokerStars, Full Tilt, AP and UB.com could be long gone after the DOJ made a prime example of them in their recent federal indictment, it looks like there could be plenty of mid-level players looking to take over their spots in the near-foreseeable future.

A pair of medium-sized networks definitely come to mind when I think of a replacement to the aforementioned websites above – and that would have to be the poker rooms currently running on the Merge Gaming and the Cake Networks.  Even before the recent seizure of the “Big 4,” both networks were already making serious moves to become a top-10 site around the world.

For example, Merge Gaming picked up sites like Sportsbook.com and PlayersOnly Poker within the last year and saw their traffic nearly triple in size in terms of real-money traffic.  They already have a big hit with Carbon Poker, Merge’s flagship poker room, and with the addition of powerhouses like SB.com and PO it only made them that much more viable and respected as a company.

Cake Poker on the other hand has been on an up-and-down roller coaster of sorts.  Once the darling of medium-sized poker networks everywhere, they quickly began to fizzle traffic-wise in the past few years, as well as began to shrink their earning potential by selling their skins to smaller poker operators who eventually saturated the rakeback market and dried up the action everywhere.

However, just when I thought Cake was about to sink, they were saved and picked up by PokerListings.com, who began to immediately push them on their website.  Now with a major backer sending them thousands of new signups a month, it seems like this crackdown on the top poker sites in the world could only benefit them in the long-term, especially if the United States government begins to invest even more time in prosecuting the executives names in their indictment.

For me, this is hands-down going to be a nice little competition for each company, as flocks of players have began to hit the tables in the last 48 hours on poker rooms for each network.  I don’t think any other site is going to be as big a player as Merge and Cake.  With both sites having a great reputation for having fishy games and having decent overlays in their bigger weekly tournaments, it’ll be interesting to see who might come out on top in the coming months.

So there you have it, if you’re still looking for a room to play on SAFELY and SECURELY, check out sites like Carbon Poker, Sportsbook.com Poker, PlayersOnly and Cake Poker.  All of them will be openly welcoming new USA players and honoring all deposits from the most popular credit cards and e-Wallets out there.

Note: You may be surprised I left out Bodog in all this. After all, they have kind of floated under the radar considering how big this online poker bust was – not to mention them being such a big target of the US Department of Justice for years now.

However, Bodog has already had fledgling numbers even before the big news hit, and they haven’t been making big-enough strides to make their room as popular as it used to be.  Their lack of deposit options hurts them greatly, and when it comes to Americans looking for a safe place to put their money Bodog just hasn’t had a stellar rep in that department.  Sorry Calvin, but hey there’s always next year, right?

One Response to “USA Poker Players Looking for a NEW Savior…”

1. Allin Entrepreneur Says:

   I wasent aware that Bodog still had deposit problems, good to know.
   You dident mention Yatahay or Everleaf, the 2 outsiders. Could be an opening for them.
   Im 100% Carbon Poker will do best, and from a poker player point of view, i dont get why anyone likes playing at the Cake network.
   I have never liked that site with the poor 3d animations and bad software.
   But thats just my opinion. Cant wait to see how the different sites traffic will increase the coming weeks.

   
   April 17th, 2011 at 2:53 pm