Paddy Power, Bet365 Close "Exclusive" Tables on iPoker

Paddy Power, Bet365 Close “Exclusive” Tables on iPoker

Top skins no longer keep any of their players apart from the rest of “iPoker 2.”

Share:

By Jocelyn Wood

January 10, 2013

Top tier iPoker skins PaddyPower and Bet365 have quietly closed their exclusive “premium” tables on their own poker rooms, pokerfuse has learned. References to the separate tables have been removed from lobbies and websites.

Both rooms had exclusive sets of cash tables, dubbed “Premium” on Bet365 and “PPP Premier” on PaddyPower, where games were entirely separate from the rest of the network. The Bet365 tables were particularly popular, with 70 active tables observed after iPoker “split” in September. They were also heavily promoted on the Bet365 website as offering a “premium” experience and the filter was shown prominently in the lobby.

PaddyPower and Bet365 are both top tier iPoker sites. In September, five skins—Bet365, Paddy Power, Poker770, Titan, William Hill—segregated large parts of its player pool from the rest of the network, affecting most cash game tables. It was later joined by Winner Poker and Everest.

It is not clear when exactly the exclusive tables were removed, but players reported to pokerfuse their absence in the first week of 2013.

iPoker had a poor start to 2012 with network traffic falling by 30%. However, since June traffic has stabilized, and it received a 15% boost following the Everest player merger. Traffic for 2013 has started strongly, with a New Year tournament “sale” offering reductions of between 40% and 70% on entry fees for many of their guaranteed tournaments.

Its goal of segregating its players comes with a long-term vision for maintaining healthy player pools and attracting new brands that will have a positive net benefit to its ecology. It can point to the successful courting of both Everest and Betfair as early successes to its new strategy, and analysts will be looking keenly at its numbers as 2013 unfolds.