Long Awaited News a Good Sign For Players

Black Chip Poker makes its move to the Winning Poker Network today.

Black Chip had been promising major news for multiple weeks to players, as Merge had left their cashouts out of the last payment batch. Players can now see why, the two sides were negotiating a deal that brings Black Chip to the Winning Network, joining major skins America's Cardroom and True Poker.

All Black Chip player funds will reportedly be transferred over in the move, including pending cashout.

The Winning Network, along with Revolution skin Intertops, consistently rank as the very best in payouts, with players receiving debit card payments often in less than 4 days. We'll keep a close eye on how the cashout timeframes change, if at all, with the addition of Black Chip to the network.

Overall Outlook

Expect to see some changes to the Winning Network with Black Chip's addition. The largest changes you'll see are more players on the Winning Network. Winning has grown over 50% in size in 2012, and this move will grow them even more. They are currently the 4th largest US facing network. With Merge Network's decline in traffic, the two may compete for the 3rd slot. Bodog (Bovada) and Revolution have been the largest US facing networks in the second half of 2012.

The Merge Network continues to a contraction plan. Carbon and Sportsbook owned skins appear to be taking over the rest of the network, forcing skins to move, buyout or go out of business. Black Chip has moved, though skins such as Bluff Gaming and FeltStars have closed shop recently. Merge also disabled player to player transfers, a move likely made to restrict the flow of money between regular/professional players, as Merge had lost a lot of traffic because of a lack of credit card deposit options at the end of the summer (the preferred deposit method of casual players). Worse rumors persist, but no substantial ones worth mentioning. Keep in mind, you'll find many players speculating without any sort of information when skins and networks do not provide clear reasoning for decisions and Merge is probably the worst communicating network in the poker world right now. So it makes sense to see a higher than usual amount of negative rumors and speculation floating around in the absence of clear explanations about bad news (such as p2p transfers being disabled).

It is our opinion that Carbon Poker will clearly be the best place to play on the Merge Network in the foreseeable future, a move we felt was obvious about a month ago when we put Carbon in our top Merge slot on our VIP Page. This is just due to the direction of the network, which cashiers skins are being placed on, which rules are being made and applied to various skins and the size and reputation of Carbon.

Feel free to email us with any questions or post in the comments below.