Is Lock Poker the new Pokerstars for US Players?

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It’s now been three weekends since Pokerstars shut it’s doors to players from the US and the question on everyone’s minds is what online poker site will become the new Pokerstars. The answer seems to be poker sites on the Merge Poker Network.

Merge Poker has increased it’s cash game traffic by 70% since Black Friday and ranks #10 for cash game traffic in the world and #1 in the US.

Leading the way for the Merge Network is Lock Poker because of their huge first deposit bonus and their monthly promotions. Lock Poker is also 100% Mac compatible and has a sleek black look.

Lock Poker is not the only Merge Poker skin making a splash.  Another skin, Hero Poker, (No longer Accepting US players) has signed former Pokerstars Pro Gavin Griffin as well as a few other poker pros. P5’s and Holdem Poker Chat members received a special invite from them this past weekend to play in an exclusive 15k freeroll. The CEO for Hero Poker explained why he set up the unpromoted freeroll by saying “I set this up for traumatized US players”.

The Merge network is one of the last major poker networks available to US players and there have been hundreds of thousands of new sign-ups on those sites within the past three weeks.

Other skins that we like on the network are Carbon Poker, RPM Poker and Feltstars. There are many poker sites on the Merge Poker Network but we do not recommend most of them.

You may be asking yourself, How do I decide which Merge Poker Site should I play on? Our recommendation is that you try out several of them and see which one you like the best. Download them and sit at a play money game or play in a freeroll while you get accustomed to the software. If you like the overall feel of the site then make a deposit. If you don’t like it, move on to another one and try that one out. According to out sources Merge is working hard on a major software upgrade that we’re told “Will have all the features that Pokerstars has” That upgrade is expected sometime next month.

Update: Lock Poker along with all other Merge skins have halted NEW US player accounts.

Zigmund quits Full Tilt Poker and Pokerstars

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With everything going on in the poker world Finnish Poker Pro Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies, PowerPoker Pro, announced recently that his days playing at FullTiltPoker and PokerStars are over.

Since the beginning of 2010, Sahamies has experienced an incredible downswing, losing over $2 million in the past 16 months. Most of this happened at FTP, after which Sahamies moved over to PokerStars under the screen name ‘Ilari Fin’. This change of venue, however, has done little to halt the downswing, and he has been steadily losing there as well.

While it is doubtful that Sahamies is done with poker for good, we can speculate about where he may go next. His home site may not have the nosebleed action that he prefers; where will the Fin go now? There’s only a handful of online poker sites that currently have the high limits that Zigmund likes to play so we should know soon.