Doyle’s Room Done in U.S., Allows Transfers to Full Tilt

In a surprise move Monday evening, online poker room Doyle’s Room announced that it will no longer accept U.S. players, effective immediately. On March 1, it will block all U.S. players, including existing customers.

As a sort of cherry on top of this unexpected announcement, Doyle’s Room has forged a deal with competitor, Full Tilt Poker, to allow American Doyle’s Room customers to transfer their balances and loyalty points to a new or existing account at Full Tilt.

All of this follows a wild few days of news surrounding Doyle’s Room and its current network, Tribeca Tables.

On Thursday, Tribeca announced that it would be banning all U.S. players from the network starting at the end of the month. Tribeca was purchased by Playtech, owner of the iPoker network (Noble Poker, Titan Poker), back in November. The month before, Tribeca had made a deal with the Tain Poker network to merge. Thus, all three networks were to merge this month. Playtech has already disallowed U.S. players on its network, so while Tain and Tribeca were U.S.-friendly, they were not going to be once the official combination took place.

So, while it was known that Doyle’s Room was going to be off-limits to Americans eventually as long as it stayed with Tribeca, it was assumed that the company would have ample notice before having to put up a wall to the States. With Tribeca’s announcement last week, Doyle’s Room was sent for a loop.

Then, Monday morning, a gambling news website reported that Doyle’s Room was closing to the U.S. The site retracted the story that afternoon, saying the report was erroneous.

Now, Monday night, Doyle’s Room has actually made it official itself. Thing is, the word had been for quite some time that Doyle’s Room was working on a new network so that when Tribeca merged with iPoker, it would have another place to go to service U.S. customers. This is why tonight’s action comes as a shock. There is no indication (although it still could happen and simply be under-wraps) that Doyle’s Room will be doing anything with a new network. After all, why would it aid in the transfer of its customers to Full Tilt if that was the case?

Current Doyle’s Room customers can login into the poker software and find an option to transfer funds to Full Tilt in the Cashier. Full Tilt is also offering a deposit bonus for anyone who has never had real money in a Full Tilt account. More information about transferring can be found at http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/doyles-room/.

Originally published 12:42 AM Tuesday, February 20, 2007