Doyle’s Room to Microgaming Network?

Just two weeks after announcing that it was closing its doors to U.S. customers and transferring U.S. accounts to rival Full Tilt Poker, online poker room Doyle’s Room has indicated that it may be making another major change. Now it appears as if the poker room will switch networks completely, this time to the Microgaming Poker Network.

Doyle’s Room has not made an official announcement, but customers of the room have received e-mails saying, “In the next few weeks we [Doyle’s Room] will be upgrading our players to new software with great new features and improved stability and performance.”

The e-mail goes on to detail the features and benefits of the new software. Included in the list are the following:

• No-download software coming in mid-March.
• $200,000 guaranteed prize pool tournament every Sunday.
• TV tables which are broadcast on Pokerzone both at pokerzone.tv and Sky Channel 843 in the UK.
• Seven daily freerolls totaling $7,200 in prize money.
• Bad beat jackpot requiring four-of-a-kind eights or better.

All of these, in addition to those features that are not listed here, match Microgaming’s features exactly. Aside from the fact that the e-mail does not specifically mention Microgaming, it is absolutely certain that Doyle’s Room is telling its players it is moving to the Microgaming Poker Network.

The odd part of all of this is the timing. The network which Doyle’s Room is currently on is Tribeca Tables (technically, it’s the Doyle Brunson Poker Network, but that is a sub-network of Tribeca), which is in the process of being converted to Playtech’s iPoker Network. As iPoker shut out U.S. customers a while back, Tribeca announced that it was doing the same a few weeks ago.

It was rumored that Doyle’s Room was working with other Tribeca rooms to create its own, new network so that it could still service U.S. customers. But then came the announcement a couple weeks ago that U.S. residents could no longer play at Doyle’s Room and that they could transfer their accounts to Full Tilt. At that point, it looked like Doyle’s Room was going to be a non-U.S. room like many others. There have even been Doyle Brunson spottings at the Full Tilt tables, even though they may not quite be 100% confirmed.

So now, after Doyle’s Room jettisoned its American players, it is going to move to a U.S.-friendly network? It is either one of the dumbest moves in recent memory or a case of terrible timing. If Doyle’s Room is, in fact, moving to Microgaming, the question is whether or not its former U.S. players will return. Considering the difficulty of moving funds around nowadays, it does not seem likely that Doyle’s Room will be able to regain a large proportion of its American customers.

On the other side of the move, this will be a boon for Microgaming. The network, which was already one of the largest on the internet, has been the beneficiary of several poker rooms fleeing their non-U.S.-friendly networks in recent months. Adding Doyle’s Room, a fairly popular site, will most definitely increase the activity at Microgaming’s tables.

When an official announcement is made, we will report it here.

Originally published 11:34 AM Tuesday, March 06, 2007