Doyle’s Rooms Closes to U.S., Enters Deal with Full Tilt

Online poker room Doyle’s Room shocked many Monday night by announcing it was closing its doors to U.S. customers. No more U.S. signups are allowed and all American players will be blocked as of March 1.

While Doyle’s Room’s network, Tribeca Tables, announced last week that it was universally banning U.S. players starting at the end of the month, it was expected that Doyle’s Room would start its own network that would accept U.S. players, perhaps as early as March. At the very least, it would allow U.S. players until the Tribeca ban and then get things figured out as quickly as possible. The Tribeca decision was quite sudden, as most thought that its member rooms would have more advance notice than they were given.

Tribeca was going to inevitable close to the U.S. because of its pending merger with Playtech’s iPoker network, it was just not expected so soon. Plus, Doyle’s Room was known as one of the hardline U.S.-friendly rooms. Thus, Monday’s announcement was a great disappointment.

To help its customers, Doyle’s Room is allowing all U.S. players to transfer their funds over to Full Tilt Poker. All Action Points earned will also be converted to Full Tilt Points. Because this is not a “merger,” but rather just a business agreement between Doyle’s Room and Full Tilt, it appears on the surface that Doyle’s Room may very well not be creating a new network at all. If it was doing so, it would not make sense to transfer accounts over to a competitor. Who knows, maybe something is still in the works, but it doesn’t look good.

Doyle’s Room customers can login to their accounts, go to the Cashier, and transfer their funds to Full Tilt. Full Tilt also has information about the procedure on its website: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/doyles-room/.