Doyle’s Room Makes Puzzling Move

While online poker room Doyle’s Room has not come straight out and said, “We are switching networks,” the company almost certainly is. Earlier this week, Doyle’s Room customers received e-mails detailing a “software upgrade,” but based on the information laid out in the e-mail, it is fairly obvious that the poker room is moving to the Microgaming Network.

All of the benefits of the new software listed in the e-mail describe Microgaming perfectly. No-download software (just introduced), a $200,000 guaranteed Sunday tourney, televised tables, seven daily freerolls with a total of $7,200 in prize money, it all adds up.

This brings us to a couple questions: 1) why is Doyle’s Room not coming right out and stating that it is moving to Microgaming, and 2) why is it doing this?

The second question is big one. Just over two weeks ago, Doyle’s Room announced that Americans could not play on its site anymore and it shipped its U.S. customers over to Full Tilt. Now it’s moving to a U.S.-friendly network? Why? Does the poker room expect the U.S. customers to come running back, or is it still not going to accept Americans?

If Doyle’s Room decides to keep the ban on U.S. players intact, then this move makes even less sense. The network it is switching from, iPoker, is one of the largest on the internet, larger than Microgaming.

It’s just a strange development all the way around.