MERGE GAMING & CAKE POKER
Black Friday shook up the entire online poker industry and it is almost impossible to establish the consequences for each operator. The gaming industry has always seen a lot of poker rooms come and go, and it would be speculative to say which rooms were closed because of Black Friday and which rooms were closed for other reasons.
It seems clear however that some other sites saw direct consequences of Black Friday. Victory Poker were planning to move from Revolution Gaming to the Cereus Poker network alongside Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet just before Black Friday.
On April 18th, three days after Black Friday, Victory Poker announced that they would be staying on the Cake Network without accepting US players at the current time.
It was however announced just a month later that as of June 1st there would be no more branding of Victory Poker and the players would be moved to the Cake Network1. Cake Poker still accepts US players (May 2012).
Merge Gaming was rewarded by the DOJ and FBI on Black Friday since it gave a massive injection of new US players. Merge Gaming was receiving so many deposit requests that it in June 2011, temporarily had to block for new US players. The doors were opened again in August. Merge still to this day accept US players. (May 2012)
Everleaf Gaming Network continued to offer real money games to US players but had their funds seized in February 2012 and has since left the US market. All casinos under the Vegas Technology Software were also closed down, in addition to Doyles Room2.
With US players almost entirely out of the picture the total online poker market has seen a drastic decrease after Black Friday (36% according to PokerScout.com)3. PokerStars has increased its market share, and with Full Tilt Poker knocked out (at least for the time being, May 2012) several sites and networks are fighting more closely for the top spots, with iPoker, Party Poker, 888poker and Ongame being the most popular sites as of May 2012.
1 CasinoAnswers.com
2 CasinoAnswers.com
3 Gaming-Awards.com April 3, 2012 (page removed)