On Friday, the poker world learned that DoylesRoom, which had made its home on the Cake Poker Network for the last two years, would be jumping ship immediately to the Yatahay Poker Network. The latter features sites like BetCRIS and True Poker and is the 38th largest worldwide in terms of real money ring game traffic according to PokerScout.com with a seven-day running average of 73 cash game players.
DoylesRoom officials told Poker News Daily that the weekly DoylesRoom Bounty tournament, which had offered up to $50,000 in bounty prize money, would be converted into a guaranteed tournament. According to an e-mail sent to DoylesRoom players on Saturday morning, the site will now have $500,000 in guarantees every month along with 2D and 3D poker rooms.
The e-mail sent to players today also refers to a “$50K Guaranteed tournament starting in March,” which may be the newly launched Bounty. On the DoylesRoom website, the Bounty is listed as “Coming Back Soon.” Previously, three members of the site’s team of sponsored pros would vie against hungry DoylesRoom players every Wednesday night.
Anyone who knocked out one featured bounty would get $1,000. Players who knocked out two pros would receive $10,000, while any DoylesRoom user who busted all three bounties would nab $50,000. Whether the Bounty’s $27.50 buy-in will stay the same remains to be seen.
Starting on February 1st on DoylesRoom is a $65,000 Race to the Top. Text found on DoylesRoom’s website explains how players can battle in the Race: “To win, just Race to the Top of the DoylesRoom Leaderboard by playing at the real money cash tables and earning points. The more rake you generate, the more points you’ll collect and the higher you’ll jump on our Leaderboard.” The top prize is $7,500 and 350 players will finish in the money.
On PocketFives.com, comments about DoylesRoom’s new software seemed to be less-than-stellar. One poster wrote, “This new network blows so far. I don’t know if it’s just because Doyle’s is in its infancy there and nothing is running today, but so far every tournament has less than 10 people in it. Bit of a head-scratcher if you ask me.” Another poster opined, “Totally ridiculous. This new setup for DoylesRoom is a joke!”
In addition, Poker News Daily has learned that the weekly Beat the Brunson 10 tournament will be retooled, although what that means is not clear. In other changes, a press release sent out by DoylesRoom on Friday noted that telephone and live chat support would be returning. When Poker News Daily attempted to access DoylesRoom’s online customer service on Saturday afternoon, we were connected with an agent in less than a minute.
According to PokerScout.com, the Cake Poker Network’s average cash game player count dipped sharply on Friday, the day DoylesRoom switched networks. On Thursday, the 24-hour peak ring game player count on the Cake Poker Network was 1,356; on Friday, the same 24-hour peak was just 961, a drop of 29%. Week over week, the number of cash game players was down 25%. Day by day traffic numbers for the Yatahay Poker Network were not available on PokerScout.com.
Both the Cake Poker Network and Yatahay Poker Network accept players from the United States.