In years gone by, when online poker gaming was much smaller than what we see today, multi network poker rooms were the only option for some providers. This allowed them to offer poker rooms alongside other operators, with all players going into the same room, rather than different rooms for each provider. This eased the struggles of a low number of players when many poker rooms found themselves quiet.
The need for this has diminished considerably, giving the rise of many big names in the poker world, and the great number of people playing online. So, is there still a need for them, and are they still available for those who want to play in them?
What Are Multi Network Poker Rooms?
Let’s start with the basics. A multi network poker room is one that allows players to join from a variety of different poker sites. Rather than the room specifically being for jut one provider and their players, a number of different poker rooms will offer that particular room, and the players will be a mix from different sites.
The reason why this can happen is because many casinos and poker sites use the same software providers for their games. Rather than have different rooms for different poker sites for their own players to go in, there is a central room, which all poker sites can advertise to their players. You may be sat on a table with players from your site, but you may also be sat on a table with players from elsewhere.
The Advantages
Although the main advantage of using a multi network poker room is not as needed as it was a decade ago, it is still there. One of the biggest problems that poker sites face is a lack of players to fill their tables. On a small poker site, at a unusual gaming time, you may find yourself struggling to get the type of game you want, because there simply isn’t enough people around to play.
Multi network poker rooms take away the risk of this happening, because players are potentially coming into the room to play with you from a variety of different sites. The more sites involved, the busier things are going to be, so the more chance you have of finding a group of people to play with.
If poker sites find their rooms to be very busy, they can simply open more and cope with the demand. This is not something they can do if things are quiet, they can’t get more players onto their site. What they can do though, is get players from other sites in the rooms, which will solve the problem.
This isn’t unique to poker either, shared networks are how most bingo sites run, for example, to get enough players into rooms and push the pot sizes up to make the games more worthwhile for players.
Why Some Providers Do Not Offer This Anymore
Multi network poker rooms were a lot more common a decade ago than what they are now, and the simple reason for this drop off is down to the number of players who are now playing online poker. There was a lot of smaller poker sites who were struggling to attract enough players to ensure their rooms were busy, especially at down periods.
To combat this, many sites joined together to form networks which they could use to share rooms, this enabled them to operate with a smaller number of players, because their rooms would be filled by players from other sites.
Although not an ideal way to solve the problem, what this did was ensure that smaller poker sites had time to develop and attract more players. This has been used well, so much so that very few sites offer a gaming platform that uses a network to give players enough opponents to go up against.
This has led to the position we are currently in where many poker networks no longer exist, though there is one big one still in place, that is used by some big providers to give their players a wide range of users to go up against.
Are Multi Network Poker Rooms Still Available?
There are still some multi network poker rooms available to use, and one of the biggest networks that players use involves some of the biggest names from the gambling industry. By having this network still in place, when people log onto the sites that are involved, they have a far better range of rooms to go inside, with more players online than you will see at most other places.
The network available is known as the iPoker Network, and is one of the biggest in the world, both in terms of the size of the poker sites that use it, and also the number of sites that use it. The network is owned and ran by Playtech Gaming, one of the biggest names in poker and casino gaming, so there is a lot of experience behind this platform.
Of the 18 brands that form part of this network and offer their rooms to players, we have the likes of bet365, Paddy Power, Betfair, William Hill and more. These are all huge names across many different types of gambling, not just poker gaming, and because of that they attract a lot of players, which all feed into the same rooms, which leads to a very vibrant playing area, where there is always something exciting going off.
There is not as much need to be part of a network as there was in the past, but there is certainly no downside to being part of one, all you are going to get is a busier poker site with more players. With this in mind, the iPoker Network is likely to be around for many more years, offering players the chance to get involved with others from various poker sites on the internet.
More poker networks being released is unlikely to happen, as the benefit to creating them is not as strong as it was, but that doesn’t mean that this network, and the others available, are going to disappear anytime soon.