Lock Poker Separates High Stakes Tables from Rest of Revolution

Sharp-eyed observers on the Revolution Poker Network, anchored by Lock Poker, have noticed that certain higher-stakes cash tables have been made available only on flagship site Lock, and are not available on other network skins.

The observations date to about Feb 5, as noted on the 2+2 forums and elsewhere, with the segregation of the tables going unannounced on the Lock Poker forums and elsewhere until pressed publicly by players for an explanation.

Three days after the segregation was first noticed, Lock Poker PR representative Shane Bridges confirmed the Lock-only tables in a brief post on 2+2, writing, “We offer all the same stakes as everyone on the network but we have partitioned some of our higher stakes based on our current size and our soft poker ecology to better care for our players.”

Bridges followed with other posts that indicate a possible problem between parent site Lock and one or more major skins, who may be “grinder” heavy, with a player base of more profitable makeup than the average network composition.

The segregation fueled speculation that the move was taken to prevent excessive cash outflow from Lock to its member skins.

Bridges, on behalf of Lock, cast the blame for the move on the so-called grinders, and the sites that cater to them, posting: “Despite everyones assumptions that Lock is only in this for a quick buck we are actually trying to keep building for the future and this was a part of this.”

Lock, previously a skin on Merge Gaming, purchased the Cake Poker Network in May 2012 and relaunched it as Revolution in June. Lock manages the network as well as one of the largest skin. Other prominent brands include Intertops, Cake itself, and Juicy Stakes, which took on Cake’s US players back in September.

“If you read any articles about the operator/network level of online poker in the last 3-5 years you will see constant talk about a stable poker ecology. One room [Bodog] went so far as to make all their tables anonymous because they felt grinders hurt their ecology,” Bridges said.

“We on the other hand believe in balance, we see the need for a good balance between both grinders and casual players. Now if our room has good balance and another room doesn’t then that affects our overall ecology,’ he added. “This new change was put in place with this in mind.”

Originally, the changes were implemented only on select no-limit hold’em tables of $5/10 stakes and higher, and was described as a “trial” only.

However, this has now been expanded to all games at $2/4 or higher, then $1/2 and higher, including low-liquidity fixed limit games, clarifying this would be the “extent extent of the segregation for the foreseeable future.”

Internecine battles between networks and competitive skins are far from new to the business, dating back to 2005 when PartyPoker absorbed its primary skin Empire Poker in a competition-reducing power play. Party likewise used ring-fencing as a tactic to undermine an over-aggressive skin, first isolating Empire players, then forcing Empire to sell out to Party.

More recently, we have seen ring fencing at Ongame (a practice now ended) and the much publicized iPoker 2 network split, although in both cases it was the low stakes games that were split up, not the higher stakes.

Update: When this article was originally published, it stated that only select games at 5/10 NL and higher were segregated; Lock Poker has further deployed this “trial” to all games 2/4 and up. The article was updated to reflect this new information.
Update 2: Later Thursday, Lock later updated that 1/2 is now included. Article updated to reflect this.