- The Beast has run every month for the last year, and is available to anyone playing on designated jackpot tables.
- To celebrate its first anniversary, WPN is giving away over $50,000 added to the prizepool.
- The promo has resulted in 50% traffic spike in the last week.
- Whether WPN can hold its position over Merge once The Beast concludes remains to be seen.
The Winning Poker Network (WPN) has moved ahead of the Merge Gaming Network to become the third largest offshore site accepting US players, thanks to “The Beast” rake-race promotion driving a traffic spike.
According to the latest data from PokerScout, which independently tracks online poker networks and ranks them based on a 7-day moving average of cash game players, Winning has had 410 concurrent players on average in the last week, with Merge at 395.
WPN has seen steady growth over the last year, up approximately 40%, whereas Revolution is down over 50% and Merge has lost over two thirds of its traffic.
Over the last 30 days Merge has managed to stabilize its traffic, but a big spike at WPN over the last ten days—almost a 50% increase—has allowed it to pip just ahead (see graph below).
The Beast has run every month for the last year, and is available to anyone playing on designated jackpot tables. As the additional rake is paid, the jackpot grows and is awarded in cash prizes to the players who rake the most. There are daily, weekly and monthly leaderboards.
To celebrate its first anniversary, WPN has sweetened the deal by adding over $50,000 to the prizepool: $1000 a day added to the daily leaderboards, and $5000 a week to the weekly board.
This, in addition to a successful rollout of its revamped poker software, can be seen as the driving force for the big traffic gains.
Whether WPN can hold its position over Merge once The Beast concludes remains to be seen. However, the poker room enjoys the distinction of having top grades for cashouts—it was rated “A” in July’s independent payment processing report. Merge is graded C, with 8-10 week waits for checks, and skins on the Revolution network are even worse, with cashouts for both US and non-US players measured in months.
The market leader by far is still Bodog. Though traffic data can only be estimated, it boasts strong growth this year and maintains top marks for payment processing.
Graph data used under license from PokerScout.com, screenshot from pokerfuse PRO Data.
