More segregation policies at Revolution Gaming Network
Poker players at the Revolution Poker Network had a new level of complexity introduced to their experience this week with the announcement of new player segregation policies that will further fragment the already-divided online poker network.
Intertops now more separated from other skins
The major change is that Revolution skin Intertops will soon be opting-out of a variety of cash games and tournaments.
On the tournament side, Intertops players will no longer be able to access tournaments with guaranteed prize pools that meet or exceed $1000. That obviously includes the major Sunday tournament on Revolution, and would include most, if not all, events in a major tournament series.
Sit and Go tournaments above $20 will also be impacted by the change.
On the cash game side, Intertops players will no longer be able to view or take a seat at network games at or above $2/$4 blind levels.
Note that this does not mean that such games won’t be available in Intertops – it just means they won’t be sharing any games with the network. So you’ll still likely be able to find $2/$4 games at Intertops (and greater), but they will be restricted to Intertops players only. And the $2/$4 and up games you see on another Revolution skin – like Lock Poker – won’t be accessible from the Intertops lobby.
Other US-facing sites mixed on issue of player segregation
What about other US-friendly online poker sites? Where do they stand on the issue of player segregation?
The answer depends on what room you’re talking about. If it’s Bovada, the room has been emphatic on the point: they do not employ any segregation policy. The same is the case for the Winning Poker Network, headed up by America’s Card Room.
Over at Merge Poker it’s a slightly different story, as players from some skins will see cash games and tables that players at other skins simply will not. The protected games are believed to reside on the SportsBook.com Poker site, but the policy appears to be regularly evolving.
By and large, it’s safe to say that the Revolution Network is easily the US-facing poker site with the most segregation. While some other sites do have segregation policies in place, the policies at Revolution appear to result in the network with the greatest level of segregation among all US-friendly rooms.
Additional segregation policies on Lock and Juicy Stakes
To add another twist to an already complicated situation, Lock Poker and Juicy Stakes both employ some additional form of segregation. That means players at one skin could be seeing a much different lobby that players at another skin. While details of the unique segregation policies at each Revolution skin are not readily available, it seems safe to conclude that at this point, each and every Revolution skin is likely showing a unique set of cash games to their players.
Cashout differences driving many of the policies
Players might rightfully ask why there’s so much separation on the Revolution Network from one skin to the next. After all, isn’t the entire point of an online poker network to share traffic across several rooms in order to generate the largest possible pool?
In theory, yes. But in practice, the issue gets more complicated when you’re discussing Revolution. And that’s because – at least according to player reports – cashout speeds can vary significantly from one Revolution skin to the next. So, a player at Lock Poker from California could wait weeks for a cashout while a player at Intertops in the same state might wait only days (learn more about skins and cashouts at our online poker FAQ page).
The problem there is obvious: players with money on Lock are going to seek to move that money over to Intertops, where they’ll have much faster access to their bankrolls. But with no way to transfer money between the two skins, players might be tempted to dump chips (to lose on purpose) to a friend as a backdoor method for moving money from Lock to Intertops.
With a number of other attempted solutions apparently flawed, Intertops decided that limiting the amount of crossover between their players and other players on the Revolution Network was the only answer for limiting such attempts by players.
