The Equity Poker Network will grow by one online-poker site this work, courtesy of a deal in which former Action CEO Clive Archer, later the founder of the Equity Poker Network and its flagship skin, Full Flush Poker, has reacquired the Action Poker brand.
Action Poker will move over to EPN immediately, with little hassle for players. Both Action’s future and former homes, the Equity and Chico Poker Networks, use the same poker software, a platform created by Norway’s Playsafe Holding AS.
The reuniting of Action Poker where with its initial founder, Archer, closes a circle, as Archer and EPN hope to pump new life into a once-damaged brand. Archer’s Equity Poker Network has already announced that the Action Poker brand will be repositioned as a Euro-facing site to complement Full Flush, which is aimed more at North America and the US online-poker market.
In a press release published this week by EPN, Action Poker’s troubles in recent years were acknowledged. “EPN is committed to reviving the Action Poker brand,” read the EPN statement, “and to giving it a fresh new look and a place to call home.” The statement also asserted that Action Poker has been given a “sweeping facelift as part of its move over to EPN.”
“Action Poker was once a great, competitive, and respected brand,” continued the EPN presser, “but in more recent times, its standing in the poker community has lapsed. We plan to restore it to its former glory, and to create a sister site to our flagship FFP brand that we can be proud of. We’re excited to be the instrument of Action Poker’s rebirth.”
The referenced “lapse” referred to extended cashout problems at the one-time Action Poker Network, for which Action Poker itself served as the flagship brand. In 2012 and 2013 the network’s players were unable to retrieve funds for many months, even as the network rebranded itself as the Chico Poker Network and continued operating and soliciting new players. Playsafe, with whom Archer has had a close business relationship for years, maintained independent ownership of the Action Poker brand.
Player cashout difficulties were subsequently linked in several news report to unresolved contract language in the sale of Chico from Playsafe to Julian International Holdings, its current owner. Meanwhile, Archer, whose role at Action stretched into its Chico days but ended with the sale to Julian, moved on in early 2013 to announce his new Equity Poker Network. The players’ pending withdrawals were essentially held hostage as the legal battle between old and new owners dragged out.
Eventually, the players at the troubled Chico sites did get paid, with Playsafe and Julian announcing a deal in August of 2012 that allowed withdrawal processing to be resumed. Amazingly, the Chico Network survived its many months of “no-pay” status, and still ranks 26th in global online-poker network traffic, according to PokerScout, in the same range as the Merge Network.
By comparison, the newer Equity Poker Network currently ranks 39th on the latest PokerScout listings, which admittedly are in some instances estimates and are also most accurate when referring only to cash-game traffic, and not SNGs or MTTs. Action Poker’s migration from Chico to EPN may make the two networks almost equal in size.
The Equity Poker Network itself continues a pattern of slow, hesitant growth. EPN debuted last November with five skins — Full Flush, IntegerPoker, Gear Poker (another former Chico site), Heritage Sports, and HiroPoker. However, Hiro, and Asia-centric brand, has already departed the network while the 5Dimes group of skins joined Equity soon after its launch.
Four 5Dimes skins — 5Dimes.eu, Sportbet.com, IslandCasino.com, and Vietbet.eu — joined EPN at that time. Another apparent EPN “house” skin, Bellugo Poker, was added earlier this year, and the pending Action Poker addition therefore swells the EPN ranks to at least ten, and not the six mentioned in a recent pokerfuse update.
The Equity Poker Network’s new cooperative approach, in which member skins each pay $10,000 per month to be part of the network, has shown some early, promising sites. Archer’s and EPN’s broadly-proclaimed “shark tax,” designed to deter player-poaching skins, is yet another variation on poker sites’ retargeting of casual, recreational players, as opposed to high-volume grinders whose effect on sites’ overall player balance may outweigh their short-term rake benefits.
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