Interesting article but the line about ensuring iPoker becomes a softer network is laughable. The only thing this move will accomplish will be to move grinders/rake back players from the smaller rooms that will be excluded from the main network to rooms that are not excluded - especially the likes of William Hill and Titan where rake back up to 65% is still available. In short, its nothing more than a liquidity grab by those operators that mean most to the network. The one anamoly from amongst the five operators rumoured to make up the main network is Bet365 who most surely provide the majority of recreational players to the network yet have never in my experience gone down the route of offering high level rake back, unlike Titan, William Hill, Paddy Power and BetFred so; whilst the four aforementioned rooms are likely to increase their player pools through their rake back operations, Bet365 are likely to suffer as their players are now subjected to a higher concentration of grinders due to the loss of the recreational players from the excluded rooms.
Personally I think this is a really sneaky move by iPoker and the main operators simply put in force to increase business levels in a declining market. Ultimately it won't change the ecology of the network for the better but may, at Bet365's expense, actually make it worse.

That's true - they're the biggest canibalistic affiliate in existence and are sure to focus on those operators on the new iPoker2

Seems like someone has said that this will be a good idea, and not really thought through the long term implications. WH/PP etc do next to 0 marketing for Poker otherthan tapping up established players.

(you missed Genting and its brands Circus etc off the will get list btw)

No doubt this will punish some leigt smaller skins trying to make their way in the world, but all the undertable rb donk skins have shot themselves in the foot.

Genting doesn't care much about online poker in general, they make no profit with it apart from the Asian market.

I just got an email from my affiliate that this is starting on July 1st and they'd move me to a room on ipoker2 with the same deal. Glad that I still have 2 networks to play on

thought it would begin in september?

Oh how I love it when MTTs are in fact STTs...

Pretty simmilar stuff happened lately on Microgaming. One difference that microgaming instead of spliting networks just capped amount of tables you could play on rakeback skins...
One thing I would suggest is to withdraw from rakeback skin before they colapse after split. I mean on microgaming one rakeback skin (5050) is already in liquidation, others like dbet or tobet have serious troubles.

I mean we all know that pretty much any skin/site except pokerstars maybe isn't able to cover all player balances.
It is savvy to move before the whole run on bank start.

+1
I hope that dafa, offside and other bot rooms will be separated from ipoker...
I think this is chance for Ipoker.

btw guys what u think about celebpoker? Will they remain in the ipoker network? Is this a reliable room?

And so the liquidity grab begins..........

850 new players every month + 6.000 active real money players... only Titan and William Hill (?) can beat these numbers.

I heard from one iPoker manager - network 2 will require 6.000 active players per day, not month, as some people think.

I think you'll find that Bet365 can easily acheive these numbers and at a rate of 95% recreational also, unlike Hills & Titan who's rate is probably nearer 50/50 recreational/grinder. Paddy Power and BetFred will also probaly only make it in on the back of their RB business.

As for 6,000 active players per day; if that were the case then iPoker would be giving Stars a run for their money already so I think "per day" is incorrect.

It's not going to be per day because even at peak times there are rarely 6,000 cash players on the whole network. I know that could still mean that many more are active throughout the day but 6000/day would be a weird way of doing it because of peak days etc, and would also be needlessly high as 6,000 a month will be more than enough to weed out the smaller cannibals from the network.

That list of rooms that make the cut will include a few more big brands, but a large proportion of the current rooms will likely be 'demoted'.
I'd be surprised if any of these rooms didn't make it:
Bet365
BetFred
Expekt
Genting
Mansion
PaddyPower
Titan
William Hill

So mostly big bookmakers/casinos that already have a big player base to tap, but there may be a couple of others that are large enough.

This is part of an email I received from a big iPoker affiliate scheme today:

Betfred, they offer 55% under table dont they?

I like your reference to "weeding out the smaller canibals" - You're 100% correct but at the end of the day it just gives the bigger canibals more power.

I'd be surprised if Expekt and Mansion make it in though. And Gentings come to that.