Doyle's Room, Others Left in Lurch by Tribeca Lockout

Tribeca Tables' recent decison to stop providing services to U.S. players at the end of February has put many of its member sites between the proverbial rock and hard spot, in trying to work with their U.S. players. Doyle's Room was the largest of the more than half of the Tribeca-hosted sites to still allow Americans to play, taking advantage of an extended grace period that Tribeca had previously allowed as Doyle's Room and many other sites continued development of a new poker network, one which is to remain open to U.S. players.

The Tribeca move will lock out all computer connections emanating from the U.S. as of February 28th, and Tribeca will no longer allow Doyle's Rooms and other sites (such as Platinum Poker and BetUS Poker) to sign up U.S. players. That second part is effective immediately, so if you live in Marietta and were considering a Doyle's bonus offer, it's temporarily off the table.

What it means is that U.S. players on the affected sites won't be able to do anything with their online bankroll as of March 1st, except, perhaps another forced withdrawal. The number of affected sites may be 55 or more. The only other option is to wait until the new poker network centered around Doyle's Room comes online, which won't happen until later in March at the earliest. [Update: I've since encountered some postings whihc suggest that Doyle's Room might be able to get the new network up and running by the start of March, but it's likely to be a close thing --- hh]

One poker-news site quotes an unnamed manager of one of the affected rooms as being highly upset at the Tribeca move, saying that this represented a careless abuse of these rooms' ongoing business model and cash flow. Tribeca, though, for its part, had little reason to continue providing services for U.S. poker players, particularly as Tribeca itself is involved in a larger merger with the newly renamed Playtech network, which also includes all the i-Poker sites such as Titan and Noble. The existing Playtech network does not allow U.S. players, which may have paid a part in the Tribeca move.