Blanca Games get "Cereus" about Expansion

For the average player trying to win big money playing casino slots online and trying to make the pro ranks in poker, the behind-the-scenes power moves don’t necessarily matter. As long as you’re still able to log on and play the game, most don’t rightly care who owns it.

But some moves are just too big to ignore, like Blanca Games’ recent purchasing of the Cereus Poker Network.

Why does this move matter to the Internet gamblers of the world? Well, if you like sites like Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, two of the biggest names in the genre, then you should care a great deal that Blanca Games, a relative unknown, has swooped in with enormous purchasing power and grabbed up one of the biggest networks in the history of online gaming.

Since complete details of this transaction haven’t been released yet, the implications are unknown. It’s not likely that stricter regulations would surface, or that any bonus structures would change throughout the casino, sports book and poker sites on the network. But when big corporations buy other big corporations, the little guys—being we mere poker players—end up feeling some of the weight.

When you play online blackjack at a place for a while, or get used to the ring games at a poker site, any slight change can throw you off your game and end up costing the site huge dollars when more and more players switch. Ask Pokerroom.com what happened to their base when they sold out and took the chat lobby away from players.
It wasn’t pretty.

The Cereus Poker Network has worked incredibly hard over the past few years to build up their brand. Competing with PokerStars and other huge sites that are constantly advertized by poker pros on tour, turning Ultimate Bet from a startup background player into a top-level site was certainly no small feat.

Blanca has stated that their mission going forward is to work on security holes that Cereus had developed over time. It’s nothing major, like out and out hacking, but there have been a few minor security issues on the sites over the years.

With this new buyout, Blanca also hopes to increase the overall customer service on the site.

As far as bothering the games, changing the platform or opening up restrictions on more countries, time will tell how Blanca proceeds. But for right now, they seem to be taking it slow and are working to tighten the ship.