Earlier this week it was announced that two popular online poker rooms – PokerRoom and EuroPoker – are being absorbed by the equally popular company bwin.  bwin purchased the two websites in 2006 and they will be hosted on the Ongame Network.  Hollywood Poker, Poker Loco, and Strykke Poker are other popular sites that are also on the Ongame network.   

The e-mail that was sent to affiliates of the two popular gaming sites said, “PokerRoom.com and EuroPoker.com players will soon become a part of the bwin platform. Every PokerRoom.com and EuroPoker.com customer will get the possibility to choose to transfer their account to bwin. This transition presents a unique opportunity to become a partner of bwin, our best-known and best-converting brand.”  

Prior to the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006, PokerRoom was a very dominant website in the United States, popular with American players and doing well.  Currently, the affiliates for PokerRoom and EuroBet are working in close conjunction with bwin.  bwin is a publicly traded company on the Vienna Stock Exchange, and even through a global financial crisis the company has been trading well.

PokerRoom’s ‘The Grand’ monthly tournament is their signature game and it has a healthy $1,040 buy-in with a $750,000 guarantee payout.  It is currently the largest recurring tournament among networks and online poker rooms that do not service the United States.  PartyPoker, a website owned and operated by PartyGaming, is getting set to offer their first round of the $1 million guaranteed payout ‘Monthly Million’ which will surpass PokerRoom’s ‘The Grand’.

These are not the only websites that are moving.  Doyle’s Room recently moved to the Cake Poker Network, a network that is friendly to American players.  The website is run by 10 World Series of Poker Champion Doyle Brunson, a well know figure in the poker community.  There is currently no date as to when PokerRoom and EuroPoker will make the move to bwin.  The fate of CasinoRoom, the sister site of PokerRoom, is still to be determined.  CasinoRoom offers casino games to players, and while bwin operates a full online casino and sports book business, there is no word as to whether or not they will pick up CasinoRoom with PokerRoom.

The Ongame Network offers their gaming software for both Mac and Linux based operating systems via their web-based applications that use Java or Flash.  PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have fully downloadable versions for Mac users.