Lock Poker announced this week the launch of its new Player Dashboard with stats from Sharkscope integrated directly into its client. The site will now allow players to view their own stats, search for opponents’ stats, and shop at the Lock Poker store all while playing poker in real-time.
“One of our mandates as a company is to provide a superior online poker experience,” said Jennifer Larson, CEO of Lock Poker. “We are determined to take this industry by storm and innovate in every possible way we can. The player comes first at Lock and that will always drive our business development.”
Lock’s new Dashboard has never been seen before in online poker. While some rooms like PartyPoker and Ladbrokes recently introduced anonymous heads-up tables to allow a player’s identity and statistics to remain secret, Lock has taken a different approach in making opponents’ stats available right at a person’s fingertips. Other sites, such as PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, have prohibited Sharkscope while their client is in use.
Online poker legend Eric “Rizen” Lynch, who was hired by Lock Poker as its VP of Product Development in 2009, posted the official Lock/Sharkscope press release on his blog, saying, “I’m really excited about this partnership and what we can do with it going forward.”
Lock Poker has prided itself on being innovative in this ever-changing industry ever since opening its doors in 2008. The site made a name for itself in March 2009 by introducing the Bluff Online Poker Challenge, which pitted several of online poker’s top tournament players in a one-month bankroll-building challenge. Lynch, Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul, Jeff “yellowsub” Williams, Ari “Bodog Ari” Engel, Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet, Brett “gank” Jungblut, Brandon Cantu, and Maria Ho were among the participants, but the competition was ultimately won by Brian “SNo0oWMAN” Hawkins in a landslide.
Sharkscope, meanwhile, has become a mainstay in online poker since it began tracking and analyzing online tournaments in 2004. The site has nearly half a billion tournaments in its database and estimates that well over 20% of all online poker players use its services. Despite constant resistance from some of the major poker sites, Sharkscope remains one of the most popular software tools in online poker today and even recently started tracking live poker results.
“SharkScope is delighted to be working with Lock Poker in a groundbreaking partnership that brings our years of expertise in the display and analysis of poker statistics directly to Lock Poker players,” SharkScope’s CEO said. “Players will be able to track their tournaments results, examine their statistics in great detail, and find new ways of increasing their profits, all directly on the Lock Poker site.”
Lock Poker is part of the Merge Gaming Network, which currently ranks 23rd in the world in cash game traffic according to PokerScout.com. The Australia-based site averaged 830 ring game players over the past seven days with a peak of 1,422. Other sites on the Merge Gaming Network include RPM Poker, Aced, and Carbon Poker, which signed actress and poker player Shannon Elizabeth to be the face of its site in June. The Merge Gaming Network accepts players from all over the world, including the United States.
