According to a number of sources, including PocketFives.com and PokerFuse.com, Merge Gaming Network CEO Anthony Taylor has stepped down from his position at the helm of the company. No reasons have yet been given as to his departure and Merge has yet to issue a press release.
Taylor joined Merge Gaming in April 2007 after a number of years in the gaming industry. According to his LinkedIn profile, he sold advertising a developed bookmaker relationships for the Racing Post from 1999 through 2004 before moving on to Wagerworks, where he became poker manager. In July 2005, Taylor co-founded The Sportsman, a daily UK newspaper, and took the role of Commercial Director. He left The Sportsman a little over a year later to serve as Poker Consultant for the British Sky Broadcasting Group and to oversee the launch of SkyPoker.com. After a year there, he moved to Merge Gaming.
The Merge Gaming Network is one of the few remaining semi-relevant poker networks to still serve U.S. customers. According to PokerScout.com, it currently ranks as the 12th largest poker family in terms of cash games, with a seven day average of 930 players.
The network has had a bit of a rocky ride over the last year or so. In June 2011, it voluntarily stopped accepting new customers from the United States because of Black Friday. Interestingly, though, it wasn’t because Black Friday hurt the network. On the contrary, when PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker were either shutdown or lost their American customers, those players needed somewhere to go. Naturally, many of them went on over to Merge rooms. Normally, that would be great for Merge, but the rapid growth caused payment processing problems. Facing two week cashout backlogs, the network decided to halt the addition of new U.S. players so that current players could be properly serviced.
In October, the Merge Gaming Network finally re-opened its doors to U.S. players.
In May of this year, Lock Poker, the biggest member room on the Merge Gaming Network, bought the Cake Poker Network. At the same time, it left Merge and rebranded Cake as Revolution Gaming. Now, Revolution Gaming sits one spot ahead of Merge in the PokerScout.com rankings, boasting a seven day average of 1,240 cash game players.
In its latest weekly report, PokerScout.com shows Revolution Gaming as one of the few year-over-year traffic gainers in the industry, with its cash game numbers up 66 percent from the same time a year ago. On the other hand, the Merge Gaming Network has seen its traffic fall 20 percent.
Merge has also seen its share of cheating scandals, the most notable of which involved former Lock Poker pro José “Girah” Macedo. Macedo admitted to winning tens of thousands of dollars from friends of his while secretly being able to view their cards. Additionally, during Lock’s Bluff Pro Challenge, former CardRunners instructor Haseeb “Dogishead” Qureshi chip dumped $100,000 to Macedo to help him win. In addition to the Macedo scandals, a number of players have been found to have multi-accounted and colluded on the Merge Gaming Network, though it was the work of poker players, not Merge security, that discovered the cheating rings.
Merge Gaming has had its fair share of events and controversy over the years; however I do find it strange that the CEO Anthony Taylor decided to step down from his position at this time without any form of explanation.