Poker News

The seven-year old online poker room Cake Poker has re-branded itself slightly, changing its name to Win Cake. The change appears to be not much more than a shift towards marketing the site as an overall internet gambling destination, rather than just a poker room.

Upon arriving at the Win Cake home page, visitors are now presented with a mixture of promotional messages. The headline window does start with an advertisement for Win Cake’s new player bonus for poker and then proceeds to scroll to casino, jackpot, and other games promos. Below that, Win Cake urges players to “Get a piece of the action,” adding, “Now serving poker, casino, jackpot, & casino games.” And underneath that, there are two scrolling frames touting even more promos for all of Win Cakes different games, not just poker.

It does not appear that poker players will see any difference in their experience at the tables. As before, Cake Poker, now Win Cake, will not accept players from the United States. Cake Poker’s American players were moved over to Juicy Stakes Poker, another skin on the Revolution Gaming Network, last fall.

Cake Poker was launched in 2006 during the peak of the poker boom after months of advertising build-up which was purposely vague in order to pique the interest of players. It thought of itself as a very player-friendly site, implementing a unique feature in which special Gold Cards would drop at the tables every so often (the rate was dependent on rake). If a player had the regular version of that Gold Card amongst their hole cards, that Gold Card went into their collection. Gold Cards could be redeemed for cash rewards.

Cake also used Gold Chips as a part of its loyalty program; players could earn Gold Chips for accumulating Frequent Player Points. These Gold Chips could be redeemed in the Cake Store for merchandise or even used to buy-in to special tournaments.

Things were going fairly well for Cake Poker and the Cake Network until 2010, when two of the network’s largest poker rooms, Sportsbook.com and PlayersOnly, bolted for the Merge Gaming Network. What had once been a network that looked like it would be a mainstay in the top ten began to fall quickly. Last June, Lock Poker left the Merge Gaming Network, purchased the Cake Network and renamed it the Revolution Gaming Network.

Revolution has stayed afloat, now ranking 15th in cash game traffic, according to PokerScout.com. It is not particularly well respected, however, as cashout problems have plagued the network.

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