Bwin.com has successfully shifted its customers to the PartyGaming poker gaming platform on Tuesday, which means that Bwin.com poker players and Party Poker players now form a common player pool.
Although Bwin.com did not announce the move in advance, it was determined to complete the procedure by the end of this year. As a result, Bwin.com players will get a wider range of cash games as Party Poker has double the number of ring game players than Ongame. Besides, Bwin.com players can now play PartyGaming’s version of high-speed online poker.
According to a post on the Bwin blog, the new poker gaming platform has features such as custom avatars and late registration tournaments, to mention just two.
If most of Bwin.com players will continue playing on the PartyGaming software, players on Party Poker will notice a larger volume to player traffic to cash games and tournaments. Most of the traffic will be towards micro-stakes games. According to estimates, Bwin.com has 30 to 50 percent of the players on Ongame, which means that Party Poker will witness a 15 to 20 percent rise in player traffic. Players at other PartyGaming skins such as Empire Poker and WPT Poker will also observe a rise in player traffic.
This rise in player traffic is expected to put Party Poker on position three in the list of sites attracting huge volumes of player traffic, as per PokerScout’s ranking based on average ring game traffic. This position was previously occupied by iPoker Network. It also puts Party Poker closer to Full Tilt Poker, which had occupied position two ever since its re-launch in early November. Since player traffic to Full Tilt Poker is now reducing and is soon expected to stabilize, chances of Party Poker shooting up to position two are quite high.
On the contrary, players on Ongame skins will witness a fall in player traffic. However, this decline might not be that noticeable as several of Bwin’s poker tables were exclusive only to Bwin.
Players had been anticipating this move ever since Bwin.com and PartyGaming merged in March 2011. The next year, Ongame Network was put on sale. Although the sale ought to have been completed by 2011, it was delayed as those interested in purchasing Ongame backed out. Since Ongame was finally sold to Amaya in Oct 2012, Bwin.com could finally move onto the PartyGaming platform before the end of this year.
