Duplicate Poker Closes its Doors

Duplicate Poker has apparently been affected by the stock market blunder and shut down their website abruptly on Sunday due to the “global financial crisis” according to their website announcement which read:

Duplicate is sadly bidding farewell to its players. Caught in the middle of the global financial situation the company is not able to continue to provide service. We are a small victim of the global financial crisis.

Regretfully as of the today, October 5th, 2008 we are closing our service. We thank our players for being with us. Hopefully at later time and in a better economic climate Duplicate Poker will re-appear.

This is quite shocking as a couple weeks ago Duplicate Poker issued a press release praising their 250,000th depositor and the founder/ceo, Pinhas Romik went on to comment in the release saying, “DuplicatePoker.com has quickly gained global appeal and poker players at all levels are playing this new game and developing new strategies for winning. Our revenues have increased six-fold since the public launch and we expect the game’s popularity to continue its upward trajectory.”

Duplicate Poker was a skilled gaming site based on the game of Texas Hold’em. It brought an interesting approach to the game and the way it worked was that there are several players sitting in the same seat at another table. Each table is dealt the exact same cards and will see the same community board. Instead of competing against players at your own table you’re competing against players that are in your same seat. The idea is to win more chips than your competitors who are in your same seat at another table.

It is quite unfortunate that Duplicate Poker closed its doors as it was completely legal for all USA citizens to play on the site and deposit via credit cards. From the way Duplicate worded their farewell message, it seems that they have hope in the future and may look at returning when they get their finances sorted out. One can only wonder how much of an impact the stock market had on the company, or if they made poor choices marketing their site when they launched silly commercials that appeared on NBC during Poker After Dark.