How Does MPN Do after Unibet?

After Ladbrokes and Unibet Poker left MPN, the liquidity of the network has dropped significantly. Nevertheless, Microgaming is still operating among the Top 10 of the .com market.

Microgaming started to implement their new concept for their poker network about a year ago, changing its name to MPN and introducing a number of improvements that favour recreational players, including a reformed Bad Beat Jackpot structure with lowered requirements of hitting the jackpot.

In June, all regular heads-up tables got closed and replaced by Heads Up 8-Man Blaze tables as an anti-bumhunting feature; as a result, only fast-fold HU cash games remained available in the network. The Heads Up 8-Man Blaze games are played in pools of eight, so that regulars intending to play against specific recreational players have to join a pool, rendering it impossible for them to avoid each other.

In July, the Blazing Cannon feature was added: after each 20 raked hands won, Blaze Poker players would be offered a mini game, where they can aim a cannon at a house of cards and golden tokens. Shoot chips to destroy the house and make the tokens fall, so that you can win a bonus of €1 to €100.

After the rebranding and the implementation of these improvements, the status of the network seemed to stabilise, establishing a steady position among the top 10 of the .com traffic list. Still, one of the flagship skins decided last December to migrate to iPoker, resulting in a 20% drop in player liquidity. Nordicbet followed suit in January, if with insignificant impact, and then Unibet Poker announced that they would continue as a standalone operation. This latter loss proved to be a major blow, resulting in a 33% drop in traffic.

The question arose whether MPN would be able to remain among the top operators after the departure of Ladbrokes and Unibet Poker. Apparently, the answer is yes, which may sound surprising to most analysts. It had been expected that MPN would drop far behind after Unibet left and lose even more skins. However, the network has managed to keep its top 10 position: in the last seven days (that is, after the complete split with Unibet), an average of 900 players frequented its tables according to PokerScout, ranking 8th among the .com operators.

MPN is now busy winning over the partner rooms of the soon-to-be-closed IPN, although it is still very far down the road for them to compete against 888Poker, iPoker, PartyPoker and Full Tilt Poker, or the largest operators after PokerStars.