One of the, most popular, and best known, of the US legal online poker rooms has shut-down over financial concerns. SpadeClub was owned and operated by Card Player Magazine, and was a subscription based online poker room. For $20/month players could participate in tournaments that had predetermined cash-prizes, including a $5,000 weekly tournament and a $30,000 monthly tournament.

Unfortunately, it appears that handing out over $100,000 in cash prizes each month was simply too much overhead, despite a rumored 200,000 customers at SpadeClub. Card Player Magazine owner Barry Shulman summed it up this way: “We just couldn’t make it work from a financial standpoint. We were getting close to having a break even month for the first time about a year ago and then we started having processing problems that we couldn’t overcome.”

All is not lost for the site’s existing customers; SpadeClub members were greeted with the following message on the site’s homepage:

“Going forward, all SpadeClub members are being offered a chance to participate in the transition to the ZEN Entertainment Network. ZEN’s VIP program will honor all time already purchased by SpadeClub members. Basic members can continue to play for free as well.”

With a handful of similar sites is operation it will be interesting to see which ones are able to attract SpadeClub’s considerable player base.

Tags: Barry Shulman, Card Player Magazine, SpadeClub, subscription based online poker room, ZEN Entertainment Network

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 18th, 2010 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.