The Winning Poker Network has made many changes over the past couple of months in an attempt to gain as much market share as possible in the wide-open US market.
The latest change took effect on September 1st and may be the network's biggest make over of all. The Bad Beat Jackpot has been discontinued and the extra money that was normally raked in those games will now go toward WPN's proprietary promotion known as “The Beast.” In force for just over one year, The Beast is essentially a rake race of sorts that encourages players to grind as many tables as possible in order to accrue the greatest number of points by playing more hands.
The money currently sitting in the jackpot will not simply disappear as the remaining funds will be distributed in a way that will allow what is left to be collected numerous times. Players will not have to pay into it anymore, but will still have a chance to win a fair portion of the remaining jackpot that sits at over $187k as of this writing.
The money that would normally be raked for the Bad Beat Jackpot is going to be collected instead for the different benefits awarded by The Beast and will be distributed among both cash and tournament rewards. Perhaps the biggest benefit will come to players who play 10nl and lower, which will no longer be raked past the normal rake, as they were not eligible for The Beast previously and will no longer have to contend with the Bad Beat Jackpot. This is no small change as many have said that even beating 10nl with the BBJ consideration was a tall order. The revamped format is sure to alleviate some of that. Another major benefit will be to anyone playing $2/$4 or higher, as now only $0.25 will be raked as opposed to the $0.50 that was collected previously.
Discarding the BBJ, lowering the rake on hyper turbo SNGs, constantly improving the WPN tournament schedule, and the announcement of the M2 weekend from September 6th to 9th (which means that all tournament GTDs are going to be doubled and there is a Main Event on Sunday and Monday for $20+2 and $3 + .30, respectively) shows that WPN is really dedicated to trying to take over the no. 2 spot in the U.S. market and perhaps even gain ground on top-ranked Bovada. It’s a stark difference from what is happening over at both Revolution and Merge right now as both those U.S-friendly networks continue to falter and lose players on a weekly basis due to glacier-speed cash outs or unpopular decisions, respectively.
