I’ve always liked the concept that Duplicate Poker brought to the table within the online poker community.  It’s style of play focussed on two players at different tables holding the same cards and seeing who could play them the best.  The winner was obviously the person who made the right moves with the cards and outplayed their opponent.  In this system there was no bad beats, no bad stretch of cards, and no people lucking into money. 

However, a unique concept wasn’t enough to survive in the end as Duplicate Poker fell victim to the poor economy that the world is starting to experience.  The fact that Duplicate Poker was one of the few places that was allowed to operate in the US (because it wasn’t considered gambling) couldn’t even save them in the end. 

And this was a tremendous surprise to me personally because I saw on a site called businesswire.com where Duplicate Poker was supposed to be kicking ass despite the major turmoil that other rooms were experiencing due to the world economy.  The article even mentioned something about how their player base had increased by 25% during one bad economic stretch.  

For this reason, the news was kind of puzzling to me.  Especially when the Duplicate CEO, Pinhas Romik, was making statements such as, “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.”

Going beyond the fact that this statement just seemed really cocky, it also makes me wonder if it was just a last ditch effort to try and shuttle as many people towards Duplicate as possible to save the company.  Here’s the statement that their site now says, “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.”

That’s quite a change from the former.  I just hope that everyone is able to get their money out of Duplicate Poker without losing any of it.