2010 has began bit slowly in the poker business, however at the end of the 2009 there were several major developments which might lead to some big changes during the year of 2010. Below we have listed 3 possible major online gambling business events that might take place during 2010.

VC Poker leaves iPoker network and joins Entraction network

While ago the big guys over at Playtech (company behind iPoker network) decided that the network had too many sharks and too few fishes, so they began fining the sites that belong to the network that have too many sharks compared to the fishes. For this reason for an example NoiQpoker decided to leave the network in 2009 and joined the Entraction network. Now VC Poker appears to be struggling wit the rules. There have been countless reports on poker forums from winning poker players who have been emailed by VC Poker and told that they need to find a new site to play at.

It is hard to imagine that VC poker would be happy with having to “ban” their players and thus we suspect that they are already searching for a new network where all their players are welcomed.

You might be asking why VC would join the Entraction network. Well there are several reasons for this. First of all, because iPoker doesn’t accept players from Israel the VC users who are from Israel have already been forced to play at their Entraction powered poker room, thus in some sense VC is already part of the network and the jump wouldn’t be as big as it would be for some other poker rooms. The Entraction network has also been one of the fastest growing poker networks during the last year which makes it an attractive partner for VC and other poker sites. Also all the poker action over at Entraction is in euros which VC Poker as a site that focuses on European gamblers might be happy with.

VC Poker might also follow the footsteps of Ladbrokes and Unibet and join the Microgaming network which has enjoyed small growth during the last 6 months.

Expekt, Bet-At-Home and Betclick merge with Everest Poker

Mangas Gaming went on bit of a spending spree during 2009 and bought Expekt, Bet-At-Home and 60% of Everest Gaming. They also already previously owned Betclick which is one of the bigger European online gambling sites. Currently Expekt is part of the iPoker network, Bet-At-Home and Betclick are part of the International Poker Network (IPN) and Everest Poker is a standalone poker room. From Mangas Gaming’s perspective it would make sense to get all these sites together under one roof and create one bigger poker room. This new poker room would most likely instantly become bigger than Ongame network and might very well in a short while become real threat to Party Poker and iPoker network.

Party Gaming will merge with Unibet / Bwin / 888 / Other major player.

Party Gaming itself has already confirmed that they are looking for attractive partner(s) to merge with and create a huge online gambling powerhouse with. The open questions right now are if they are going through with the merger in 2010 and if they do with whom they will merge. Of the European online gambling companies at least Bwin, 888, Ladbrokes and Unibet might be big enough Party Gaming.