Lock Poker Review

Lock Poker Warmly Welcomes All Poker Players Including Americans

Players from countries that look to either limit your choices or to look to keep you out of the game of online poker entirely find that their choices these days are limited. This is especially true if you live in the United States.

First, most poker rooms got out of the U.S. market a few years ago when they became scared off by some new legislation making it illegal to process financial transactions for unlawful gambling. The big question was whether or not online poker was unlawful in the U.S. or not.

The U.S. government believed it was, however their courts ruled that it was not unlawful and ruled that the law that the U.S. Department of Justice was looking to enforce only applied to sports betting and not online poker.

Not All Poker Rooms Were Scared Off Though

In spite of that, the new unlawful gambling act did scare off the majority of online poker rooms back then. Since this law would not stand up in court, due to the court ruling, the American government relied on intimidation to try to make online poker rooms comply.

Not all online poker rooms were scared off, and it was in fact at this time that the Merge Poker Network, which Lock Poker is a member of, was created. While other poker rooms were on the run, the online poker rooms of Merge were game for a fight and felt that they had the rightness of the law behind them as well.

Some other poker rooms continued to offer online poker to Americans as well, most notably Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. Recently though, even these poker rooms gave up and said Uncle, as in Uncle Sam, and they no longer offer poker to Americans, much to the chagrin of the millions of online poker players from the U.S., who used to play there and now felt that they had nowhere to go.

Merge And Lock Poker Stand Up And Grab The Torch

However, not all online poker sites were driven off by the most recent attacks by the U.S. government. However, the poker rooms that were left were not among the most popular ones out there to be sure, at least in comparison to the giants that left.

Merge and Lock Poker did have a dedicated following at the time, and in spite of all of the heat going down, made the decision to stay the course and continue to take care of their American friends. Things started to grow a little faster than their servers could handle though, and they also needed to come up with better payment processing methods that were out of the reach of the long arm of the U.S. government, so they had to temporarily stop taking new U.S. signups for a time.

They did not want to re-open their poker site to new U.S. players until things were set up exactly the way they wanted it, to make sure that their operation is really top rate and ready to handle things under the new reality, so this did take a few months. They still took care of their existing U.S. players throughout this time and no one was left abandoned like was the case with the other sites. Now, everything has been resolved and they are now fully open for business for players from all over the world.

However, It Turns Out That Poker Was Legal In The U.S. All Along

Ever since online poker first began, the U.S. government had steadfastly maintained that it was illegal in their country by way of a 1961 law that made sports betting by wire transmission illegal. Legal experts, and even the American courts, disagreed and believed this law only applied to sports betting. Finally, in a surprise decision in December 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice finally admitted that it had been wrong all these years and online poker was not in fact illegal as they had believed.

So this of course opened the door wide open for Merge and Lock Poker, who were rewarded for their insight and perseverance. Things have really been growing ever since, and among the few poker rooms who have had the courage to stick things out, they have now become the most popular place to play poker online among those still offering poker to Americans, and this growth continues daily.

The Merge Poker Network Is Now A Major Player

Due to its significant growth over the last little while, the network that Lock Poker is on, Merge, has risen from the ranks of the second tier poker networks to become one of the most popular spots in the world to play poker online. They have now moved up to number 6 worldwide in terms of popularity, and have established themselves as the dominant poker room among those servicing the U.S.

A lot of players tended to stay away from Merge and the other rooms who remained in the game after Black Friday, since they were accustomed to playing at mega sites Full Tilt and Poker Stars and these alternatives only had a small fraction of the player traffic that they were accustomed to.

However, a lot of this hesitancy grew out of a misunderstanding of how much traffic that you need to want to play at a poker site, and while players may not be able to play as many tables as they wanted at the same time like they might have been able to do at the biggest poker sites, this didn’t mean that there wasn’t money to be made at the smaller ones. It simply required a change of thinking, and as time went on, more and more players made that change.

The Profit Potential For Players At Merge Has Always Been Superior

One very nice surprise that these new players at Merge discovered is that the level of competition there was considerably softer than what they were accustomed to at their old poker sites. I’ve been preaching the virtues of poker sites like Merge for years, and personally never played much at all at the bigger ones, simply because it was so much easier to make money at the smaller, fishier poker sites.

However, players tended to fall too much for the slick marketing of the huge poker sites, and then even the best players had to expand their volume significantly to try to remain profitable. So players would play a crazy amount of tables at the same, time, just to look to break even and make a little off of their frequent player rewards.

On the other hand, I only play one table at a time and have tried two but didn’t really like it, as it takes away from the quality of the thinking that you can do at the table. That’s just me though and I play a pretty sophisticated game where I really get into the heads of my opponents and you can’t really do that very well playing a bunch of tables where you are playing mindless poker really.

By playing less tables, you can play a lot higher stakes than you can playing many tables, as the quality of your play goes up significantly. This is especially true if your opponents are playing several and you are playing less, which allows you to get better reads on them than they can on you.

However, the traffic at Lock Poker and Merge is such that you can easily play several tables at once at the lower and mid stakes if that’s what you want to do. You will definitely find that you can make some good profit at Lock Poker just from playing one table at a time, because there are actually fish that play there, instead of mostly grinders who aren’t going to pay you off very much.

So the bottom line here at Lock Poker is that you can’t play a massive amount of tables at the same time, but you do not need to either. The idea of poker is supposed to be to win money from your opponents, not just rack up frequent player points and get some crumbs thrown at you from the poker site for paying so much in rake. Merge and Lock Poker have always been better places to play poker online, regardless of whether you are a world class player, a newbie who has no clue, or anything in between.

Will The Merge Network Get Too Watered Down As It Keeps Growing?

Some of the regulars at Merge and Lock Poker have been concerned that this new influx of players will take Lock Poker from being a hidden gem in the online poker world, with its relatively smaller traffic levels and considerably higher fishiness, to a much more difficult place to make money, like Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker were.

There’s no risk of this happening though. First of all, a big part of the player base at Merge still comes from poker rooms that bring over a lot of fish from their sports betting and casino operations. This was never the case with Poker Stars and Full Tilt, who attracted just poker players, and these poker players tended to be very skilled on average.

The problem with the huge poker only sites is that they really didn’t attract many fish, and the ones that they did get were soon eaten up. You would see 15 sharks fighting over a single fish at times, however more often you would see table after table of sharks fighting among each other. Even with more sharks at Merge and Lock Poker than you used to see, there are still lots of fish to go around, and that trend will continue.

Another reason is that the big time grinders, the kind that you don’t want to see at a poker site if you are looking to play there, are simply staying away from Merge and Lock Poker. Not all are, but many of them refuse to make the necessary change in their poker philosophy to adapt to playing a lot less tables, and they are sitting on the sideline these days. That’s great for us as we don’t want Merge and Lock Poker turned into a massive grind site where the games are turned into blind stealing contests, with very small average pots and even smaller opportunities to even beat the rake.

You Need To Set Yourself Up To Have A Chance To Succeed

One of the main reasons why limit poker died off is that the games became so tight that the only people who made money was the poker room with the rake. No limit poker became an alternative, with its bigger bets, bigger pots, and bigger hourly earn rates. However, at some poker rooms, no limit has gotten so tight that we’re back to the same problem, with only the poker room making money for the most part.

Now this isn’t to say that you can’t make money in tight games if you are a good player, but it’s much better to be playing against loose fish, as the more money that players are willing to get in bad, the more money that we can make off of them. This is the reason why I have always preferred the off the beaten track poker sites. Now that Merge and Lock Poker have become more in the mainstream, this additional infusion of traffic hasn’t really hurt them much at all, and they remain an excellent choice among players from all countries who believe that their results at the table matters.

Lock Poker Has Really Stood Out Among The Poker Rooms On Merge

I’ve spent quite a bit of time taking about the network that Lock Poker is on, since that’s the first thing that we need to be looking at when we are looking to decide where to play. Once we’ve come to the decision of whether a poker network is worthy, which in this case Merge is definitely in that category, then the next step is to choose from among the different poker rooms on that network.

So there often isn’t a lot of difference among poker rooms on a network, even though they are all independently owned and operated. One of the things that’s impressed me a lot about Lock Poker is that they went out and hired a top online pro to run their operation, and didn’t just go out and hire a player no one has ever heard of either.

Eric Lynch, the poker room manager at Lock Poker, is not only a well known online pro, he’s also a renowned poker author, and co-wrote what many believe to be one of the finest poker books ever published. His coming on board at Lock Poker ended up convincing a lot of other well known pros to play at Lock as well, not because they are being paid to do so, like other poker rooms do, but of their own free will.

So Lock Poker really is a poker room by and for poker players, and while the differences between Lock Poker and some other highly rated poker rooms on Merge may be on the subtle side, there’s no question that Lock Poker is an excellent choice, not only among the Merge poker rooms, but as a poker room period.

Lock Poker’s Welcome Bonus And Bonus Code

New depositors at Lock Poker are greeted with a generous welcome bonus of one and a half times their initial deposit, up to a maximum of $750. So this is above the industry average, although you never want to think of bonuses as this or that, but rather this and maybe that too, as there is no reason at all why players need to choose just one.

In fact, taking advantage of several welcome bonus offers is a great strategy to build up your bankroll, and this is why we feature so many different great bonus offers for you here at Poker Bonus Code. In order to get this deal, you need to enter in our bonus code when you sign up, which is “750MAX”.

The more you deposit, up to $500, the higher bonus amount you will be eligible for. As always, you free up your bonus money by trying out the poker site, which is paid out to you in increments as you play there. With this deal, you get paid $10 each time you accumulate 750 bonus points. You have 90 days to collect it all. Lock Poker automatically tracks your progress, so there’s nothing else that you need to do but sit back and play and get paid.

Other Bonuses And Promotions At Lock Poker

In addition to your welcome bonus, Lock Poker also offers frequent reload bonuses, where you make an additional deposit with them and they set you up with bonus money just like they did when you first joined. These are always great deals and it’s always worth your while to put in more money whenever you get an opportunity to make extra money like this.

Lock Poker also offers several value added promotions, where they throw in generous amounts of prize money and players compete against one another to get their share of it. The idea behind all of this is to not only create some extra interest and excitement, but to provide additional rewards to their players for playing there.

Like most poker sites, the promotions that they run change throughout the year, and when one ends, another one starts. Once you register with them though, you can visit their promotions page to see exactly what they have for you right now.

Lock Poker VIP Program

Lock Poker offers four different VIP levels, which you qualify for based upon how many VIP points you earn per month. The entry level White VIP only requires 1000 VIP points per month, which is well within the reach of even the most casual player. From there, you can move up to the Silver VIP, the Black VIP, and the Black VIP Elite.

Each level provides you with better and better rewards, although unlike some VIP programs, the lowest level VIP players are still treated very well, like VIPs should be. White VIPs enjoy 10% daily cashback, which is nice in itself and puts a lot more money back into your pocket than other VIP programs tend to do at this level. The cashback amount that is paid out to you goes up to 20% at the Silver VIP level, 30% at the Black VIP level, and 35% at the Black VIP level.

The VIP program at Lock Poker may in fact be the finest anywhere, especially for the smaller to mid size player, and this alone leaves little doubt why Lock Poker has been so popular with so many players in the know. Rewards are very important to poker players, and Lock Poker not only understands this, they make sure that they roll out enough cash to leave no doubt in their players’ minds where they should be playing.

They also offer all of their VIP players a seat at their $10,000 Monthly VIP freeroll, double points on Thursday and Friday, and access to their exclusive VIP vault, where players can put money in that they don’t want to access, which also adds to the security of playing at Lock Poker. As you move up the VIP ladder, additional benefits are available, although what impresses me the most is how well even the lowest category of VIP is treated here.

Deposit And Withdrawal Options At Lock Poker

Even if you are from the United States, Lock Poker has a nice assortment of deposit and withdrawal options for you. Although they do take credit cards, many Americans have difficulty depositing with them, although many have found that prepaid cards tend to work better. However, if you want to use your regular credit cards to deposit at Lock Poker, there are several internet wallet options available for you to do so, in addition to funding internet wallets from your bank account.

My favorite option to both deposit and withdraw is by using eChecks, which are a method of directly transferring money to and from your bank account to your chosen poker sites. Lock Poker offers this option, which is currently limited to residents of the U.S. and Canada, but if you live in either of these countries, it’s an awesome choice.

Players from other countries have an even larger assortment of payment and withdrawal methods to choose from, including the most popular. Regardless of where you live, Lock Poker fully understands the importance of making a wide variety of popular options available to everyone, to make sure that your financial transactions with them are as convenient and efficient as possible.

Lock Poker Software And Customer Service

The software at Lock Poker is first rate, and is designed with the needs and preferences of poker players, unlike some poker sites where you’re not sure who designed it other than they probably don’t play much poker. The trend over the last little while has been to take players into account a lot more when designing and upgrading poker software, but this has always been a priority at Lock Poker.

Should you ever need assistance, Lock Poker has agents available 24 hours a day through their live chat support. More and more poker rooms are moving toward live chat support lately, and it’s definitely a feature that is very much appreciated should you need it.

Lock Poker Definitely Has A Lot Going For It

As you can see, this is a real quality poker site on a quality poker network. However, don’t just take my word for it, check it all out for yourself by trying them out and getting paid to do it as well. If you have never had an account at Lock Poker, there’s no better time than right now to discover all the benefits that they have to offer you.

So just click on our link to them and don’t forget to enter in our Lock Poker bonus code of “750MAX” to get the highest bonus that they pay. Best of luck at the tables!