The network lost Doyle's Room, and maybe a couple other sites as well.

 

Originally Posted by All4ANG

I think also just in general online poker has dropped tremendously the past few years. though stars and fulltilt still hold up well its nothing compared to when I signed up years ago. Hope this will change if banks allow you to put money on via credit and debit again.

No, that's wrong. Tournament guarantees are as high as ever. The number of players may have leveled out and growth may have stalled, but it hasn't declined.

the traffic left when cake got rid of their best guaranteeds. their mtt's are laughable now with such gems as 1-3k's with a $100+9 buy in and the like. last week, they just added a 15k and a 25k, so maybe there is still hope. and yeah losing doyles room was a big hit

those are their sunday majors now. like 3 and 5pm EST

 

Originally Posted by Ripbeast

Just got an email from Cake advertising their Step Promotion for the WSOP. Is it even worth it playing in these? Will they honor the prizes, I recall one poster said he won a trip on Doyles' site and they never awarded his trip.

Doyle's room's reputation arguably is only slightly better Cereus'. Cake however, still has a sterling reputation despite their large decline in traffic. I wouldn't hesitate to take them at their word.

Also, Cake just added e-checks as a deposit option. Big step forward. If the site gets more traffic I might go back, cause playing cash on stars/FTP is just so stupid now if you can play on Merge/Cake/Cereus. The level of play on the smaller sites is just so much worse compared to the big two.

When Cake disbanded from the Doyle's Room network (last year, around this time I believe it was), their peak volume went from like 8k players, to now 2k. The addition of the 15k and 25k guarantees on Sunday is a good idea to get players back as the average prize pool of the then 2k Added (15k now), and the 5k Added (25k now) were both over the amounts they are now offering. Honestly, they just need a few guarantees throughout the day at reasonable stakes (between $10 and $50), buckle down and do some nice promotions, and put up some bigger guarantees and let their be overlay and see if they can't get some players back.

I have been playing Cake for over a year, love the site, just can't stand the lack of guarantees. Cake is so soft, it's totally worth it to keep playing on occasion. I got 2nd in their later version of the turbo fiddy like 5 months ago, WORST FIELD I HAVE EVER PLAYED. It literally played like a $2 Turbo tournament on FTP or pokerstars.

Losing merge poker (I think it was) and now doyles room certainly hurt them

 

Originally Posted by JapanRep420

When Cake disbanded from the Doyle's Room network (last year, around this time I believe it was), their peak volume went from like 8k players, to now 2k. The addition of the 15k and 25k guarantees on Sunday is a good idea to get players back as the average prize pool of the then 2k Added (15k now), and the 5k Added (25k now) were both over the amounts they are now offering. Honestly, they just need a few guarantees throughout the day at reasonable stakes (between $10 and $50), buckle down and do some nice promotions, and put up some bigger guarantees and let their be overlay and see if they can't get some players back.

I have been playing Cake for over a year, love the site, just can't stand the lack of guarantees. Cake is so soft, it's totally worth it to keep playing on occasion. I got 2nd in their later version of the turbo fiddy like 5 months ago, WORST FIELD I HAVE EVER PLAYED. It literally played like a $2 Turbo tournament on FTP or pokerstars.

they lost doyles a month ago. and it hurt both and doyles. the new doyles doesnt have anything worth playing since they change the weekly bounty promotion, and cake guarantees got smaller i assume. many people will just say, who cares, play on ftp or stars. but, theres over 100 point difference in my roi on cake than on stars and ftp so its basically like being laid off when some of these sites go under or leave networks.

personally i wish networks didnt even exist. its already shifty enough in the first place, that all these sites that use the same software and client base have different supports, payment processors etc. and when one of these sites leaves the network, it turns things into a huge clusterfuck. I wish the 'cake network' would simply become cake poker and merge with all these stupid sites so people can actually have an idea of where theyre playing

Just looked it up and i could have sworn I saw that years ago but i guess your right... dont listen to the noob here... sorry. i do know alot of my friends dropped off the poker train after there banks made it tougher to put money on the sites though. also very interesting fact
On December 27, 2009, pokerstars set the world record for the biggest online tournament. The tournament entry fee was $1, and the record number of people reached was 149,196.
It was pokerstars wiki so i cant 100% that but wiki is usually pretty accurate.

The site support is still amazingly fast. Too bad all the traffic is fading away.

what traffic?

Yep as people have already pointed out doyles room recently left the cake network. But the big hit really came last year when they lost Players Only and sportsbook.com, to the merge network.

Add to that fairly recently there was a security scare, whereby a flaw in the system was uncovered. also lee jones resigned.

It has really been a few things...

1) Players Only/Sportsbook leaving for the Merge network
2) Doyles Room recently leaving

Those two have hurt Cake's traffic a lot because both of those sites brought in a lot of fish (ie, net depositors) to the network. A lot of CakePoker.com players tend to be better because the marketing was largely centered around bringing in good rakeback players. CakePoker.com itself doesn't do much, if any, offline marketing or marketing through channels that brings in fish. We'll see if that changes going forward...