Over the past 18 months, the story of Lock Poker has continued to get worse. This week in its Scouting Report, PokerScout has presented some information to show just how far Lock Poker has fallen in the poker community.

The researchers at PokerScout point out that Lock Poker is in arrears to its players for potentially millions of dollars, but it hasn’t had an impact on new players coming to the site. “Since departing Revolution in late October 2013 to re-launch as a standalone site, [the payment processing woes] have only worsened, with only a select few high-volume players receiving promises of expedited payouts,” the PokerScout staff wrote.

“It’s conceivable that the majority of Lock’s remaining players are those who have behind-the-scenes agreements with management and the remainder are unaware casual players.”

A graphic contained in the PokerScout report detailed the rapid decline of Lock in just the last 18 months. Prior to its departure from the Revolution Gaming network, Lock averaged approximately 400 cash game players over a seven-day period on the Revolution Gaming network. Its numbers immediately tumbled after departing Revolution to the point where today the room barely averages around 50 players, among the bottom of the barrel in the PokerScout rankings.

“Lock’s ineptitude resulted in plummeting cash game player counts, which have dropped 78% since February 2014‘s high water mark of 80 and have fallen by at least 5% in each of the past five months,” PokerScout stated. By comparison, Revolution Gaming’s player numbers took a tumble as well, but have stabilized around 100 players over a seven-day period.

There are several reasons for this decline, many pointed out by a former Lock Poker employee. Former company spokesman Shane Bridges (pictured), recounted his storyto Pokerfuse and cited Chief Executive Officer Jen Larson‘s largess as a potential reason for the company’s “imminent” failure.

Naturally, this hasn’t set well with the online poker community. The original thread on 2+2 started by IHasTehNutzin 2013 has now reached 3,506 posts. Poster nikinblindsvehemently stated that “it’s possible that some recreational player who doesn’t know better will deposit money on Lock today. Jen Larson, among others, is knowingly stealing that money. It is simply not enough that the site be shut down. That is going to happen eventually. What needs to happen is all the scoundrels involved face some kind of repercussions.”

The PokerScout report and IHasTehNutz should serve as a fair warning to even the greenest of newcomers about the practices on Lock Poker and how they probably will never see any money deposited on the site. It also serves as case study for the regulation of the online poker industry, whether internationally or by each country, to ensure that such actions never occur again in online poker.

PokerScout’s Scouting Report is a daily newsletter for the online poker industry, with in-depth data and analysis of the market. More information can be found by clicking here or contacting support@pokerscout.com.

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