Yahoo! Poker to Close at End of Year

If you’re a keen player of Yahoo! Fantasy football then you’ve likely seen a whole lot of advertising for Yahoo’s poker offering. However, that advertising has more or less been futile as the company announced it will be closing its poker offering at the end of this year.

In a statement on its website, Yahoo said that it will be discontinuing all of its ‘Classics Games’ – of which its poker offering is a part – due to security concerns.

However, the company has also said that it will develop new versions of its games in the future, although it did not give a timeframe for when this will occur. Further to that, some of the ‘Classics Games’ will not be making a return to Yahoo at all, according to the statement that was made by the company.

It remains to be seen whether Yahoo’s poker offering will eventually return or whether it will be one of the games to be given the permanent chop. The company obviously saw a potential niche in its poker portal given the heavy advertising campaign it had waged among players in its fantasy football leagues.

It is unclear as to whether the company received its desired reaction from the increased advertising. If it did not, then there is a risk that its online poker offering will not be returning anytime soon.

Poker still remains largely popular, though, and that is likely to remain the case in the short-term future. Given the popularity of the game as well as the fact Yahoo is very well-known, it would be a bit of a surprise of poker is one of the games that won’t be returning to the Yahoo catalogue.

Time will tell whether online poker does indeed make a return to Yahoo.