In a relatively short space of time since their invention, synchronized breaks have become an established part of online poker tournament life. It almost seems strange to think of how we coped before those breaks at 5 to every hour for every tournament across all the big sites… so, my question today:

is “Whats the problem iPoker / Merge / Party / Ongame and the rest of you?”

This is not just a ‘nice to have’ any more. Several times I have turned on Titan poker to have a look at their tournaments, remembered that the breaks do not match up with the games I already have running at Stars and / or Full Tilt and then gone to Absolute to find an additional game instead… this has cost you $100 in fees or more over the last 6 months from me, and compared with many players I’m low volume.

I mentioned this to my affiliate manager at one of the large sites, who thanked me for the information and said he would look at it. While he is a great guy I really do not think he understood the potential gain from putting synchronized breaks in place. People who play the high volumes (some are playing 20+ a day) would include the newly synchronized site into their schedules, add to this the people like me who will hover the mouse over your poker site’s icon – then click one which does offer these breaks instead and you have a nice increase in revenue. Add to this the ‘Virtuous Circle’ of bigger tournaments with bigger prizes attracting still more players and we have a win-win.

Come on – time for someone to explain to the finance teams behind some of the non-synchronized poker sites that this could have a real impact on the bottom line.

I’ll end the rant here – we just put up an article listing the current Poker Sites With Synchronized Breaks, and hope to be adding to it soon!

GL at the tables, Mark