The World Sports Exchance will be closing their poker room at 1pm ET on February 15th, 2012. WSEX originally opened their doors in 1995 as a Sportsbook/Casino based in Antigua. They became quite successful and by 2007 WSEX was one of the top sportsbook sites. There was some legal trouble along the way, when in 2000 former owner Jay Cohen was prosecuted by the U.S. government for violating the Federal Wire Act.
WSEX added on a poker room not long after the online boom began in 2003. But due to the high amount of competition among new and existing poker rooms, they were not able to develop a critical mass of players. Shortly after opening in 2006, they raised many eyebrows when they turned their run-of-the-mill poker room into an attractive 100% rake-free room. Every week every player on the site would receive a payment consisting of 100% of the rake that they had generated. This was completely unheard of, as most sites were offering rakeback and/or bonuses that equated to just a 20-40% discount.
World Sports Exchange's poker room
The site’s traffic grew quickly, but it came as no surprise that their 100% rakeback offer attracted some major sharks and grinders. This resulted in the games becoming significantly tougher and tighter. The recreational players quickly fled to greener, more action-filled pastures. The fragile, non-networked poker ecosystem quickly broke down. WSEX’s poker room limped along with minimal traffic for a few more years. They reduced rakeback along the way in steps from 100% to 90% to 75% and finally to 65% where it will stay until the room closes on Wednesday. Despite being one of the few rooms still allowing Americans to play, they were ranked approximately 40th of 47 for traffic among all active rooms on pokerscout.com.
WSEX will keep their Sportsbook and Casino sections open for business. Player balances will be transferred seamlessly to the main account wallet. In their official email, WSEX stated that closing their poker room will allow them to concentrate on the development of better casino and sports betting products and services.
It is sad to see another poker room close their doors. This is especially true for a site like WSEX which aspired to be different than every other online poker room. In the end their business model for poker didn’t work out, but I wish them all the best in their future endeavors.