Yahoo! To Shut Down Texas-Holdem Poker Due To Web Security Issues

Just one month after Yahoo began heavily advertising its Texas Hold’em portal in conjunction with fantasy football, Yahoo has announced it is shutting down its online poker site entirely, effective December 31.  Although Yahoo has left open the possibility of launching a new Texas Hold’em game in the future, no further details are yet available.

According to the Yahoo webpage, it will not longer offer its current Texas Hold’em game because “changes in supporting technologies and increased security requirements for our Yahoo web pages” have rendered the game “incompatible, insecure, and no longer functioning correctly.”

While web security is an extremely important issue, it is somewhat surprising to find Yahoo shutting its Texas Hold’em game just one month after it began heavily advertising these game on its fantasy football webpages — the holy grail of young-adult, male advertising space.

If Yahoo had been planning to close these games, it may have been better off selling the ad space to Toyota, Procter & Gamble's Gillette, or one of its other regular fantasy sports advertisers.

Noteworthy in all of this news is that at the bottom of the Yahoo Games Help webpage, Yahoo mentions that it will be working toward the launch of new online games with better cyber-security, and these new games may ultimately include a new form of Texas Hold’em.

In addition, unlike the current Yahoo poker games that require users to purchase chips to enter, Yahoo has indicated that a new game, if launched, would be “free to play” but may offer ‘boosts’ for purchase” — a model similar to Candy Crush.

Unfortunately, the Yahoo’s information page does not discuss whether Yahoo! Poker will allow for prizes if it returns. Yet, if Yahoo is even remotely considering a move in that direction, its upgrade of web security serves absolutely utmost importance.

No doubt, the hosts of the Yahoo Hold-em recognize that much.

But the shutdown still seems odd, given the heavy marketing efforts of Yahoo holdem-poker that so recently predated it.