Apparently there is a new poker room trolling for Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker players who are waiting for their funds since Black Friday and they have a pretty good pitch.

Walker Poker has been spamming bilked players offering them a 45% rakeback and a 100% Instant Deposit Bonus. The rumor on the street is that the UB/Absolute list has been leaked, so Walker may just be the first poker room to go fishing using that list. The trouble is many players have no idea who Walker Poker is and have been asking us about them.

After a little digging through our database we were able to find that Walker Poker appears to have grown out of the ashes of Wingows Poker, a Costa Rican-based poker site that went belly up in 2008. Walker Poker took over some (not all) of the customers and then had the players complete a convoluted rollover based on rake to get their money. Though rollovers are not uncommon in a bailout situation, at the time Walker did not use the term bailout. Even more disturbing is that players on one of Wingows poker platforms were left with nothing, completely stiffed in the takeover. Walker claimed they overtook only Wingows that was under Dobrosoft network, not the DGS driven poker room and thus left those players using that software out in the cold.

Walker is now part of the Merge Gaming Network which does have several very reputable sites like Lock Poker, Carbon Poker, Poker Host and Play Aces, amongst others. But Merge has/had a relationship with FutureBet/Game Tech which is/was a known problem provider. Both Wingows and Walker were FutureBet websites at one time and both, in addition to UB, use the Kanhawake Indians in Montreal, Canada as their licensing body and location for their servers.

So is it worth taking a shot with this poker room? Options for U.S. players are limited but since the games are all networked in nature, we cannot see any reason to stray from the best and most reputable sites on the Merge Network. That said, outside of the initial problem with the Wingows players, we have not heard of problems at Walker Poker. If players do decide to take the offer from their recent email blast, please tread lightly and report back as to your experience.