When the news came that Full Contact Poker was shutting down their doors, initial thoughts by many players was that the U.S. online gambling crackdown was to blame. Now, however, that does not appear to be the case. Full Contact's closure is, in actuality, a merger with the wildly popular and successful online poker room, Poker Stars. Furthermore, the Full Contact Poker website will remain up and running as an online poker community and forum of sorts.

Instead of clearing out their funds and looking elsewhere to open an account, players at Full Contact have the option to transfer their accounts to the Poker Stars platform. Apparently, online gamblers love their poker, because a whopping 90% of Full Contact Poker account holders have already transferred their funds and are actively playing at Poker Stars. The merger appears to be a wise choice, considering Full Contact's role in hosting one of the top poker forums online, and Poker Stars role as one of the largest and most popular online poker rooms.

While Poker Stars increases its tournaments and jackpots resulting from the increase in players, Full Contact continues to provide an informational resource for players, largely thanks to poker pro Daniel Negreanu, whose video blog through Raw Vegas T.V. and written blog on Full Contact is updated if nothing else. Phil Hellmuth also has a video blog, which is essentially the same as Negreanu's in that both men recount their experiences at the poker table and shed some light as to what is going through their heads.

Upon the merger of the two rooms, Negreanu signed an endorsement deal with Poker Stars, and joins the likes of Joe Hachem, Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer, all of whom are part of the Poker Stars team. Giving poker pros like Negreanu a star-like celebrity status certainly is something that poker fans are apparently eating up. And with online poker rooms like Poker Stars, the world of poker continues going strong.