At the start of the New Year, PokerStars made poker history by becoming the first online operator to merge their Michigan player pool with another jurisdiction, in this case, New Jersey. By doing so, they became just the second online poker site to take advantage of the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA), WSOP.com being the only other (combining player pools from New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware).
In December, poker speculated that a merger was coming as PokerStars informed them that the site would be going down for a bit, though a specific reason wasn’t known.