So far, 2011 has been a pretty bad year for online poker players from the United States of America, and it doesn’t look like it will be getting better any time soon.

Following on Black Friday in April, when the top poker rooms stopped taking players from America, those poker rooms that were continuing to take players seem to be becoming a bit hesitant about doing so now.

All poker rooms on the Merge network have suspended new accounts for Americans from the beginning of June. It is said that this is only a temporary move, to allow the network to catch up will a backlog of new player signups and deposit processing, but it has not been said officially anywhere that I can find.

From what I can tell, the temporary block should only last from four to six weeks. I guess after the middle of July we should know where we are at with that network.

There are some other sites that still do take US players, though they are being fairly quiet about it all.

The Yatahay network says that they will continue to take Americans. The ‘who?’, you say. The Yatahay network is the oldest online provider of 3d poker software, having launched in 2001 or thereabouts. The leading room on this network is True Poker, but probably the most well known room on it would be Doyles Room, which recently moved over from the Cake network.

Oh, the Cake network takes Americans too, but with cashout delays of up to two months currently that is probably not a viable option for most.

Anyway, back to Yatahay. So, True Poker and Doyles Room both take US players. But with Doyle Brunson disputing the right of the poker room to use his name (he is no longer involved with the site called Doyles Room), and with a number of reports of dodgy software and account hacking, no poker is probably better than poker on this network of sites.

So, where else can an American player go? It is proving kinda difficult to keep up with the various changes in this area of online poker right now. The guys at PracticalGambling.com make a good effort at keeping up with the latest news with regard to US players and you can see their list of where Americans are playing poker online now for the latest updates.