PokerScout.com, the internet’s leading website for online poker cash game traffic tracking, put out its Weekly Online Poker Traffic Update on Monday, revealing that traffic fell a slight one percent last week. The site chalked up the drop mainly to the holiday season, as even though people spend more time indoors, they also spend that time away from the computer and with family and friends. Lots of players are willing to set aside poker time to unwrap their new laptop that will allow them to play even more poker once the relatives take their leave.
In the top ten sites and networks in PokerScout’s rankings, advancers and decliners were dead even, five to five. Bodog, the largest U.S.-facing online poker room, slid from fifth to seventh, allowing partypoker and PokerStars’ Italian offering, PokerStars.it, to each move up a spot to fifth and sixth, respectively. partypoker and PokerStars.it are pretty close to each other, separated by just 50 cash game players, but Bodog dropped to a seven-day average of 1,350 cash game players, a full 100 behind PokerStars.it and 150 behind partypoker. That’s a pretty large shift in the course of just a week.
Adjarabet is still hanging on to a top ten spot, continuing to keep up its traffic after months of attractive promotions. It tied for ninth with PokerStars.es (Spain) at the moment, with 1,150 cash game players. PokerStars’ flagship site is, of course, the runaway number one with 19,500 cash game players, followed by 888poker (2,500), the iPoker Network (2,000), and Full Tilt Poker (1,800). Winamax.fr is in eighth with 1,200 players.
It has not been a good year for online poker on the whole, as the industry’s cash game traffic is 17 percent lower than it was at the same time last year.
PokerScout gives an example of how the holidays can affect traffic: on Christmas Eve, traffic was down over 12 percent from the previous Wednesday. Christmas Day was better, with traffic down just five percent. This is probably because the night of Christmas Eve is when families traditionally get together, thus pulling poker players away from their computers during poker’s prime time. Much of the family time on Christmas Day is in the morning (though obviously this all varies household by household).
PokerScout also notes that 888poker has been doing its darnedest to gain some traction in New Jersey, where its All American Poker Network (AAPN) is in third place behind the Party Borgata Network (150 cash game players) and WSOP.com (120 players). It has been running the 50% Off Holiday Sale in which players who deposit $20 will receive 50 percent rakeback up to $100 on their contributed rake and tournament fees. The first day of the promotion, December 22nd, Poker Scout reports that AAPN’s saw a 22 percent increase in its average cash game players from the previous week. The day after Christmas was AAPN’s most successful Friday in more than a month. Right now, the network is averaging 80 players over the last seven days, a distinct improvement from the 65 player mark it was often see at before the promo. The promotion ends today.