Last week, I penned an article titled “There’s Nothing Going on in Poker Right Now” because there wasn’t. The Christmas/New Year week was barren of tournaments and, for the most part, any particularly interesting news. And though people spent much of their time away from work and away from the live poker tables, they didn’t necessarily flock to the online poker rooms, either.
According to PokerScout.com’s Weekly Online Poker Traffic Update, New Year’s Eve was the absolute slowest day in terms of cash game traffic in all of 2013. Summer is usually the slowest time for online poker, as people spend more time outside and less time at their computers, but this past December 31 was even worse than the dog days, coming in six percent lower than the slowest summer days (adding to the surprise of that figure was that New Year’s Eve was on a Tuesday, which PokerScout says is typically one of the busiest days of the week.
PokerScout says that Saturday, though, was the most active day for online poker in two weeks, so players are already starting to get back into their routines.
Among those returning to the virtual tables are players in New Jersey, who continue to reward the state’s policy makers for legalizing and regulating online gambling. On Friday, average cash game traffic on the New Jersey online poker sites came close to hitting 700 players, the highest it has ever been since the games went live at the end of November.
For a while, the Party Borgata Network and WSOP.com were the two clear lead dogs in New Jersey online poker, but now 888’s All American Poker Network (AAPN) has started to make a run, seeing its traffic rise by a third last week. It currently has a seven day average of 110 cash game players, the same as WSOP.com’s offering in Nevada. Party Borgata is still on top in the Garden State with 280 cash game players, while WSOP has 170. Ultimate Poker, the first mover in Nevada, is almost a non-factor in Jersey with only an average of 18 cash game players.
In the online poker industry as a whole, traffic actually went up 2 percent from the previous week, though it is down 11 percent from the same time a year ago. The iPoker Network has moved into third place with an average of 2,600 cash game players, versus Full Tilt Poker’s 2,300, good for fourth place. PokerStars is still the belle of the ball with 23,500 players, while 888poker is second with 2,800.
