Ultimate Poker Continues To Garner Support In Early Days Of Action

Although it is extremely early to gain a read on how successful it will be, the early days of action on Ultimate Poker are showing that the site is steadily garnering support from Nevadans who can actually play on it.

Opening up on Tuesday, Ultimate Poker became the first regulated online poker room in the United States to accept real money action. Owned by Station Casinos under the Ultimate Gaming moniker, the site has blasted into the consciousness of the online gaming world as they opened their 30-day trial period for testing of the site. Although there have been some complications, Ultimate Poker has only seen increases in traffic on their site since the first virtual cards hit the felt earlier this week.

According to PokerScout.com, Tuesday’s action peaked at only 92 players but has only grown since then. On Wednesday, the peak player numbers almost doubled to 173 during the evening hours and, on Thursday, those numbers jumped again to 205. For Friday’s action, the peak player numbers were 243 and it is extremely possible that Ultimate Poker could crack the 300-player peak for action on a Saturday night.

While these numbers may not sound impressive, it is enough to get Ultimate Poker into PokerScout’s rankings of the online poker industry. Its peak numbers on Friday night are comparable to such comparable “nation specific” sites such as PartouchePoker.fr and the PartyPoker and iPoker Network’s efforts in Spain. Out of the gate, Ultimate Poker eclipsed another offering for U. S. residents, the Bitcoin-driven SealsWithClubs.com, while it currently sitting as the 42nd ranked online poker operation in the industry.

This information is outstanding for a site that has only been in operation for slightly more than four days, but there is some legwork to get to the numbers that those sites from offshore locations that accept U. S. action. The Merge Gaming Network (home to Carbon Poker) is the 17th ranked room in the industry with last night’s peak players at 1022; Revolution Gaming Network (home to the beleaguered Lock Poker) is in 13th place in the industry (although it only peaked last night at 955 players), while Bodog tops those rooms accepting American action with a peak last night of 2340 players.

As with any startup, however, there have been some bugs to work out for Ultimate Poker and not all of them are on their end. For some willing customers, the complicated Nevada verification process has shut them out from playing on the site. That verification process requires a cell phone number that can be geolocated inside the borders of the Silver State and also that the computer’s IP address the player is using can be verified to be in the state.

That cell phone process has hung up some from the start. While service providers such as AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile users had little to no issues with the geolocation, Verizon users were shut out from Ultimate Poker not because of anything they did but because Verizon has not allowed for their phones to be geolocated. “96% of AT&T/T-Mobile/Sprint users should be able to verify they are in Nevada upon login,” Terrence Chan, the poker professional who is also a Ultimate Poker representative, reported on Twitter this afternoon.

A second issue has arisen from players too near the border of Nevada for their geolocation to accurately be positioned. Residents near the border have reported that the verification process views them as being out of the state, either through their cellphone or through their IP address, because the phones can ping off different towers that may be outside the Nevada area or an ISP that is in another state.

Other than the verification issues, there have been some complaints about Ultimate Poker itself. At this time, UP only offers Texas Hold’em; many have clamored for more games. As this is their 30 day trial phase, however, UP wanted to get the testing done – under the watchful eye of the Nevada Gaming Control Board – before providing more games and potential issues. Players have also nitpicked about their inability to resize tables, a maximum cap on what a player can bring to the table for play and a lack of a hand history presentation on the site.

Still, for only being four days (and, I am sure, four hectic and frenetic days it has been!) into their life, Ultimate Poker can seemingly call their startup a success in that their player numbers continue to move upwards. What will happen this summer, with the World Series of Poker in full swing and players aching to get an online poker fix, will be an interesting subject to keep an eye on.