Regulated online poker in the United States is still in its infancy – the legal game did not go live until April 2013 in Nevada – but it has quickly become apparent to the poker sites that it is going to be increasingly difficult for them to go it alone. Competition is a good thing in the vast majority of industries, but in online poker too much competition can fracture the player base and hurt the quality of games for all involved. Two rivals in the New Jersey market have figured this out and have decided to give it a go together.
Starting today, WSOP.com and 888Poker will share many of their tables in an effort to increase liquidity and make the games more attractive to prospective players. It is not as shocking of a pairing as one might think, as both operate under the Caesars Interactive Entertainment’s New Jersey interactive gaming license and both use 888’s software.
As you probably well know, it is of the utmost importance for online poker rooms to have a healthy pool of players. Online casinos can have relatively few customers without it having a negative effect on the site (aside from the amount of money brought in) because casino games are just a contest between an individual and the house. Sure, in a live casino, part of the fun can be the social interaction between players, but online, that sort of thing usually doesn’t matter. The vast majority of people don’t care about logging in to play some blackjack and not being able to chat with anyone. In poker, though, you need lots of players. We play against each other in poker, so if there are only a few players at the tables, the games are typically poor. Then it turns into a vicious cycle: players see the lack of activity at the tables and opt to play somewhere else, resulting in fewer players at the tables, resulting in prospective players going elsewhere, etc.
To this point, it has generally been a bit of a struggle for the online sites to find their groove in the U.S., largely because of the limited player pools resulting from the ring fencing of each state. New Jersey is in a better position than Nevada and Delaware because of its population, but its online gaming industry has significantly underperformed expectations. The Party Borgata Network is the market leader with an average of 160 cash game players, according to PokerScout.com, with WSOP.com coming in at 110 and the All American Poker Network (AAPN), populated to this point by 888poker, in third with 90 players. The combination of the player bases of the latter two sites would obviously give Party Borgata more serious competition.
The union also appears to be the unofficial start of the “network” portion of the All American Poker Network, which has never had more than one poker room on it until now. AAPN also has plans to get going in Nevada and will initially comprised of WSOP.com, a new Treasure Island poker room, and a new 888 poker room. AAPN Nevada will also likely add Delaware’s three online poker rooms eventually.
According to OnlinePokerReport.com (OPR), not all tables will be shared between WSOP.com and 888. On the cash game side, the No-Limit Hold’em tables with stakes up to $0.25/$0.50 and Limit Hold’em tables with stakes up to $0.50/$1.00 will be combined. Sit-and-Go tourneys up to $5 will be shared and four multi-table tournaments will be shared: $5,000 and $10,000 nightlies and $10,000 and $25,000 Sunday tournaments.
WSOP.com’s Head of Online Poker Bill Rini told OPR in so many words that the reason not all tables will be shared is that the higher stakes tables have a lot of overlapping players, so merging them would not be overly useful.