Quantcast

So What Happened To The Poker Rooms This Week?

by Bill Rini on January 22, 2007

in Is Online Poker Legal?, Online Poker, Poker, Poker News

Like what you see? How about getting Bill's Poker Blog delivered to your inbox?

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Else, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!


Well folks, a one week comparison is far from statistically relevant but let’s take a gander at what this week dished up compared to last week.

Poker Room US 1/21 1/14 Change
PokerStars Yes 12499 15153 -17.5%
PartyPoker No 8482 8309 +2%
Full Tilt Yes 5604 7255 -22.8%
OnGame No 3957 3889 +1%
Everest No 3801 3660 +3.9%

Source PokerSiteScout

It appears the US facing sites took a bit of a pounding this week. Messages boards like 2+2 have been abuzz with people frantic to get their funds out. Unlike the initial passage of the UIGEA when people raced to get money onto the sites, the problems sites are having getting people’s funds back to them is causing a bit of a mini-panic.

Stars’ $1 million guarantee tournament had about 900+ less players than the week before but still managed to make the guarantee. Full Tilt and Bodog weren’t so lucky and had to add a little moola to their guaranteed prize pools.

The US facing sites seem to be on the same growth patterns that they have been in the past so there’s not much change there.

Related posts:

  1. Paradise Poker . . . What Happened? Way, way, way back in the day I used...
  2. Why Affiliates Will Always Trump Online Poker Rooms Before I got into the online poker industry I...
  3. What a Week it Was Obviously, the big story of late has been the...
  4. The Week That Was July 14 – July 20 Lots of great stuff last week in case you...
  5. The Week That Was It’s starting to feel a lot like Christmas here...

SiteRackbackSign Up BonusUS
Absolute Poker 30% 150% up to $500 The poker room accepts US players
Ultimate Bet 30% 111% up to $1100 The poker room accepts US players
Cake Poker 33% 110% up to $600 The poker room accepts US players
PKR Poker 30% 100% up to $800
Paradise Poker 30% 200% up to €1,000
Players Only 33% 100% up to $650 The poker room accepts US players
Fortune Poker 30% 200% up to €1,000
Betfair 30% $1500
Aced 30% 100% up to $500 The poker room accepts US players
Poker Heaven 30% 200% up to €1000
Poker Nordica 30% 100% up to $200 The poker room accepts US players
Carbon Poker 30% 150% up to $1000 The poker room accepts US players
Red Star Poker 33% 110% up to $600
True Poker 27% 100% up to $200 The poker room accepts US players
Action Poker 35% 100% up to $2500
Cellsino Poker 40% 500% up to $500
Minted Poker 40% 100% up to $400
Power Poker 33% 110% up to $600
Interpoker 30% 200% up to €1000
Doyles Room 33% 110% up to $600
Gutshot Poker 33% 110% up to $600
Full Tilt Poker 27% 100% up to $600 The poker room accepts US players
Fat Bet Poker 40% 1000% up to €500
NoiQ Poker 30% 100% up to €5000


Site Rake Race Rake Chase Freeroll
Doyle's Room $35,000    
Cereus Poker Network* $7,500 $10,000 $10,000**
Cake Poker $60,000    
Party Poker***   $50,000  
Red Star   $23,000  
Eurobet***   $21,000  
Players Only   $16,400  
Tower Gaming***   $15,000  
Full Tilt Poker $10,000    
Carbon Poker   $12,000  
Betfair Poker   $12,000  
Boss Media Network**** $5,000    
Cellsino Poker   $5,000  
Power Poker   $5,000  
Poker Nordica   $5,000  
NoIQ €1,500    

* Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet (UB) ** May not be available to all players *** Poker Heaven, Fortune Poker, InterPoker, Paradise Poker

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Haley 01.22.07 at 12:19 pm

“Stars’ $1 million guarantee tournament had about 900+ less players than the week before but still managed to make the guarantee. Full Tilt and Bodog weren’t so lucky and had to add a little moola to their guaranteed prize pools.”

Bill, this is out of context and misleadingly negative. The Stars Sunday Million was down something like 14%, which means that they indeed just “managed” to make their guarantee… by about 37%. Bodog advertises a frequent overlay and often has one in the Sunday $100K, regardless of other circumstances. Full Tilt was running their monthly $500 buy-in version, and they had upped the guarantee on it from $500K to $750K just before all the other shit hit the fan. That said, the paid entries would have brought the prize pool to almost $700,000 anyway, which would have been an all-time record for a non-FTOPS event.

So, nice negative spin. Mansion’s $100K was down by four or five percent, too; how’d that get left out?

2 onewhowas 01.22.07 at 1:01 pm

Actually, I think what Haley said is significant.

Let’s assume for a minute that there wasn’t a big decrease in the major online tournaments.
But we do know that in the cash games, there was approx 20% decrease across Poker Stars and Full Tilt.
So, who were those people?
People that may play a SNG or two, maybe some cash games, but don’t play the major ($200+ buyin) tournaments.

I think that equates to the casual online poker player who plays on occasion…has some fun when playing…and (most importantly) loses most of the time.
i.e. the fish.
As Bill has said, as the fish leave, the games will get harder and harder.
You should consider that 20% of them just left.

3 Bill 01.22.07 at 5:01 pm

I don’t think it is misleadingly negative. I reported straight numbers. Stars covered their guarantees and FT and Bodog did not. I did not say Stars “just managed” and the fact that you try to put those words in my mouth says a lot about you.

What I said was:

Stars’ $1 million guarantee tournament had about 900+ less players than the week before but still managed to make the guarantee.

The facts are that they did have 900 less players. They still made the guarantee but I never said that they “just managed” to make it. You’re pulling quotes out of your ass.

Haley, if you want to pull punches I can go on here but the fact of the matter is that is that I never said a word that is untrue. FTP ran a bigger than average guarantee and they missed it. Bodog missed their guarantee too.

I can guarantee you if you asked FTP if they thought they would make their guarantee 2 weeks ago they would have laughed at you. Sites like FTP don’t run guarantees they don’t think they can hit.

4 Haley 01.23.07 at 6:44 am

Sorry, Bill, but I never said that you said “just managed” — you just misquoted me instead. I did say that you used “managed” in a manner that implied undue negativity. I’m not sure why the personal attack on me, but if you can’t separate the messenger from the message….

For what it’s worth, Card Player ran almost the same story. Problem is, I hold you to a higher standard. :-)

5 Bill 01.23.07 at 7:19 am

Haley,

I’m sorry you see this as a personal attack but when you come out and say things like:

Bill, this is out of context and misleadingly negative.

and

So, nice negative spin. Mansion’s $100K was down by four or five percent, too; how’d that get left out?

I can’t see how you expect an overly civil response. :-) I love people who poke you with a stick and then cry abuse when you swat back at them. If you want to use that kind of language when talking to me expect a similar tone in my responses.

The thing is I mentioned these stats as an observation. I didn’t come out and make negative associations with them. Here’s what I said:

Stars’ $1 million guarantee tournament had about 900+ less players than the week before but still managed to make the guarantee. Full Tilt and Bodog weren’t so lucky and had to add a little moola to their guaranteed prize pools.

Stars had 900 less players than the week before. That is a fact. Period. End of discussion. They also still managed to make their guarantee. If I hadn’t mentioned that they still made their guarantee, THAT would have been misleadingly negative. I mentioned it because it clarified and gave the proper context to the statement. There are a million ways I could have spun those numbers in a much more negative way. I didn’t.

Full Tilt and Bodog both missed their guarantees. Again, a fact that is not open to dispute. I said that they had to add “a little moola” which implies that they didn’t miss by massive numbers.

And all of this is about 2 sentences that were offered in passing just to give a glimpse into how the tourney world looked in relation to the main part of the post which was the cash game results.

Your accusatory comment focused on how I used the word managed. And you did try to put the phrase “just managed” into my mouth as indicated below.

which means that they indeed just “managed” to make their guarantee… by about 37%.

In fact, your entire critisism of my post holds no water if this is an issue of how I used the word managed. It’s when you added “just” in front of it that it started to look like I was being misleading.

And, I didn’t mention Mansion because . . . well, their missed guarantees are a promotion. I don’t really take them seriously as a contender in the online gaming market. Their results would hardly be indicative of anything.

Haley, normally I like you but your comments were out of line. You know me, I’m not going to take the time to figure out why and patch things up. I’m going to respond in kind. That’s the way I roll. :-)

6 Haley 01.23.07 at 8:30 am

Bill,

I wrote a long comment but I think the durned comment beastie ate it. If it shows up that’s cool; if not, I’ll just post something similar over at my site.

I still like you, I just disagree with you here

Haley :-)

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title="" rel=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <card> <code> <em> <i> <span class=""> <strike> <strong>

Previous post:

Next post: