Poker Ban Not Affecting Online Play

The ban of online poker play does not seem to have hurt the international online poker market. 

According to PokerListings.com MarketPulse, at least seven of the top online poker rooms have shown increases in pots and deposits over the first quarter of 2008.  These numbers were gained by the company’s tracking and analysis of over 20 million poker hands.  

Jan Lindhout, who is PokerListings.com’s press secretary, claims that the larger pots are causing looser and more passive games.  This trend is rising among the poker rooms and giving the poker sharks plenty of money to be had no matter what site they choose to play at.  MarketPulse’s hand tracking is a comprehensive way for the industry to see how it is moving.  Simply put, it is growing by leaps and bounds.

Pacific Poker, Full Tilt – home of some major professional players – Titan Poker and Everest Poker are all showing average pot size growing by at least 5%, increases over the final numbers reported in 2007.  UltimateBet, Mansion Poker, Party Poker, and Absolute Poker are not far behind.  
Other statistics include cash-player traffic at various sites  increasing.  Pokerstars saw an increase of the number of players online at one time increasing by 6,000 players over the course of a year.  Peak traffic at PokerStars shows a 32% market share of its players, one of the highest on the Internet.  Titan Poker saw a 6% increase and Mansion saw a 9% increase.  Peak hours on all the sites are between 2 and 7pm EST with the top rooms seeing a combined total of almost 70,000 players around 5pm.

Texas Hold’Em variations seem to carry the largest pots with prizes being somewhere between $50,000 and $150,000 during March of 2008 alone.  The largest pot was $163,997 which was split between two players.  While this is nothing compared to the pot won by professional player Phil Ivey on Full Tilt Poker - $385,000 – the pot was substantial enough to make other players sit up and take notice.

MarketPulse not only analyzes the amount of hands played, but they also look at the histories, biggest available pots, traffic and volume overall, breakdowns for Texas Hold’Em cash games and much more.  They update their numbers ever hour and are continuously adding information on a regular basis to keep industry gurus and players aware of how the online gaming and poker community is doing on an international scale.