Home / Poker News May 2011 / The Poker Grapevine – Declining Player Numbers
The Poker Grapevine – Declining Player Numbers
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2011-05-18 11:22
It’s not a secret to anyone that after a myriad of punitive measures taken by authorities in various areas of the globe against online poker, player numbers have been dropping steadily for a while. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that a move like the Black Friday indictments will have a devastating effect on the game, but the reality of the situation doesn’t usually sink in until one faces the actual numbers. Prepare to be shocked: online poker player numbers have dropped by an alarming 4% last week alone. There was only one poker network which saw player numbers rise. Unsurprisingly, that poker network was the US-player accepting Merge network, one of the big winners that emerged from after April 15. While their last week player-number increase was a seemingly unimpressive 1%, the poker network has seen a 155% increase in traffic since the beginning of the year. One would probably be right to assume that the bulk of that increase came after Black Friday.
Each and every other online poker room in the industry’s top 10 has seen decreases. In some of the cases, these drops were downright catastrophic: the Cereus network for instance, saw a traffic drop of 29% last week alone. If you still won’t believe these guys are on their way out you may want to know that they lost 82% (!) of their players since the beginning of the year.
Although they have done pretty much everything they could in the wake of Black Friday to avert a similar catastrophe,
Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars saw traffic declines as well.
PokerStars’ overall traffic fell by 28% this year. Full Tilt Poker’s loss was a “mere” 24%. One can’t help but wonder where all those lost players go and when and where they will surface again.
In other news: 20-year old online poker wunderkind Jordan Jayne made the move to live poker after Black Friday, and won the Heartland Poker Tour’s Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort event.
