Home / Poker News August 2012 / The Poker Grapevine – Maryland Approves Poker
The Poker Grapevine – Maryland Approves Poker
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2012-08-16 03:27
Tuesday night, the issue of legal poker earned another jolt from Maryland lawmakers, who passed a measure that will allow real money poker and various table games in casinos across the state. The bill made it through the House of Delegates and the Senate as well. In the House of Delegates, the result of the vote was 71-58 in favor, while the State Senate passed it with a margin of 32-14. Also part of the above said gambling measures was the approval of a Vegas style casino which will be built close to Washington DC and likely operated by MGM Resorts International. The casino is slated to feature 250 table games, 4,500 slot machines and all the other side-offers like restaurants, a hotel and retail outlets that come with such operations.
Not only has the bill made it through the gears of the legislative machine, it has already been signed into law by Gov. Martin O’Malley on Wednesday.
In other news: like it or not, online poker traffic is apparently still on the slippery slope of decline. According to operations specialized in traffic tracking, overall online poker traffic saw a drop of 0.1% last week, which may not be a riot-triggering margin, but which is still a drop nonetheless. It also marks the 3rd straight week of dropping traffic.
PokerStars still hold an absolute strangle-hold on the market, having registered 21,600 real money cash games players on an average daily basis. The iPoker network is a distant second, with 2,650 real money cash game players, while PartyPoker came in third with 2,350 cash game players.
PartyPoker have recently launched their FastForward Poker, which, although still only in its beta-testing stage, is likely to find the going hard against PokerStars’ Zoom Poker and Full Tilt’s Rush Poker once the site is re-launched.
888 Poker came in 4th on the traffic list with 1,900 players, while 5th place went to PokerStars.it, with 1,620 players.
