Poker Update – The online poker industry saw a rise in player traffic of 5% last week, the largest weekly increase since the “Road to 100 Billion” promotion at PokerStars in June.
All but one of the top ten poker rooms and networks on PokerScout’s ranking of global poker sites saw a rise in cash game action for the week. Those 10 top sites retained their positions, except for Winamax grabbing the eighth slot and knocking Bodog into ninth.
Reasons for the overall market rise may be cool and damp weather throughout much of Europe, which typically has a tendency to prompt players to revisit their online poker accounts. But action in America also spiked, with the country’s only two regulated poker sites currently engaged in a marketing battle for industry dominance.
WSOP.com seems to be gaining ground on its rival, Ultimate Poker. The newest Nevada poker site broke its own records for cash game traffic on Sunday, falling just eight players short of 200.
Another site on the rise is PartyPoker. After losing players in early September due to a number of glitches associated with a major software upgrade, those same players seem to be finding their way back to bwin.party’s online poker offering. A cash game traffic increase of 10% last week has PartyPoker closing in on both fourth place Full Tilt and third place 888poker.
The online poker market shows a 9% decrease from the same time last year. Attracting more recreational players would likely put a dent in that decline from 2012 player traffic and an industry-wide trend is currently taking hold in an effort to do just that.
