View From The Sky
Worldwide online poker traffic rebounded a bit this week, making back 1% of the 3% it lost last week, and placing it up a bit for the month of September overall. 6 of the top 10 biggest online poker sites saw an increase in traffic this week, with 4 declining.
Full Tilt climbed yet another spot, to fourth place overall, moving up from seventh to fifth this week and then showing this week that their recent surge continues. They even managed to put together a healthy lead on now fifth place Party Poker of 150 cash game players on average.
Adjarabet continues their recent climb, cracking the top 10 last week in tenth place and following it up with a surge all the way to eighth, an all time high for the site. Perhaps this recent improvement will manage to keep them in the top 10 for awhile. Pokerstars.fr remains on the outside looking in, out of the top 10 for the second week in a row, and are now being challenged for that spot by Europe Bet, now in 12th and not far behind them.
Compared to a year ago, online traffic is down 7%, but this is one of the better numbers we’ve seen here in awhile and up from the 10% from last week.
Georgian Poker Sites Really Impress This Week
The biggest stars of the week may be Georgian poker sites Adjarabet and Europe Bet, and both have put in very impressive performances of late due to both some strong promotions and perhaps the growth of the Georgian online poker market as well.
Both these poker sites sit in the top 12 this week. Adjarabet had been in the top 12 for quite some time now but thanks to their ongoing promotion called Hand Battle, they hit an all time high on the leaderboard in eighth spot. The promotion continues for a couple more weeks.
Europe Bet’s rise has been even more impressive, thanks in part at least to a successful promotion of their own, and in a single week have rocketed up the rankings from 22nd spot all the way up to 12th. Things are likely to settle down once these promotions end, probably seeing them return closer to the positions they started from, but they have certainly made quite a splash on the scene so far.
British Shake Up
The new gaming regulations that were scheduled to hit the U.K. online poker market have been delayed another month, and is now set to commence on November 1, which allows more time for poker sites to make needed adjustments to look to comply with the new rules.
In the mean time, poker sites continue to scramble to get things in order in preparation for the new legislation to take effect. Several poker sites are pulling out, including Pokerstars.fr, several iPoker sites, and even Carbon Poker, who aren’t easily chased away and still offer play to most states in the U.S., so you know that this is pretty serious.
While this has shrunk the number of operators in the U.K., not all are leaving of course, especially U.K. based providers such as Ladbrokes, although the situation has caused Ladbrokes to now pull out of the Canadian market in fears that continuing to offer play to Canadians may not leave them in compliance with the new U.K. rules, since Canada may constitute a “grey market”.
Possibilities Of Washington State Allowing Online Poker
There are many states which have anti gambling laws which apply to all forms of poker, including online poker, but the most famous is the U.S. state of Washington, which enacted laws explicitly banning online poker a few years ago.
The law is so strong here that no online operator dares touch players from this state these days, and even Poker Stars and Full Tilt pulled out of Washington back when they were offering play to players in every other state in the country.
Washington does have a pretty thriving live casino and poker business though, so it’s not that they are opposed to gambling generally, like Utah is for instance, where all forms of gambling including the lottery are prohibited. Washington’s problem is with unregulated gambling though, which at least leaves the door pretty open to the possibility of having regulated online poker there some day.
There has been a movement in this state to try to decriminalize online poker playing, but this has met opposition from groups who see this as condoning offshore play. The solution will likely be to put together a plan where they can license in state online poker sites, such as what other states have done and more are planning, and while this is at least a ways off, it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility that players from Washington State may be able to get back into online poker again.
Given that there are no competing options from offshore sites as there are in other states, regulated poker in Washington could do quite well perhaps.
