Poker News

Online poker cash game traffic monitoring site PokerScout.com released its weekly update on Friday, reporting that traffic was up one percent last week. Not too exciting, but certainly better than the alternative (unless the alternative is two percent). Of the top ten networks and sites, seven saw increases in their traffic while just three experienced decreases.

The top seven remained the same as the previous week. PokerStars, as usual, is the top dog with a seven-day average of 20,500 cash game players. It is followed by 888poker (2,500 cash game players), the iPoker Network (1,900), Full Tilt Poker (1,700), PokerStars.it (1,700), partypoker (1,600), and Bodog (1,600). PokerStars.es, the global leader’s site that is restricted to players in Spain only, moved up to the eighth spot with 1,300 cash game players. Winamax.fr dropped to ninth (1,200), while Adjarabet moved back up into the top ten with 1,050 cash game players.

Full Tilt, according to PokerScout, is continuing to benefit from its Gold Rush promotion. It began in December and was originally scheduled to end on January 1st, but the poker room extended the promo through Sunday, January 11th. It has apparently been quite successful, so Full Tilt extended it yet again, this time until February 1st.

Gold Rush rewards players for participating in Rush Poker games, plain and simple. Everyone who contributes to the pot in a Rush Poker game in which that game type has at least two full tables worth of players in the player pool (yes, I know that’s weird) is eligible to win. Players will be randomly chosen to be moved to a Gold Rush prize table after a hand where there will be three cards laid out face down. The lucky player then picks a card to reveal a prize. After the decision is made, the player is taken back to the game.

Prizes can be up to $10,000 in cash, Full Tilt points, tournament tickets, Rush Poker ring game tickets, Gold Rush freeroll tournament tickets, and Gold Rush satellite tickets.

Play money players can also participate, but they can only win play money prizes.

The effect of the Gold Rush promotion on Full Tilt’s cash game traffic, says PokerScout, is impressive. On the first day of the promo in December, cash game counts were up 27 percent. The kicker, though, is that traffic has stayed up when most of the time things fizzle out after the initial excitement of a promo. Additionally, prior to the Gold Rush promotion, 38 percent of Full Tilt Poker’s cash game traffic was at the Rush Poker tables. When the Gold Rush promotion started, it soared to over 50 percent. It has calmed a bit, but Rush Poker still accounts for about 45 percent of the site’s cash game traffic.

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