Online poker traffic monitoring site PokerScout.com issued its Weekly Online Poker Traffic Update Monday, indicating that the summer doldrums are over, as cash game traffic was up for the third consecutive week. Last week specifically, traffic increased 2.9 percent, with only one of the top ten poker rooms and networks declining.
That one laggard was Full Tilt Poker as players moved on to other rooms after the conclusion of the Build Your Bonus promotion (as frequently happens with any room upon the end of the promo). As a result, Full Tilt dropped to third in the cash game rankings, while the iPoker Network ascended to second. Both are way behind PokerStars, which has a seven day average of 21,400 cash games players; iPoker has just 2,350 and Full Tilt Poker has 2,250.
Speaking of PokerStars, PokerScout showed in its report how the world’s largest online poker room has actually been hurt in one way by its insanely popular World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). Because the focus of so many players on the site is tournament play, there is less activity at the cash game tables. The tournament draw is so strong, in fact, that it outweighs the post-summer boost, resulting in decreased cash game numbers over the course of the WCOOP. Compare that to other rooms – iPoker and PartyPoker were the ones displayed in the PokerScout report – that see their cash game numbers rise in September. So far, so good, though for PokerStars at the start of this year’s WCOOP; the site’s peak traffic on Sunday was higher than it was last Sunday.
The other focus of the weekly PokerScout report was PartyPoker, which released its long awaited new software on Thursday. Unfortunately for Party and its players, the software was buggy and unstable, creating extended downtime and repelling players from the site until things began to be ironed out. To illustrate the effect of the problematic new poker client, PartyPoker’s peak cash game traffic on Friday was 2,804, down 13 percent from the 3,237 of the previous Friday. Average traffic, according to PokerScout, was down 20 percent. The software has since improved (though not fully), as has PartyPoker’s traffic.
After PokerStars, iPoker, and Full Tilt Poker, 888Poker and PartyPoker round out the top five in PokerScout’s rankings. Two more PokerStars sites, PokerStars.it and PokerStars.es, are next with Winamax.fr, Bodog, and MPN (Microgaming), completing the top ten. Bodog is the largest U.S.-facing site, followed by the Revolution Gaming Network (19th overall), the Merge Gaming Network (24th), and the Winning Poker Network (25th). Ultimate Poker, still the lone regulated online poker site in the United States, is 31st with a seven day average of 193 cash game players.
