Every Sunday, our friends at PokerScout.com release their Weekly Online Poker Traffic Update, which gives us a feel for the current trends in player activity around the industry. PokerScout monitors real money cash game player traffic at over 30 different online poker rooms and networks and ranks them according to their seven-day averages. Visitors to the site will notice that these numbers come in well short of what the poker rooms report in their lobbies. This is because tournaments and play money games are not counted. Players who multi-table, however, are counted multiple times; the traffic counts reflect the number of real money cash game seats occupied. For the first week of February, several poker rooms traded spots in the rankings.
The majority of the movement was in the bottom half of the top ten. The Cake Poker Network, home to Power Poker, DoylesRoom, the brand new Unabomber Poker, and its flagship Cake Poker, jumped both the Microgaming Network and International Poker Network (IPN), climbing from tenth to eighth in the cash game traffic standings. As of Tuesday afternoon, there is not much separating the three networks, as Cake Poker has a seven-day average of 2,250 players, while Microgaming and IPN are tied at 2,200. Microgaming is comprised of almost 50 rooms, including Gnuf and Unibet. Boss Media’s IPN is headlined by the once independent Paradise Poker as well as Yahoo! Poker and Poker Heaven.
Just above those three networks is the CEREUS Network, made up of Absolute Poker and UB.com. CEREUS switched places with Everest Poker, the former falling to seventh and the latter bumping up to sixth. Out of the bottom half of the top ten, only the Cake and CEREUS Networks accept players from the United States.
Elsewhere in the rankings, the Everleaf Network continued to move since merging with the Universal Poker Network, moving up another spot to 18th. The launch of Victory Poker is also possibly giving the network a boost, as it is offering attractive bonuses and rakeback to attract new customers.
PokerScout.com named Pacific Poker as its standout performer, as it saw its cash game traffic increase 25%, likely because of new promotions.
At the top of the rankings, there has been no movement for the fifth straight week. PokerStars still dominates everyone, with 32,600 cash games players on average. Full Tilt Poker is next at 16,600, followed by PartyPoker at 5,400 and the iPoker Network at 4,850. Overall, PokerScout reported that online poker traffic increased slightly from the previous week after falling for three weeks straight.
Compared to the same time a year ago, the most notable gainers in traffic were Full Tilt (68%), PokerStars (43%), and the Cake Poker Network (42%). The iPoker Network (23%) and Svenska Spel (20%) were the most notable losers in the first week of February.
