After two straight positive weeks, the summer doldrums finally caught back up to the online poker industry as internet cash game traffic dropped one percent last week. In its Weekly Online Poker Traffic Update, traffic monitoring site PokerScout.com reports that of the top ten poker rooms and networks, it was split evenly with five rising and five falling.
Not much changed in the top ten; Bodog reached its highest-ever point in the rankings, advancing to fifth, while PokerStars’ Italian offering, PokerStars.it, dropped to the sixth spot. As usual, and until the sun rises in the west, PokerStars.com is perched upon the catbird seat with a seven day average of 20,000 cash game players. 888poker, in second place, is the only other online poker room or network with even 2,000 players, currently averaging 2,100 cash game players. The iPoker Network is next with 1,800, followed by PartyPoker with 1,600 and the aforementioned Bodog rounds out the top five with 1,450. As of the writing of this article, PokerStars.it has pulled back into a tie with Bodog and Full Tilt Poker also sits at 1,450.
According to PokerScout, the promotion launched by PokerStars a week ago, the Summer Daily Challenge, has not done much to move the needle. PokerStars saw a 1.3 percent uptick in cash game traffic for the week since the promo started. Then again, considering the size of PokerStars, that’s not too bad.
The Summer Daily Challenge is a promotion in which every player is given a certain goal for the day. These goals are generally very simple, like, to use PokerScout’s example, win five ring game hands. They are there to get people logging in and playing. When the daily challenge is completed, the player receives an All-In Shootout ticket, good for a special tournament that day at 2:05pm ET. The Shootouts all award at least $1,000 to the winner and a $215 tournament ticket that can be used to enter any $215 2014 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) event. Each tourney will have a prize pool of $10,000 to $30,000. Perhaps the best part about them, though, is that because they are all-in tournaments, the players don’t even have to commit a block of time to playing. Everyone is automatically put all-in every hand, so as long as people are pre-registered, everything is done for them.
Then there is the $150K Summer Bonus Challenge, which is basically the same as the above, but just souped up. Players who complete a separate set of ten challenges will receive a ticket into the $150,000 Bonus All-In Shootout, with $10,000 going to the winner, $100,000 in total cash prizes, and $50,000 in 2014 WCOOP tickets to be awarded. The winner also gets a $5,200 ticket into the 2014 WCOOP Main Event and the top 256 players will receive $215 WCOOP tickets.
In other poker traffic news, PokerScout reports that New Jersey’s regulated market declined last week, with the Party Borgata Network and the All American Poker Network (AAPN) falling while WSOP.com advanced a bit. Party Borgata currently has a seven day average of 140 cash game players, WSOP.com is just behind with 130, and AAPN has 70.
