PokerScout.com, online poker’s leading cash game traffic watchdog site, released its weekly update this week, revealing a marginal uptick in the industry overall.
One online poker network that bucked the trend was the Merge Gaming Network, which saw its cash game traffic fall 10 percent from the previous week. According to PokerScout, during Monday’s prime time hours for poker, traffic was down a whopping 25 percent. This is all almost certainly the result of the Subject: Poker report from last week that the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland has plans to seize Merge funds being held by payment processors. The report and has likely scared players on the Merge family of sites, which include Lock Poker, Carbon Poker, and Hero Poker, possibly resulting in a wave of withdrawals. With player funds still frozen at Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and UB.com, customers likely do not want to risk even more losses by keeping their bankrolls tied up in a threatened site for too long. This is purely speculation, though.
Pokerview, an online poker room on the Everleaf Network that has special webcam tables, has no plans to halt its move over to Merge, which is scheduled for tomorrow.
Merge had been the biggest riser on PokerScout’s charts since Black Friday, as it remained, for a while, one of the few viable networks for Americans. It quickly went from an also-ran to one of the top ten poker networks/sites on the internet as it scooped up refugees from Full Tilt, PokerStars, Absolute, and UB.com. The recent decline in traffic has seen Merge fall out of the top ten, down to twelfth, with a seven day average of 1,100 cash game players. It’s 24-hour peak yesterday, though, was over 2,000, the first time it had hit that mark in a week.
Year-over-year, the Merge Gaming Network has still made great strides, gaining 52 percent. While it still allows U.S. residents to play on its tables, it has not accepted new U.S. customers since May.
Elsewhere in the rankings, the PokerStars family of rooms – PokerStars.com, PokerStars.it, and PokerStars.fr – were the only ones in the top ten to see a drop in traffic, though the declines were minor. The battle for second place in the rankings continues with Full Tilt’s absence, as PartyPoker and the iPoker Network are neck-and-neck, as usual. iPoker has a seven day average of 4,150 cash game players while PartyPoker has 4,000; they saw their numbers rise three percent and six percent, respectively. 888Poker has taken advantage of the dip by PokerStars.it to climb into fourth place, while the Ongame Network is now tied with PokerStars’ Italian offering in fifth.
Of the remaining U.S.-facing online poker rooms and networks, Merge remains the largest, while Bodog is just behind it in thirteenth position. One should expect Bodog to decline at the turn of the year, however, as it will be closing its doors to U.S. residents. The Cake Poker Network continues to struggle, barely cracking the top twenty, while Everleaf and the Yatahay Network are virtual non-factors.
merge sucks