Poker's Popularity
It seems to me that Poker is not as popular as it was last year or the year before. Revenues from online sites are down. The number of entrants in the WSOP main event was down this year. Ratings for poker programming is down this year as well. I am not saying that poker has "jumped the shark", just that it is not as popular.
I see that there are two reasons, one major and one minor. The minor reason is the unpopularity of last year's champ of the WSOP main event Jaime Gold. I have no comment on him one way or the other. The fact is that he did not generate as much excitement in his win as did Hachem, the previous winner.
The main reason is what I call the "Stupidity of Congress". In putting the screws to financial institutions who do business with legitimate online poker sites. This caused Party Poker to drop all their US clients to play money status. And caused Neteller to basically do the same. This cut about 80 to 90 percent of the online players out of the game. If they are not playing online, they cannot win seats to the main event and they tend to forget about poker.
I know I have not played for real money online since Congress passed and the President signed the bill into law. And I have watched far fewer hours of poker on TV since then.
If only I could find a good home game.
Until then, Enjoy the Pokery Goodness!
Labels: Poker Sites, Poker TV
posted by mortal_one @ 9/24/2007 04:19:00 PM
2
comments
2 Comments:
Hi,
I was brought to your blog via the Daily Buzz Report, and I can’t really say that I agree with your post.
You may be referring to poker in the US, and you may be correct in your assumptions, but outside of the US poker is booming. Many countries in Europe are currently in their infancy of the poker boom, and still have many years of growth to come. Eastern Europe, parts of Asia and Africa are more interested in poker today than they have ever been in history. Online as well as offline tournaments continue to break records in tournament entrants and prize pools on a monthly basis. If that is not an indication of the popularity of poker I don't know what is. PokerStars has smashed all previous precedents with this years WCOOP and so far the EPT's prize pools are bigger than last year as well.
When you say that online operators have had drop in revenue, I guess you are talking about Party as these will be the only numbers available to you. Where exactly do you see the drop in turnover?
Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
HR
HR,
First pardon my lateness in moderating your comment.
Thank you for your comment. Thank you for disagreeing with me. Your points about Europe and Asia are on the money. Yes, I was refering to the US in my post.
I am not sure what you mean by "drop in turnover".
I was mostly expressing my opinion on poker's recent popularity based on what I have seen in the last couple of months. Since I live in the US, my opinion is going to be based mostly on what I see and hear here. I must apoligize for not being more tuned into the online poker blogging community lately as family and job have taken up much of my time.
To the second commenter:
I am afraid I do not appreciate name calling here. If you wish to disagree with my opinion you are free to do so. I admit I do not know what you mean by "UIGEA". Apparently it is something I missed. But because I missed something you feel is extremely important, it does not mean I have less than average intelligence. It only means that I have not been informed.
There is a difference.
If you wish to politely inform me as to what UIGEA is and why it is important, I would be most pleased to learn.
Enjoy the Pokery Goodness
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