Online Poker Going Strong in Weak Economy

Published: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 Online-Casinos.com

Independent online poker tracking website PokerScout has some very thought provoking things to say on it's site. Some of the content is critical of the mini-tournaments of poker which are occurring at the same time as major competitions.

Dan Stewart, the savvy owner operator of the tracking web site implies that the mini tournaments may be having a negative effect on the success of the major poker tourneys outcomes. Mr. Stewart uses examples of operators introducing mini tournaments with one tenth the buy ins of their major tourneys finding that the mini tournaments overtook the revenues and interest of their big siblings.

Interest in online poker remains very strong, with Stewart reporting that traffic to most major online poker sites to be up an astounding average of 55 percent.

Stewart analysed a major online poker championship recently and found a similar practice of offering low, middle and high multiple stakes, created similar negative results for the high stakes action. Stewart said that even though the economy is not doing well the online poker industry, "Is quite healthy. All we can do is compare right now to the same time last year. When we do that, we see that the industry is up 30 percent year over year. That's probably a slow rate of growth in comparison to three or four years ago."

Some individual online poker operators are not doing that well according to PokerScouts research with certain operators reporting traffic to their sites down by from 14 to 30 percent, while others have surged forward by as much as 140 percent. The astute Mr.Stewart was positive when he said of the online poker industry, "I don't see the economy affecting online poker too heavily. Some people say that poker is counter-cyclical. A person is laid off, spends more time at home, and gambles online to make money. I don't see it being counter-cyclical; it just chugs along regardless of the economy."