Online poker traffic dropped 2.3% in the second full week of the New Year as a post-surge lull set in. Among the top 10 sites and networks, decliners led advancers 7-3.
Full Tilt Poker once again led to the downside with a 14% decrease. The roller coaster ride just doesn't seem to end for the world's second largest poker site, which has lost about half the traffic from its post-relaunch high.
At PokerStars, the second annual Turbo Championship of Online Poker got underway on Thursday. The series features 50 tournaments and $15 million in guarantees, up from $10 million guaranteed in last year's inaugural TCOOP.
With 19 of the 50 TCOOP events in the books, most tournaments are easily surpassing their guarantees. The only overlays have come from knockout (bounty) events, including a Pot Limit Omaha knockout tournament that fell $33,000 short of the $200,000 guarantee. (The actual cost to PokerStars net of fees was only $17,000, an amount dwarfed by the fees raked in just on the very first event of the series.)
Perhaps most interesting about the series is the player demographic information offered by PokerStars, including the number of tournament entrants by country. Russia easily tops the list with 18,754 players, followed by Germany with 13,690 and Canada with 10,700. Rounding out the top 10 are the UK, Netherlands, Brazil, Denmark, Ukraine, Poland and Sweden. Somewhat surprisingly, the ranking of player cashes by country shows the same top 10 countries in the exact same order. See these and other interesting TCOOP statistics here.
Looking ahead, we may see more big gains in the next few weeks as we approach the busiest time of the year in February and early March.
Top 20 Movers
iPoker.it moved up a spot to 16th place, trading places with Svenska Spel.
Year Over Year
Overall, the market is down 5% from this time last year, despite the relaunch of Full Tilt Poker and the launch of the Spanish market.
23/1/2013, 8:56 pm