Black Friday and the aftermath: Online Poker Implications

[Amatay]

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee UB paid up!

Dear Simon Jones

Your Payout of 891 USD for Account ID 8796706 has been submitted.

For more details on the status of your request, please click here.

We thank you for your continued business and are always available if you should have any questions.

UB Team

[cambridgealex]

what happened to all those playing touneys on stars/tilt during the seizure?

[pokerfan]

what happened to all those playing touneys on stars/tilt during the seizure?

Afaik they played on as normal, only probs were after logging out.

[tikay]

PokerScout latest traffic stats.....

Latest post-Black Friday traffic stats (left US):
PokerStars -6885 (down 24%)
Full Tilt Poker -8528 (down 48%)
Cereus Network -1076 (down 53%)

Latest post-Black Friday traffic stats (European):
PartyPoker +361 (up 10%)
iPoker Network +190 (up 5%)
Ongame Network -19 (down 1%)
888Poker +99 (up 7%)

Latest post-Black Friday traffic stats (still in US):
Merge Network +331 (up 36%)
Bodog +213 (up 36%)
Cake Network +170 (up 31%)

[Royal Flush]

A Full Tilt-supported televised poker game in Cardiff, UK — The Poker Lounge — was canceled mid-event today, when the TV production company walked off the set after an expected wire-transfer from Ireland did not arrive, reliable sources say.

Supposedly, Presentable Productions were waiting on a second installment of funds from Full Tilt subsidiary Pocket Kings that had been promised by today, and at 4pm GMT, after recording the 3rd heat, they sent the camera crew and players home, with no plans for return. (The show is an 8-heat event featuring $20k sit-n-gos with seven players at each table.)

It remains to be seen whether this was just reactionary angst over a technical blip that could normally be resolved with little problem, or indicative of cash-flow and money-transfer issues that have far more severe implications. But either way, it does confirm a certain unease in the UK after problems in the US.

Presentable has been producing poker television shows since 1999, when their show, Late Night Poker, originally debuted.

A lot of this is plain wrong.

[Spraggs]

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee UB paid up!

Dear Simon Jones

Your Payout of 891 USD for Account ID 8796706 has been submitted.

For more details on the status of your request, please click here.

We thank you for your continued business and are always available if you should have any questions.

UB Team

mbn

[TightEnd]

"Absolute Poker issues statement

A statement from Absolute Poker:

“Absolute Poker has retained Blank Rome LLP as United States counsel to provide legal advice in relation to civil and criminal matters filed in federal court in Manhattan and made public on April 15, 2011. Absolute Poker is aware that on April 19, 2011, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York entered into separate agreements with FullTilt Poker and PokerStars. These agreements concern the use of the respective www.fulltiltpoker.com and www.pokerstars.com domain names. The US Attorney, in a press release dated April 20, 2011, stated that the government is willing to enter the same agreement with Absolute Poker and UB.

“At this time, Absolute Poker’s top priority is, and must be, the refund of balances to its and UB’s US players. However, given the far-reaching consequences of the US Attorney’s actions for Absolute Poker and for the entire poker community, Absolute Poker believes that the responsible course of action is to review with its attorneys the relevant court filings before taking any action.

“Absolute Poker believes that the US Attorney shares the view that refunds to US players are an immediate and pressing concern, and Absolute Poker wishes to make clear that it wants to work cooperatively with the US Attorney to safely and efficiently return its players’ funds. To that end, Absolute Poker’s counsel has initiated communications with the US Attorney’s office and plans to continue proactively advancing those discussions.

“Further information and timely updates will be provided to Absolute Poker/UB’s players as we move forward.”

[TightEnd]

Unibet attempts to take advantage of the situation in the US with a 750k Euro guarantee tournament. They miss the guarantee by 247k

[paulhouk03]

Unibet attempts to take advantage of the situation in the US with a 750k Euro guarantee tournament. They miss the guarantee by 247k

nice
whats the buy in?

[Longines]

Unibet attempts to take advantage of the situation in the US with a 750k Euro guarantee tournament. They miss the guarantee by 247k

Micogaming rather than just Unibet. It's been scheduled for a few months but after Black Friday Micro upped the gtd from 500k to 750k.

It's a €300+€20 two dayer.

[TightEnd]

Playtech Poker Revenue Down 33 Percent

First Quarter Revenue At iPoker Plunges From Same Period Last Year

by Brendan Murray 

Playtech, the publicly-quoted online gaming software provider which owns the iPoker network, today reported poker revenue down 33 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to €5.7 million compared to €8.5 million a year earlier.

Excluding France, whose market was regulated during 2010, poker revenue was down 25 percent.

The company did not give any reason for the significant decline but made a statement about the recent U.S. market shut out of some of its competitors saying, “The actions taken by the US Department of Justice against certain US-facing poker sites on 15 April has prompted considerable volatility, however Playtech believes that this action will in the longer term have a positive benefit to the iPoker networks both in the dot.com segment and also in the European regulated markets.” 


Total revenues at the company, which also includes casino and bingo, were up 2 percent to €36.7 million.
 
 


   
      

[tikay]

"PokerScout" have reported on how things have settled the weekend after Black Friday.

At the foot of the article are the Black Friday - v following weekend traffic stats, too.

http://www.pokerscout.com/news/weekly-traffic-update.aspx?year=2011&week=18

Overall, 'Stars are reported to be down 28%, FT has bounced back from the worst & is now 35% adrift of pre Black Friday traffic, but Cereus bombed 40% the first weekend, & a further 42% last weekend, to end 65% down. Absolutely horrendous.

[tikay]

PokerScout summarised thus......

Post-Black Friday performance

Overall, the worldwide online poker market shrank by 22% in one week. Most of those losses came from the Big Two: PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

To assess the consequences of the US online poker crackdown, we looked at weekend traffic the week before Black Friday and compared it to the weekend immediately following the crackdown. We also looked at the next weekend (Easter weekend) to see how the sites are faring in the new online poker environment.

Highlights and notes:

- Cereus Network has lost nearly 2/3 of its traffic

- Full Tilt Poker managed a startling comeback after Black Friday. The reason is unclear, but it may have something to do with FTOPS XX which is underway. In any case, the site has still lost over 1/3 of its traffic.

- Among the remaining US-facing networks, the largest are also growing the fastest

- European sites have not posted especially strong gains since Black Friday

- The second weekend was Easter weekend, when traffic is naturally lower than usual

[AndrewT]

PokerScout summarised thus......

Post-Black Friday performance

Overall, the worldwide online poker market shrank by 22% in one week. Most of those losses came from the Big Two: PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.

To assess the consequences of the US online poker crackdown, we looked at weekend traffic the week before Black Friday and compared it to the weekend immediately following the crackdown. We also looked at the next weekend (Easter weekend) to see how the sites are faring in the new online poker environment.

Highlights and notes:

- Cereus Network has lost nearly 2/3 of its traffic

- Full Tilt Poker managed a startling comeback after Black Friday. The reason is unclear, but it may have something to do with FTOPS XX which is underway. In any case, the site has still lost over 1/3 of its traffic.

- Among the remaining US-facing networks, the largest are also growing the fastest

- European sites have not posted especially strong gains since Black Friday

- The second weekend was Easter weekend, when traffic is naturally lower than usual

The reason Tilt bounced back was because they lost a lot of non-US traffic when their client stopped working after the .com domain was seized, and players had to download a new one from the .co.uk site.

[titaniumbean]

how did cereus still have players?!