The recession bad for the online poker?

Author: Qid
Filed under: High Stakes News, Online poker, Poker
Date: Nov 18,2008

Even though people are not buying houses and other big stuff because of the economic meltdown, the online poker market just keeps growing. The biggest poker room in the world, PokerStars, now broke the mark of 30,000 cash game players for the first time in the online poker history.

PokerStars is by far the biggest poker site in the world and it will keep the position as the top dog for a long time, as it is according to pokerscout.com more than twice as big as the second biggest site, Full Tilt Poker.

It is quite sure that the WSOP final table has helped especially PokerStars, which had six sponsored players in the final table, including the winner Peter Eastgate, but also Full Tilt Poker, which was the other site that had sponsored players in the final.

The WSOP might have had a short term impact, but in overall the poker industry is going strong, as the cash game traffic has gone up about 19% in the past year. Still, online poker faces some heavy issues in UIGEA, super-user scandals and other kind of cheating.

Especially UIGEA can have a devastating effect for the poker industry, if US players can no longer compete in online poker. One reason why PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have succeeded in the past has been the decision to allow players from United States.

After all, the recession is by far the least problem online poker industry is facing in the future!