[Sniper]

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Sniper,

Well, I think it would be difficult to walk you through specifics because then I'm predicting the future rather than making assumptions based on trends. In other words, even though the DJIA has been on an upward trend since it's inception and I might offer that it's more likely than not that the DJIA will be much higher 20 years from now than it is today, I can't tell you what IBM's stock price will be 20 years from now.

Also, I think that while you're technically correct in what you say that your conclusions may not be correct. The non-US players they have are still with them because they still provide sufficient liquidity. We're only about a month out from the Neteller fiasco and I don't believe we've seen the full shakeout. The major non US poker sites all went up by about 20% while the major US poker sites decreased 20%. My hypothesis here would be that those were Europeans and Canadians jumping ship.

Right now the US facing websites seem to be in a struggle to bottom out from the Neteller mess. As soon as it seems like their numbers are on the rise they'll have a few days that test the lows again. Meanwhile all the major non-US sites are on an upward trend. What happens in 6 months when Party is #1, Stars #2, and Everest and Ongame are #3 with Full Tilt trailing in 4th or 5th spot?

Will non-US players remain loyal? Will they chase liquidity like people did in Oct when Party shut its doors? Will US Full Tilt and UB players flee to Stars as the last remaining site to offer US players sufficient liquidity?

I don't know exactly how those scenarios will play out. I have my thoughts about which companies are better or worse prepared to deal with a constant weakening of the US market but that's another thread on another day :-)

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Bill, I'm not sure that "the masses" are chasing liquidity, in the way that you describe.

Sciolist predicted pretty early that the bottom half of the list, would dry up due to liquidity... to the extent he predicted, that hasn't happened yet.

I believe the top US facing sites still have a strong enough core of non-US business to withstand most anything tossed their way (barring a marine raid on PokerStars headquarters/datacenter or something).

Take a look at how Absolute has weathered this storm... and they have not only dealt with UIGEA & Neteller, but also a significant change in their own business model.

Bodog, has had the roughest time of it, but their peak traffic is still holding up compared to pre-UIGEA...

fwiw, imo, comparatives to the week before Neteller lockdown, are not that useful, because of a post-Holiday seasonal peaking trend. It is unfortunate that we don't have numbers from early last year...