how long before PS UB and FT drop?

[KotOD]

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Bill,

Yes you gave the condition that the onus is on someone else to disprove a highly speculative and less reasonable assertion that you made, instead of on you to prove same, despite being given a rebuttal, partially speculative as well to be sure, but which is more likely given the past history of online gambling (i.e. sites will find easy ways around a blacklist *if* it comes to that), the tecnical difficulties involved in actual enforcement, and the lack of effectiveness of government action in stopping other activities it deems illegal. This is the same as if you said the moon was made of cheese, and that it was on me to disprove it. You are now not engaging in honest debate.

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Bluff, you are wasting your time. Everyone here can see that Rini has an agenda. He cannot back down from his position for multiple reasons, but it's obvious that he can't. He needs blog readers, he doesn't want to be wrong, he doesn't want to stop the PPA, CP gravy train.

Obviously the sheep that read his blog aren't going to be any wiser, but everyone in this forum can see what's going on.

[Billman]

Sniper,

I think you're looking at way too short a period. I don't know when it will happen but at some point the withdrawal/deposit curves will reverse if sites can't come up with better funding methods. The implosion won't be overnight but it will come rather rapidly once you break certain thresholds. On sites like FTP where people can't get their money off the site, it's going to be weeks or months before that threshold is crossed. Many players may say screw it and not wait the 35 - 50 days FTP is forecasting for paper checks and decide to donk it off in a cash game or tournament. That's going to extend the time it takes before the inflection point occurs. Also, now FTP is taking over Doyle's Room players which buys them some more time. But the bottom line is that unless something happens that reverses the trend they will hit that threshold sooner or later. Maybe not this month or next month but without a fundamental shift in trends crossing the threshold is inevitable.

You make a very interesting observation. You mention how sites are doing compared to their pre-UIGEA numbers. I agree many are around the same levels. However post-UIGEA until the Neteller incident their numbers were markedly higher. Full Tilt and Party were running neck and neck for second spot two months ago. Now Full Tilt is in a distant third and fighting off Everest to keep from sinking to fourth. Stars was the main beneficiary of the Party pullout but their numbers have been on a steady decline for months and Party has been on a steady increase which has put Party within striking distance of becoming the number one site again. When you graph out the peak cash game player numbers for the major sites, all of the non-US sites are on an increasing trend line and all the US facing sites are on a steady decline.

I disagree with you on which sites will survive. And again, survive doesn't mean that the site has to either be in business or out of business. My definition of survive is that the site is a relatively strong player in the market. If a site goes from #3 to #13 I don't really consider them having survived. Technically they fit the definition of survival because they're not out of business but they're so far out of the game that they might as well be out of the market. Maybe a better way of looking at it is whether or not they survive as a major player in the online poker world.

I agree that Stars will survive. Full Tilt won't in my opinion. They have almost zero non-US presence. None of their payment processors are European centric nor have they shifted any of the marketing efforts overseas in any sort of meaningful way. I think that's the same problem UB, Bodog, and most of the other US facing sites have. They've all built their businesses on US advertising and US media exposure. When I watch European television almost none of the big US facing sites have any exposure. Stars has the European Poker Tour, Party ads are featured on nearly every football (soccer) game, 888 owns darts and billiards advertising, etc. There's no UB, Full Tilt, etc ads of any major significance. Stars has their client offered in several different languages. Not true of most of the other US facing sites.

Stars has used the time since Oct 13 to move more aggressively into Europe. Most of the other US facing sites have been trying to suck up more and more of the US players Party had to abandon when they left the US. To see where a site is focusing it's efforts all you need to do is look at their tournament and promotions schedules. Sites that have little or nothing scheduled during peak European or Aussie hours are putting little effort into developing those markets.

And when the US players start to drop off due to funding difficulties the sites who have not invested in beefing up their international presence will find many of their Euro and Canadian customers fleeing to sites like Stars or Party where the loss of US players (in the case of Stars) won't have such a drastic impact on liquidity. So in effect, it's a snowball effect which is why I previously referred to an implosion.

You say that players won't chase liquidity but I think you're wrong. Players who have a choice (Europeans and Canadians) will chase liquidity because they can. Not every single one but enough to cause major numbers erosion in any site that is on the wrong end of the stick.

[BluffTHIS!]

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And when the US players start to drop off due to funding difficulties

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Billman,

Another speculative unproven, and not likely to be proven assumption. Is it now incumbant on Sniper to disprove that assumption of yours instead of on you to prove that it has a high probablity of being true?

[MadJim420]

Hi, Im from the U.K. and I would like to make 'my position' known.

I only learned to play poker a few years ago on party. After losing a few $1000 over a year i read some 2+2 books and started making a small profit which continued over the last 18 months. I got barred from party for using poker phrophecy (which i will never do again).

Anyway i started playing on stars & ub. Then when party left last year i noticed starts number increase and i could still break even. Now that neteller have pulled out the games are much harder, I like $15 sng ive played the odd $50 and $100 where im about evens.

'My possition is' The $15 sng is now harder than the $100 4 months ago, i've run down my account to $0 and im not deposting on USA accepted sites. I will go back to stars only if they ban USA players or the USA law people agree to let poker be exempt or go back on the gambling bill.

Im sure im not the only one outside the US to notice this trend and jump ship to non US sites.

Best regards,

MadJim.

[olivert]

Party has gained market share because it spent truckloads of money on marketing in GERMANY, a market which might or might NOT be viable in the future, as no one knows yet whether the German government will extend its crackdown on offshore online sports betting (Bwin in particular was targeted by the German government) to offshore online poker.

Full Tilt was one of the first to dip its toes into the German market by putting the Full Tilt invitational from Monaco on German sports TV network DSF.

However, Full Tilt hadn't followed up with additional efforts in Germany, as it was pre-occupied with getting its name out in the UK to prepare for an IPO, which obviously had to be postponed once the UIGEA was passed.

Again, EVERYTHING is in flux in this business. With France and Israel in heavy crackdown mode, and with Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Russia, and even parts of Canada (notably Ontario Province) leaning toward eventual crackdowns, no one knows yet how this business will look like 24 months from now.

(The likes of Cryptologic and Playtech already placed their bets in East and Southeast Asia, as they are operating under the assumption that GOVERNMENT entities or existing GOVERNMENT-LICENSED MONOPOLIES will be the only legal online poker operators in many territories. Cryptologic and Playtech are pursuing a software licensing approach rather than an operator approach. )

[MTBlue]

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My bottom line for this discussion is that predictions and even plans for this short term a period are mostly not necessary, again given the caveat I made earlier, as we will know in a period of months what will be what.

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I think this really sums up your entire point of view pretty well. People who can't pay their taxes because their money is caught up at Neteller or stuck on Full Tilt might disagree that people shouldn't have some sort of short term plans. See, your unending optimism has effects. People who came here back in Oct, Nov, and Dec and read all the optimistic posts about how the government could never stop online gaming and that nothing was going to change got royally screwed. But instead of being apologetic about it, you're still pumping out the same lines. The real difference between you and I though is that the worst that might happen to someone who listens to what I say and follows my advice is that they might feel a little depressed about the future of the game.

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If you mean by royally screwed up, I got a couple of 100K while you were trying to protect assets, then YES. Yeah I got money seized but nothing compared to what I made. Yeah the risk went up after the Gambling act was passed, but it didn't make it prohibitively risky. This apocalyptic nonsense is silly and really unconstructive. The key question is How do I profit from this?.

The landscape changes but I think you are foolish for thinking that people around the world or even in the US are going to stop playing poker. Morality based laws seems be on the whole fairly ineffective (e.g. War on Drugs, Prohibition). I'm not really optimistic or pessimistic about the change. Its just change. Poker will exist in some form and I would like to understand and then profit from this uncertainty.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this by any means.

[Billman]

As I noted previously, most of what I'm talking about is specific to the US market and US facing poker rooms. I heartily believe that online poker will continue to flourish worldwide.

And what I've said previously regarding setting up a presence outside the US still applies. Why would people be willing to jump through all of the hoops to set up some dodgy eWallet type account when for roughly the same effort they can set up an overseas bank account which would give them the following benefits:

a) No restrictions on funding. I can deposit on poker sites right now either via my bank debit card or directly from my bank. I don't even need Neteller or any other eWallet.

b) You funds are held in an actual bank account and not likely to be frozen when/if the DOJ strikes again.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for having an overseas bank account. There are far fewer legitimate reasons for having an account with a dodgy eWallet. As I've said from the beginning, get your money out of the US banking system and a lot of these funding issues go away.

And if you go the next logical step and rent a Windows based server in the UK or Canada you can install any software you want and then just Remote Desktop into that server and play at both US facing sites as well as those sites not accepting US accounts.

Of course you might need an overseas mailing address but those are easy to rent. Lots of companies have mail drop or PO Box rentals that would serve that purpose. And if you really, really got stuck and needed a utility bill a little Photoshop could make you a resident of any country you wanted to be from.

So, I'm not apocalyptic. I'm just very convinced that the DOJ has a lot more tricks up their sleeves in terms of cutting off funding from US residents to online gaming sites. As I've demonstrated above, getting around that would be a trivial exercise for those determined enough.

Unfortunately, I don't believe Joe Fish is going to be that determined which is why I don't have a whole lot of positive expectations for online poker sites that continue to focus on the US market.

[Municipal Hare]

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. . . and even parts of Canada (notably Ontario Province) leaning toward eventual crackdowns,

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Oliver, I've come to appreciate your insights more and more, but you need to substantiate this claim or stop repeating it. No legislator in any province to my knowledge has hinted at a ban: on the contrary; the Alberta government has been polling about whether it should open its own rooms, and the Quebec** government turns a blind eye to online gambling datacentres within its borders. You mentioned once that Ontario was moving to restrict .com advertisements, but even that bill had most of the wind kicked out of it upon review.

** Edit: said Ontario, meant Quebec.

[BionicComma]

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So much time has come upon my hands due to the Doyle'sroom/ Tribeca trajedy. From what I hear the whole site- which claims to have hundreds of individual skins - is banning all U.S. IPs. Also, a little off-topic, in "Online Poker" by Doyle Brunson (a waste of money if you know anything about the internet and poker) quotes, Brunson writes "While I don't have any ownership (in Doylesroom.com/net), I'm glad they're putting my name on it - because they're paying me a handsome endorsement fee, and because it's a site that makes me proud of my association." Anyway, these two things make me believe that this is just another site fading away. The whole Tribeca network would peak at 11,000 during peak UK time, so I don't see how Doyle'sroom would have many members American or not. I'm not saying it wasn't affected by the legislation, just that it is no more prominent than others.


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As a former Doyles Room shark I can vouch that they would usually run at 10K or so during peak hours. The big draw was the bounty tourny and their Limit HE games were softer than some house games. I was paying my car off quickly thanks to Doyle's Room.

Is there anywhere that US players can go? Amazing how Poker is all over TV but the GOP says people can't play.

If there was ever a good reason to give up on the Republicans...

[Kneel B4 Zod]

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I'm not convinced that FT/UB would go under without the US... on what basis do you make this statement? (convince me that you know something that I haven't thought about)

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an estimate that 90% of their players are American. granted, Full Tilt has a much bigger base. UB would die without the US.


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As for Absolute's business model changes, you can find links to the discussion in the big Site Tracking thread, just scroll back a bit. Basically, they changed their bonus clearing methodology, and their MGR calculations for US players.

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just a nit point - this is far from a business model change. this was a pricing and compensation change which go often very often in all other businesses. Much closer to a 'business model change' would be UB focusing on their new product Ultimate Blackjack.