Official Poker Site/Network Tracking thread

[Sniper]

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Why is FT gaining players almost 2x the rate of Stars? Is it simply the deposit bonus that's responsible? If so, I think Stars is making a huge mistake in not having an inticing bonus of their own at this critical juncture.

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I think it likely has to do with rakeback affiliates shifting players... Stars does not have an advantage in this area.

I will however, agree with your comment (and those in other threads) on bonuses... that while Stars recent VIP bonus and new player bonuses are OK, they blew it by not having a $50 bronze bonus for those players who already have an account, but don't play there very much.

[4_2_it]

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Why is FT gaining players almost 2x the rate of Stars? Is it simply the deposit bonus that's responsible? If so, I think Stars is making a huge mistake in not having an inticing bonus of their own at this critical juncture.

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I think it likely has to do with rakeback affiliates shifting players... Stars does not have an advantage in this area.

I will however, agree with your comment (and those in other threads) on bonuses... that while Stars recent VIP bonus and new player bonuses are OK, they blew it by not having a $50 bronze bonus for those players who already have an account, but don't play there very much.

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I agree. Stars is great, but their bonus/VIP program is geared toward their grinders (which is fine, the grinders do generate the most rake), not the fish or recreational player. I would expect FT to get more than its fair share of the Party run-off.

[Sniper]

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Bottom line, all sites should be focused on increasing their non-US business, whether thru consolidation or marketing.

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I would have thought that due to network effects (i.e, once a site hits a certain point, it'll grow simply because it has good table selection - see old Party, and once it drops below a certain point it'll probably die completely due to lack of table selection, see Paradise), the sites that dropped US players should be bought by the big sites immediately. That way, you keep their player base before it goes low enough that their table selection kills them.

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While I agree that network effect has some impact on growth; I do not believe that at least for the sites that we are looking at here, that there is a point where players will leave a site and it will die for lack of traffic.

Also, right at this moment we are seeing a market dynamic where many players are looking for new sites to play on. Any site simply relying on their current traffic to drive organic growth, is missing out on an opportunity to grab a pile of players. While size will drive some traffic, any and all additional steps to attract players right now, would be rewarded.

One of the other things that has to be considered when looking at potential buyout candidates, is there are some sites that no matter how low their traffic, would not be sold. For example WPEX, while its traffic is low, the poker room is a loss leader to their sportsbook... what incentive do they have to sell their poker business.

[Sciolist]

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While I agree that network effect has some impact on growth; I do not believe that at least for the sites that we are looking at here, that there is a point where players will leave a site and it will die for lack of traffic.

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I think this is exactly what we're seeing with Paradise: I think they will die completely, or drop to sub Action-Poker levels with a hardcore of players. I guess we can see who is right from that kind of prediction: I predict it'll happen with firstly Paradise and then with Pacific. Of course, this would've been a smarter prediction a couple of weeks ago.

[Sciolist]

I think I used too much compression on a couple of these, but nevermind.

[The_Scout]

A few questions about your graphs, Sciolist.

Where does your data come from?

In the first graph, is the magenta (or pink or whatever) line supposed to be PartyPoker?

How is that first graph generated? Are you using same-day peaks?

In the second graph, is that peak players as well?

By the way, this graph of average (not peak) cash game players recently went up on my site:

[Sniper]

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While I agree that network effect has some impact on growth; I do not believe that at least for the sites that we are looking at here, that there is a point where players will leave a site and it will die for lack of traffic.

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I think this is exactly what we're seeing with Paradise: I think they will die completely, or drop to sub Action-Poker levels with a hardcore of players. I guess we can see who is right from that kind of prediction: I predict it'll happen with firstly Paradise and then with Pacific. Of course, this would've been a smarter prediction a couple of weeks ago.

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Sciolist, what we are seeing with Paradise is what I'll call the Busto effect [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

A majority of their traffic was US... what they did was cut off US players deposits when the bill was signed, but allow US players (except from 10 states) to continue to play with money they had on deposit until Nov 13th. So, we will not see their true non-US only traffic until after 11/13; meanwhile, over the course of the month, their US traffic is continuously fading out as players either run out of funds, or withdraw what they had left.

They also just gave out bonus funds to what I would expect to be all their non-US players (although their T&C says it was random... yeah right). This promo runs from Nov 3rd to Dec 2nd.

[Sniper]

Scout, I like the comparison of 2 days of Party's traffic throughout a day.

It would be great if you could do 2 graphs.. 1 a single day look at a days traffic across just the top US sites, and a 2nd just a single day look at the top non-US sites..this would really help to understand the intraday traffic patterns at the sites and whether the primary difference in the patterns are US vs non-US or some other factor.

The Party graph would seem to indicate that the US sites should have a flatter/extended peak, while the non-US should have a pointier peak; would be nice to confirm that all the sites follow this same pattern.

Thanks in advance.

[The_Scout]

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The Party graph would seem to indicate that the US sites should have a flatter/extended peak, while the non-US should have a pointier peak; would be nice to confirm that all the sites follow this same pattern.

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Well, here's a graph I was thinking of posting anyway. It shows that PokerStars has a mixture of American and European players, although I'd guess Europeans are outnumbered maybe 2 or 3 to 1. Stars doesn't have the kind of cross-contintental balance that Party had before the Frist of October.

On the other hand, FTP and Bodog have very little European component to their curve. It's pretty much all North America. Even Party has a broader peak than they do, which is kind of mind-boggling.

[Sciolist]

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A few questions about your graphs, Sciolist.

Where does your data come from?

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Damnit, I forgot to plug your site again :]

These are just graphs created from the public data on your site. It's all peak times and peak users, so it's not desperately useful for looking at anything else.

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In the first graph, is the magenta (or pink or whatever) line supposed to be PartyPoker?

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Ah yes, managed to misname it in the legend.

The averages graphs are quite interesting, is the source data public domain, i.e, available on your site? It's worth noting that Party still have a lot of Canadians & some South Americans, so you need to look at something like Everest to look at purely European data.