Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
We start to get some numbers after the so called "Poker's Black Friday", and according to a poker traffic site the worldwide online poker market shrank by an astounding 23% in one week.
Here are some numbers:
The Targets -- These sites are the subject of the SDNY's legal measures:
PokerStars -25% Full Tilt Poker -48% Cereus Network -39% (UB/Absolute Poker) Flying Under The Radar -- These sites are still catering to US players and have escaped the heavy hand of the SDNY (for now):
Merge Gaming Network +23% Bodog +26% Cake Poker Network +19% Everleaf Gaming Network +8% Safe In Europe -- These sites did not accept US players even before Black Friday, many of them having exited the US in 2006 after the UIGEA was signed into law:
PartyPoker +9% iPoker Network +4% Ongame Network (no change) 888Poker +5% PKR +21% As you can see from the numbers, clearly the biggest loser of the week was Full Tilt Poker. It was clear Full Tilt will suffer the biggest hit since most of the players were from US.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
Yea its pretty obvious the situation with FT. right now it has 67k players while other days if im right was up to 80-100k at this time. i still see though a few US players playing freerolls? are they gonna be able to cash out money even if it is from freeerolls?
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 3361
Glad to see the post after wondering what was taking place all day while I was at work. I see FT is hit hard with the lack of U.S. players, but I'm still playing what freerolls are available. My BR isn't so big that I'd be real upset to lose it, but not saying I'm pleased either. So glad to be a part of BRM and have information like this available through the forum. All I can do is read what's up on a daily basis and hope for the best. Good Luck to you All!
Im sure full tilt will recover from this, they still have alot of players from all around the world playing there, just because its us based doesnt mean its gonna fall apart, i think its a good things because other poker sites will get a boost from new players so i think this fall in poker wont last for long.
Joined: Feb '08
Location: Netherlands
Age: 52 (M)
Posts: 818
I expected statistics like this but was wondering about two: PKR +21%? Just like PP + 9%??? Defenitly no US-players there. I understand a little increase because 'rest of the world' players will take their former poker action off PS and FT, and play 'safer' sites because there a bit worried, but those percentage-rises are quite big! I think the other(fast growing) sites are quite happy with the situation
Joined: May '08
Location: Germany
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 6786
No surprise after black friday. The three sites involved are losing traffic, the other sites, espacially those who can still handle players from the US, have an increase in players.
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
My personal opinion is that bodog will the the biggest winner of this black friday. They still allow us palyers on their tables and as seen they also started to offer very good promotions to european players. It sucks that my country still didn't get a promotion yet... The question of all US players now is if they'll be able to cash out after this incident or their money will be simple forfeited by FBI. Some sources in the poker worls said that the accounts that blocked in united states were small bank accounts, mainly used for paying full tilt poker bills and also money from where us players to cash out(but just a small part of them). The majority of their funds were kept in europe bank accounts because they always knew something like this could happen.
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Canada
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1660
It's nice to see the numbers. I know Titan and most of the iPoker network are circling this situation like vultures, trying to scoop up as much of the market share as possible.
I'm just surprised they haven't been able to claim as much of the market as some of the other guys.
Joined: Apr '11
Location: United States
Age: 41 (M)
Posts: 31
I guess that goes to show you ftp was a money making site..Its a good thing there is a family like BRM cause i would still be lost trying to find a good site to play on..Bodog is alright i say for myself,but since i been on players only i have had some all right luck.Takes getting use to i can tell you that..
But all in all i am just happy we still have options of sites to play on for real $$$...
Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
Yeah, all us players that downloaded the full tilt poker application fron fulltiltpoker.co.uk now can play on all freerolls, i saw some of them yesterday. I played play money pot limit omaha now to learn the game and one of the us guys was playing slow, so i hit the search button and he was playing on a freeroll in the same time. I saw a post saying that why PKR didn't get a larger share of the market these days. Well, their platform is awesome due to their 3D graphic but there was a huge scandal a year or so ago when they announced a huge freeroll for christmas, they never gave the password but there were 100 players registered on the freeroll, so everyone said they used bots. Never played there but i only heard this story, thats why i never did an account there.
Joined: Feb '08
Location: Netherlands
Age: 52 (M)
Posts: 818
Lauren: too bad you can only play freerolls at FT, i hope you will be able to cash out if you win. Ft and Stars do assure all US-players that they will be able to cash-out soon(what is soon?) and that their going to fight the charges. Gl
had to re-download the software 
