I am not alone when it comes to the gratitiude that I owe online poker, for providing me with an income, after Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event.
Online poker is an integral part of the lives of millions of people. Whether they use the online poker rooms as their office, play recreationally, or continually sing from the rooftops about how the 25nl games are fixed because their aces keep getting cracked; it’s touch is universal.
So here are five thoughts on the important industry trends of 2013. In the words of Dermot O’Leary.
“In no particular order.”
Protecting Recreational Players
The one resounding theme that has emerged from the throats of all areas of online poker is the need to protect the recreational players in the game. As each year passes the landscape changes. The rivers that were once gagging with fish, are drying up. The fish are drowning in debt, and the life of a professional poker player keeps getting tougher and tougher.
PokerStars Head of Communication, Lee Jones, hit the nail on the head when he told PokerStrategy during an interview, “We don’t owe a living to anyone; we have a business to run and our job is to provide entertainment.”
Bodog recognized the importance of protecting recreational poker players, years ago, when it created the Bodog Recreational Poker Model, and it was good to see other online poker operators starting to follow suit in 2013.
Rather than spend their budgets on attracting the hardline professional grinder, attention started to turn towards the player who logs on to play a few hours of poker, before putting the kids to bed and waking up to get back onto the 9 to 5. To these players poker has to be fun in order for it to continue to be their number one hobby.
So they made a number of sweeping changes aimed at created a better eco-system for the fish, and part of this process included anonymity and a crackdown on the use of data mining.
PartyPoker completely revamped their software to create a more social media experience, PokerStars met with their Poker Players Council (PPC) in a bid to make necessary changes to their infrastructure to make the games more fish friendly, and some iPoker skins also started to implement anonymous tables on their sites.
Dusk Till Dawn (DTD) owner Rob Yong even went as far as to create his own Online Club Cash Game model, in a bid to take the game back to its original online roots, and vowed to quit if it wasn’t successful within six-months.
Derivatives of Rush Poker
Hidden amongst all the shit that belonged to Full Tilt Poker (FTP) shone a gem called Rush Poker.
When it was launched, back in 2010, it was considered the greatest innovation in online poker since online poker itself broke through that its sticky hymen in the early 1990s.
PokerStars quickly followed suit in 2012 when it launched Zoom Poker and so far this year, nearly all of the major online poker sites have followed suit, with imaginatively named titles such as Fast-Fold Poker (888) and Fast Forward Poker (PartyPoker) all hitting an online poker table near you.
Mobile Becoming Industry Standard
Industry experts are predicting that mobile phone gamblers will exceed 164m in the next five years, and a big part of that gang will be playing mobile poker products.
2013 has seen nearly all of the online poker networks create a mobile poker offering, and it’s only a matter of time before this levels reaches 100%. It’s no longer seen as a choice, but instead an industry accepted norm.
It’s also the year that we have seen more people than ever before multi-tabling live and online tournament/cash games in some of the biggest tournaments in the world, and the ascent to mobile and tablet platforms has helped increase this level of activity.
Mainstream Interest Wanes
As I alluded to in the first point about protecting the recreational players, the game is getting tougher. This means as more and more recreational poker players lose their hard earned cash, their interest in the game will dissipate as quickly as their bankrolls.
A Google trends report for the word “poker” suggests that interest in the game, by the mainstream public, reached its lowest point in 2013 since measures began back in 2004.
Part of the problem continues to be the online poker sites that have done everything in their power to create a ecosystem that rewards the professional whilst lopping the heads off the fish. As mentioned in point one, online sites are now trying to resolve this issue and let’s hope it’s not too late.
The other issue that must have contributed to the decline in interest must surely be the aftermath of Black Friday, and in particular, the lack of TV exposure that the game has had since the business imploded.
The introduction of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Alpha8 Series and the recent launch of iGaming in New Jersey will surely be the catalyst for more TV exposure in America, which will have a tsunami like effect around the rest of the world.
Social Media Poker Sites Not Converting to Real Money Offerings
It was barely a year ago that industry experts were looking forward to an influx of real money online poker players courtesy of social media sites such as Zynga.
The play money poker site was pulling in more players than PokerStars, making it the most popular online site for poker anywhere in the world.
Zynga’s plan to release a real money poker application in the UK was big news. Not least because Nevada and Delaware had already passed legislation to open their cyber hallways to poker, and New Jersey was also in the offing. It was surely just a matter of time before Stars had somebody to trade punches with that didn’t tickle.
At the time of the planned release for a real money online poker offering, Zynga was dragging in around $100m per month in online gaming revenue, and many thought it would be a foregone conclusion that this trend would follow into the world currently owned by PokerStars, Full Tilt, 888, PartyPoker et al.
Instead, Zynga partnered up with Bwin.Party to launch ZyngaPlusPoker, in the UK, and nobody came. It seems the play money crowd were playing on a play money site because they didn’t want to waste their real money.
The lack of fireworks then resulted in an announcement from the social media giant that it was withdrawing its application for a Nevada state online gambling license so it could concentrate on its social media play money options.
The most hotly anticipated online poker trend of 2013, and it didn’t even materialize.
