WSOP.com and 888 Poker announced that they will begin sharing limited player liquidity across their online poker rooms in the Garden State effective January 12.
The move is designed to help boost player liquidity, which is considered as a key in the New Jersey market as it enters its second year of regulating online gaming.
The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has identified online poker as a potential growth area this year, despite generating 25% of the state’s total online gaming revenue, compared to 75% that comes from internet casino games.
Online poker players in New Jersey could benefit from increased prize guarantees for tournaments and a greater number of players available for cash games, sharing $130,000 (€109,825) in guaranteed tournaments each week.
Micro and low-limit cash games and selected tournaments will be part of the shared liquidity. Each site will continue to maintain its individual reward and VIP programs and players will earn points towards these programs only when they play on the specific site. Both WSOP.com and 888Poker have agreed to limit the liquidity share to specific cash game and tournament tables in order to effectively monitor and ultimately determine what the right mix will be for the customer base.
“This is an excellent step forward for us and should help in building a larger audience and player base for online poker in New Jersey,” said David Licht, CEO of the All American Poker Network (AAPN), the joint venture between 888 holdings and Avenue Capital. “Shared liquidity will help create a better player experience, we hope will attract a diversity of players and begin to bring poker to a broader audience once again.”
“It is important we continue to experiment and look for new ways to create stickiness,” said WSOP.com Director of Online Poker Bill Rini. “Customers used to playing on our site will not notice anything different, except more robust action and bigger prize pools. We also hope this will help expand the market by offering more variety.”
