New Jersey Online Gambling Brief: PokerStars Back in The News, Adelson Nonsense and More
Welcome to technology week in New Jersey, as PokerStars got a nice little surprise from the US patent office for Zoom Poker, while partypoker unveiled a software update with a much needed improvement.
In this week’s installment of the New Jersey Online gambling Brief we’ll take a look at both of these stories as well as a pair of competing interviews with Las Vegas Sands owner Sheldon Adelson and Borgata CEO Tom Ballance that appeared on Bloomberg TV, the lack of consumer awareness among New Jersey residents, and a whole lot more.
Adelson vs Ballance, who you got?
On Thursday and Friday Bloomberg TV’s Betty Liu interviewed anti-online gambling advocate Sheldon Adelson and then the Borgata’s Tom Ballance on the question of online gambling. Needless to say the two interviews were polar opposites, in both content and tone.
Adelson acted virulent towards the host, often answering his questions with a condescending tone and citing his extreme wealth and experience as superseding any pesky facts.
Adelson was emphatic in stating his flawed reasoning for his opposition to online gambling and continued to use debunked arguments to make his point, adding in a few new whoppers for good measure. Apparently, according to Adelson, there are no regulations of online poker in the world, even in jurisdictions like Nevada and New Jersey where online poker is regulated. Don’t think about that too hard or your head may explode.
On the other hand, Borgata CEO Tom Ballance was calm, friendly, relaxed, and had the statistics and data to back up his claims. Ballance managed to refute all of Adelson’s claims about online gambling even though host Betty Liu pressed him a lot harder than she did Adelson.
Overall, I was happy Bloomberg covered this topic as well as they did and despite some criticisms I have, Betty Liu did a reasonable job with both interviews.
PokerStars Zoom Patent Approved
In a somewhat surprising turn of events PokerStars patent lawyers, Denton’s, announced that PokerStars has procured a US patent for Zoom Poker.
According to the press release from Denton’s lawyer Bill Gantz, the patent will only be enforced in the US and will not affect fast/fold poker games in the rest of the world.
However, for US providers, especially the licensed online poker rooms like those in New Jersey this could mean the end of the road for their fast/fold variants; then again it might not.
I asked Bill Gantz to clarify precisely what the patent could mean for other fast/fold variants to which he responded with the following statement:
“I think most everyone will view the additional limitations that allowed this patent to issue as obvious and not inventive, and for each provider the question of infringement will depend upon the particular system architecture, so the issues presented by this patent may be different for each fast-fold provider. The patent will only apply to the U.S., and I think we should expect that Pokerstars may attempt to broadly assert this patent as to competing products.”
888 Poker and partypoker both offer fast/fold variants, so it will be interesting to see if PokerStars enforces their patent against these providers.
New software update at partypoker
A new update at partypoker’s New Jersey allows players to now view each table individually, so players no longer have to blindly join a table and can scout out different tables and choose the best game available.
While the new lobby feature is not an earth shattering change, the individually listed tables should be a welcome site for serious online poker players, although the lack of waiting lists is still considered an egregious flaw.
New Jersey traffic numbers
As we heads into the sixth month of legalized online poker in New Jersey things have started to tighten, and WSOP.com and Borgata / Party are running virtually neck-and-neck after Borgata / Party had dominated the online poker traffic rankings since the November 21, 2013 launch of online poker in the Garden State.
According to www.pokerscout.com, Borgata / Party is leading WSOP.com by a margin of just 150 players to 130 players, and WSOP.com’s ability to close the once sizable gap is creating the first real competition in the US market.
On the flip side is 888, which has seen their cash game traffic plummet since the end of their 80% rakeback promotion earlier this month. 888 currently boasts average cash game traffic of just 55 players. We’ll see if the launch of their Rewards Program can turn this downward trend around.
Then there is Ultimate Poker, which is now tracking at just 4 cash game players according to pokerscout.com.
We thought you should know…
Consumer awareness remains low
Even if you have the best product in the world if you fail to get the message out to the public your awesome product will just on warehouse shelves.
For the regulated US online poker rooms in New Jersey, which nobody would argue are the best in the world, this lack of consumer awareness is an even larger obstacle to overcome, as OnlinePokerReport.com wrote about earlier this week.
Station Casinos CFO Mark Falcone stated that consumer awareness was “very Low” during a recent conference call which can be seen as both a blessing and a curse, in that there is still room for growth but the sites are having a hard time selling their wares.
