New Jersey Online Gambling Brief: 888 Software Fix, CSIG’s Cold War, and More
We have a lot to get to this week, so I’ll dispense with the usual pleasantries and get right down to business.
In this installment of the New Jersey Online Gambling Brief we’ll fill you in on a much-desired software upgrade by 888 Poker that has NJ poker players standing up and cheering; we’ll breakdown the latest running of the $100k Guarantee at partypoker; we’ll show you how you can qualify for the World Series of Poker Circuit Series National Championship online at WSOP.com; we’ll bring you the latest performance theater video from Sheldon Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling group — it’s not supposed to be taken seriously right?; and a whole lot more.
Software fix at 888
Players on the 2+2 poker forum are reporting that a recent software upgrade at 888 Poker has dramatically improved disconnect issues related to geolocation at the site.
If this is true, this could be a game-changer for the industry, as one of the most common, and most frustrating complaints since the New Jersey iGaming industry launched in November has been the intermittent disconnections.
CSIG’s Cold War style propaganda
Sheldon Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling (CSIG) is back with his latest Cold War inspired YouTube video, this time featuring a young teenager who is using his father’s hacked online gambling account after stealing his father’s credit card to gamble online. All the while his parents are blissfully unaware that their little angel is turning into a problem gambler.
I wonder if Adelson’s next ad will be the same teen guessing his father’s combination to the gun safe, or using that same stolen credit and hacked online profile to purchase drugs?
Here is my advice, if your son is stealing your credit cards and hacking your personal computer files you might have a bigger problem than a degenerate gambler on your hands.
NJPO’s Johnny G took Adelson and CSIG to task for this one: Johnny G Smackdown: Adelson’s ‘What About The Children’ Anti-Online Poker Ad
Round 2 of $100k Guarantee at partypoker
The first $100k Guaranteed tournament held at NJ.PartyPoker.com and BorgataPoker.com took place on March 2nd and drew an impressive crowd of 782 players, setting all kinds of records for New Jersey online poker tournaments.
The tournament was such a success that partypoker decided to “run-it-twice” to use a poker term, hosting a second $100k Guaranteed tournament this past Sunday.
Even though this Sunday’s tournament exceeded the $100k Guarantee, the tournament fell well short of its predecessor as the second $100k Guaranteed tournament attracted 544 runners, creating a prize-pool of $100,640. A respectable, but somewhat disappointing number of entrants.
So why was there such a significant drop-off?
Robert DellaFave had an interesting take on this, positing that the lack of marketing and buzz this time around was perhaps a field trial by partypoker to see if the site could run a $100k tournament every week.
While this is an interesting theory, it should be noted that partypoker did give players a three-week notice for the tournament including satellite tournaments being offered.
My theory is the site will revert back to a $50k Guarantee over the next few weeks (likely until the New Jersey Championships of Online Poker) and see what kind of turnout they receive. If numbers are consistently high, they may turn the $50k Guarantee into a $100k Guarantee following the NJCOP.
WSOP National Championship
The World Series of Poker Circuit Series National Championship will take place from May 22nd – 24th at the newly minted WSOP Poker Room at Bally’s Atlantic City, and thanks to legalized online poker in both New Jersey and Nevada, WSOP.com is offering up four online qualifiers, while Bally’s is awarding two more seats to the $1,000,000+ freeroll.
As has been the case in previous years, players can qualify for the tournament by winning either the Main Event or the Player of the Series award at one of the WSOPC stops during the season, or by being among the top overall point-getters for the season. All told, there will be 94 qualifiers from the WSOPC season, along with the six qualifiers mentioned above.
Additionally, any poker player in the Top 100 on the WSOP Player of the Year standings can enter, but unlike the automatic qualifiers they must pay a $10,000 entry-fee to do so.
For more info on how to qualify you can visit www.wsop.com.
New Jersey traffic numbers
For the top three online poker sites in New Jersey cash-game traffic was as steady as she goes over the past week, with Party / Borgata maintaining a rolling average of 200 players, WSOP.com at 150 players, and 888 at 90 players according to www.pokerscout.com.
The fourth online poker room in New Jersey continues to trend toward cash-game irrelevancy, as average traffic numbers have dipped into the single digits for the first time.
Over the past few weeks Ultimate Poker has lost nearly half of its average cash-game traffic, a very troubling trend.
We thought you should know…
Amaya and Ultimate Gaming partner in NJ
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amaya Gaming has teamed up with Ultimate Gaming in New Jersey to provide several online casino games for the UCasino.com site via a licensing agreement with one of Amaya’s subsidiary companies.
The partnership is interesting on a number of fronts, as Amaya is partnered with several of UCasino’s rivals in New Jersey, but online casinos are very dissimilar to online poker rooms on this front, and these types of licensing agreements amongst competitors are fairly common in the industry.
