New Jersey Online Gambling Brief December 5, 2013
This week’s edition of the New Jersey Online Gambling Brief has a little bit of everything, from big overlays in the weekly guaranteed tournament at Party Poker, to the rekindling of federal online gambling talks in Congress.
Below you’ll find a comprehensive rundown of everything going in the New Jersey Internet Gaming industry.
Jersey players see massive overlays at Party Poker
It was a great weekend for tournament poker players in New Jersey, with Party Poker’s $50k guaranteed tournament boasting a nearly $18,000 overlay ($17,995 to be exact), with only 173 players registering for the tournament.
The overlay increased each player’s equity in the event from $185 (the buy-in amount) to $289, a nearly 60% increase. The winner of the tournament, a player using the screen-name “MikeyCasino” pocketed $8,050.
This is a trend that will likely continue as New Jersey’s current player pool simply cannot support a $50k guaranteed tournament at this time. So as the saying goes; get in while the getting is good!
New Jersey online poker traffic zooms past Nevada
Before the New Jersey online poker industry was even a week old it had already surpassed the traffic numbers the Nevada online poker industry is producing — online poker in Nevada has been up and running since April 30, 2013. But as Chris Grove correctly pointed out, this shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise considering New Jersey has nearly three-times the population of Nevada, and on a per capita basis Nevada still has more online poker players.
That being said, considering the rate of growth in New Jersey over its first week and a half, it likely won’t be very long before New Jersey surpasses Nevada on a per capita basis. Because, if online poker traffic numbers have taught us anything over the years it’s this: the more players you have the more players you attract.
Here is a look at the latest 7-day rolling averages for both New Jersey and Nevada according to www.pokerscout.com:
- New Jersey (Party/Borgata, WSOP.com, AAPN, and Ultimate Poker): 370 real-money cash-game players
- Nevada (Ultimate Poker and WSOP.com): 195 real-money cash-game players
House subcommittee to hold online poker hearing
It’s been a while since Congress has made any type of signal that it was interested in online gambling. That was until Tuesday, when the House Subcommittee on Commerce announced it would be holding a hearing on December 10th called, “The State of Online Gaming.”
While it’s unlikely anything will get done on the federal level in the near (and perhaps distant) future, this is still a story New Jersey online poker players should keep their eyes on; especially as opposition to online gaming continues to grow more vocal — see the next header.
The agenda for the December 10th hearing includes:
- The current state by state legislation of Internet gaming
- The 2011 Justice Department reinterpretation of the 1961 Wire Act
- HR 2666 The Internet Poker Freedom Act – a bill that would legalize online poker
Witnesses have yet to be announced, but PocketFives has reported that the Poker Players Alliance will have a presence at the hearing.
Opposition to online gambling mounts; too little too late?
Sheldon Adelson is no longer the only person penning critical editorials railing against the evils of online gambling, as the Chairman of LV Sands now has some company in the form of former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), former Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.), and Denver’s former Mayor Wellington Webb (D).
In their editorial that appeared in The Hill on Wednesday, they regurgitated many of Adelson’s talking points, including citing a survey conducted by the Tarrance Group that claims a vast majority of US residents are opposed to online gambling.
The trio is representing a group called Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, which is the advocacy group created by Sheldon Adelson when he ramped up his anti-online gambling rhetoric earlier this month. Essentially, these three former lawmakers are now working as lobbyists for Adelson’s anti-online gambling group.
I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll hear from the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, but I have to ask; isn’t the cat already out of the bag when it comes to Internet gambling?
We thought you should know…
- Party/Borgata peak cash-game traffic exceeded 500 players according to pokerscout.com
- Party Poker hosts $1 tournaments every half hour with a $25 guaranteed prize-pool. The tournaments rarely hit their guarantee and some have produced as little as 10 entries.
- WSOP.com in New Jersey has already eclipsed the traffic of WSOP.com Nevada
