Slashdot Mirror
Online Gambling Running Out of Steam
dreamchaser writes "After a meteoric rise, online gambling companies appear to be taking a beating now with the loss of 33% in PartyGaming stock. Apparently the novelty is wearing off and no new players can be found. Why have you stopped playing?"
For example, while PartyPoker is well known, PokerStars seems to be coming up fast. They advertise heavily on poker shows, moreso than PartyPoker it seems. Additionally, a visit to both sites generated a pop-up at PartyPoker on the opening page (yes, let's annoy potential clients), but not at PokerStars. I haven't tried the PartyPoker software in quite some time, but when it came time to choose I found PokerStars a more pleasant interface in which to waste time on play money games.
BUT, and this is very important, poker has been enjoying a popularity surge lately, especially Texas Hold-em. The number of poker shows on TV (even cable) a decade ago could have been counted on the fingers of one knee. Maybe there'd be something late night on ESPN 2, sandwiched in between Powder Puff BMX and Curling. Now you have poker shows on Travel channel, Bravo, InHD, and more. It's quite possible that, gasp, poker is a fad, and as more and more people realize they really suck at it, the fad is receding. Perhaps the money is going back to sports betting, going back to more traditional casino gaming (blackjack, roulette), or perhaps it's going to pay for $3 a gallon gasoline.
I definitely wouldn't take this article as an indicator of industry troubles as a whole, but it would be useful as a warning to watch for shifts in consumer gaming patterns across the industry.
Start a happiness pandemic
Perhaps people finally realized that gambling is a tax on greed and poor math skills.
Because I'm not innumerate?
Have you read my blog lately?
Maybe because the regular players have gone broke?
For starters, part of the "gambling experience" for me is physically going to a noisy, crowded casino and taking in the atmosphere. It's like going to an amusement park: the ride just isn't fun unless you're strapped to the seat.
Plus, at home, I don't get scantily-clad babes serving me free drinks, and the infrequent comp from the casino host isn't a bad thing either.
Online gambling appeals to the pros, perhaps. Which is exactly why I don't want to play there. I'd rather be taken by the house at Blackjack in Vegas.. at least there I get to sit in a pretty building.
Trust.
That's why it's down. I'm not talking about trusting your online casino of choice, or trusting that you will receive your money from your payment processor. I'm talking about trusting your fellow players.
The big money in online poker isn't from reading a book and playing off of statistics charts and pot odds. It's not in learning to read into your counterparts bets. It's in cheating.
Not the hack-the-server-to-see-everyone's-cards cheating, or reverse engineering their randomization algorithms. It's in playing 6 players on a 10-hand table and having everyone know what everyone else has.
The odds on your pocket jacks suddenly go way down once you know one of your other players has a jack. Also, you are able to control the table much more effectively with many people acting as one. Joe-sixpack might call you for $10 with his board pair, but he is much less likely if it's going to cost him $40. Also, when you know you have the winning cards, you can milk the rest of the players by raising once around the table and raising after your targets have called.
The game is entirely different and there are numerous other rulesets and strategies you can employ when you have more knowledge about the cards on the table than other people.
Sure, a "good" poker player can beat a bot or a statistical player any day of the week. However, the best player out there can't beat an entire table sharing information and playing for the same goal. Yes, the online casinos try and detect this collusion and generally the worst they do is ban players from playing together at the same table. I'm sure many Slashdoters can figure out how you get around any type of detection the casinos can through out.
I know I did.
Playing against all these morons who go all in with no remorse is no fun. They just run and refil their account. I just can't stand parting with my money to play for real cash more than a couple times to check it out. Online play jsut doesn't play like real poker, against real humans you can look at.
Online you have to resort to how fast they bet on a hand, and other suddle hints, but that may just be lag. In person you have body language. Holdem just doesn't translate well to the internet.
Why have you stopped playing?
I never started - online gambling, that is. I live in North Carolina, where draconian laws prohibit gambling (even private poker games and sports pools - as our newspapers helpfully remind us every time a major sports tournament is upcoming). So I gamble when I travel, because I love to play blackjack and craps. I've won a little bit of money here and there over the years - $50-100 at a time, nothing major, and it's fun because I know how to play sensibly.
However, we do have one casino, of sorts, in NC - on the Cherokee reservation in the western part of the state. But I have never gone there and I never will, for the same reason I will never gamble online.
Because instead of standard table games - with real cards, actual dice, etc. - there are only computers and video-poker style games at Cherokee. And as much as I love technology, I don't trust it for gambling. At. All. There are just too many possibilities to manipulate the outcome.
Granted, anyone can learn to cheat at dealing cards; there are ways to make loaded dice and fixed slot machines (I don't play slots either). But the big, legal brick-and-mortar casinos around the country, with standard table games, have a bigger measure of responsibilty. You can still lose your ass playing there.
But those casinos depend on their reputations to survive; in my experience, if you think there's a problem or an inconsistancy with a game, you can have it addressed immediately and thoroughly.
Try that with a gaming website based on a Pacific island.
Because most people play poker for the social aspects. Yes, there are "pro" poker players who play to win, but most guys are just playing it to have fun with their friends, while talking shop over a cold beer, with a bowl of chips and dip at hand, and the wives out of sight for a few hours. The winner walks away with maybe 40$ at the end of the night, but has to host the next poker party... and thus the cycle continues.
Most people don't want to play poker for high stakes - they don't have the money to stay in the very high games, and they don't really want to loose it all in one game. They just want to play for the fun of it, and doing it with little drawn cartoon avatars isn't nearly as entertaining as doing it with your best buds.
Once the novelty wore off, those who actually want to play online poker are very few....
Tepp
It's not that there's a lack of suckers, it's that the suckers are already all taken.
It's not a question of losing ppl, it's a question of finding new ppl. Kind of like AOL - they can keep going forever, until the supply of n00bs runs out.
Eventually, they'll figure out how to wire ppl up, and then everyone who gets easily addicted to that sort of thing will die off, and evolution will move on.
--LWM
With all the poker-bots and it being morally indefensible to allow suckers to keep their money, it stands to reason there is only a finite number of suckers, and even if there's a new one every minute, it takes suckers longer than a handfull of minutes to scrape togther enough money to get taken to the cleaners often enough to prop up such an industry.
I still don't understand why online poker is so damn popular - any game where the odds can be calculated with any degree of accuracy is ideal fodder for bots, which can patiently calculate hands until the heat death of the universe. Unfortunately US gambling laws prevent Americans from using sports betting sites like http://www.betfair.com/, which matches up bets between users, and though there are plenty of bots there they can't fleece people like poker bots because it's impossible to work out accurate odds for, say, Liverpool coming back from 3-0 down at half time to win the Champion's League.
Last month, my photoblog has received about 5000 comment and referral spam from that industry. I don't even read Wil Weaton anymore because he keeps reminding me of those morons.
...you also have to trust ALOT of anonymous players. At any given table, any number of players can be communicating their hands to each other, tilting the pot and the stakes heavily in their favor.
That's why I mostly play multi-table tournaments. Players are assigned randomly to tens (sometimes hundreds) of tables. There's no way a colluding group can be big enough to have more than one or two players per table.
I could see possibly playing a $5 tournament or two online on a down night, but for the most part I'd really rather go hang out with real human beings. And as an added bonus, when you play an offline tournament you don't have to deal with the prepubescent dweebies that seem to hang out on the online poker rooms.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Aye, I didn't see much of anything about players of profit. It mentioned one's growth slowed to 4% per MONTH. The other companies were only mentioned as per stock prices dropping quite a bit. I don't know what 4 bil pounds (it was pounds,no?) comes to, but it sounds like alot and a correction doesnt seem unreasonable.
:)
Nowhere did i see they were losing money or even customers, only that new people weren't joining in droves as before. Not like some astronomical growth rate is gonna go on forever. Pretty sure the number of internet users doesn't grow at 50%/year so at the rates they had (over 50%/year apparently) aren't you gonna run out of internet users at some point even if we all played and kept playing?
slashdot, the home of irrelevent recaps and run-on sentences
It constantly amazes me how quick people are to post theories about why they think online poker is on the down. None of these people have obviously spent much more time than reading the headline to come up with these "+5 insightful" theories. As the parent poster correctly points out, the only thing slowing down is Party Poker's growth, not online poker in general. The poker craze is so big, dozens of sites, many endorsed by big named professionals, have entered the market. The market has become more competitive, and Party Poker is not the only trusted name in town anymore.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I played about a month ago... Turned $200 into $15 into $500. So I was happy. It was fun. The problem? Although it was mighty quick to deposit and give them money, it took 20 days to GET my money. I had to confirm my account, send a photo ID, call them and verify via phone, and then wait a 5 day "penalty period" (read: try to get you to keep playing), and then 3 days for the actual transfer and another day to clear. Give me a break. It's just not worth it. Consumers value liquidity -- especially if times get tough or if you're in a rush to contribute to the Red Cross. I used vegasred, by the way..
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
still don't understand why online poker is so damn popular - any game where the odds can be calculated with any degree of accuracy is ideal fodder for bots, which can patiently calculate hands until the heat death of the universe.
That's such a minor thing in poker that it really doesn't make a difference. A good player can estimate the odds and probabilities in a few seconds close enough to matter for most hands, and within a minute or so in others. It's actually putting a percentage next to possible hands for the opponent that the bot can't do well at all, and will therefor always lose to a good human player. In no-limit games against good players that's much more true than in limit games against a mediocre crowd, mind you, since big blunders will cost the bot less, and "statistically correct" plays will win more often than not in a large group of average players.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
the only thing that would keep someone from gambling is intelligence
luckily, there is a permanent shortage of that in the world, so online gambling has a rosy future
It's worth pointing out that poker, unlike blackjack or roulette where you play against the house, is purely against other players. The poker house takes a percentage called the 'rake'. You only have to be marginally above average to compensate for this. Competing players don't have unlimited pockets unlike a casino, also eliminating this advantage.
As for lacking intelligence, those that invest in real estate are similarly short sighted. Even more of a gamble as they have to make up for stamp duty and capital gains tax. And those that deal in stock and shares of currency dealings are equally foolish.
Your cliche may have held up a few of decades ago, when you took up a professions early in your teenage years and then were guaranteed the same job until your retirement, but in today's world learning to manage risk is a vital skill. Those that don't learn will hang on to your dogma but will then bemoan the fact that their (rapidly diminishing) state pension isn't enough to support them. Sorry to be blunt but being in the position myself I have to be honest. Online poker has taught me so much about risk management that my education failed to do. It's an important life skill.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Funny thing is, Exxon Mobil just published their biggest profit EVER.
I'm much more amazed that people are surprized by this considering who's running this country.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
You're right, but then if I was running a poker bot I wouldn't let it anywhere near the high stakes games with good players. I'd have it roaming the small-fry tables with casual players, and clean up on the margins. Even if it only makes a few percent profit by playing conservatively, if I run it 24hrs a day it'll soon add up, at the direct expense of the 'average' players.
This "statistically correct play" you people on yammering about doesn't really exist outside the fantasies of game theorists modelling two-player game.
Bots only play as well as the humans designing them are at describing good play explicitly. And all humans suck at doing that.
Come on people, stock performance often has NOTHING to do with the actual performance of a product. Growth gcould be exponential, and stock prices can drop through the floor, especially right now, with stockholders being extremely skittish.