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?"

Comments

Lack of Suckers

[ackthpt]

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.

My money's on the really big gambling:

• What I bought on eBay is what I actually get
• Living on top of a fault line
• Hope against evidence that the price of gas will actually go down with the increase in available crude (actual crude price increase in past year 66%, gasoline price increase over same period 132%, source BBC)
• One day my comic book collection may approach in sticker price value
• My donation to Katrina relief won't go into some fat-cat's pocket.

Besides, with the price of gas being so high who has money left to gamble?

Re:Lack of Suckers

[TexVex]

As someone who has been playing online poker since 2002, I can tell you firsthand that Wired's article paints a stark picture that makes things seem worse than they actually are. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that online poker completely lacks bots and cheats. Cheating is a problem with practically all sports and games. People do collude at "brick and mortar" poker tables as well.

Just like card rooms and casinos strive to make their games safe, so do online card rooms strive to detect and eliminate the bots. Their efforts include analysis (some automated, some done by real people) of people's play to find evidence of cheating. They punish the cheaters and do what they can to make reparations to the victims.

There are also problems with credit card fraud in online poker. Someone makes a huge deposit at an online card room, then passes chips to a partner in a high stakes heads up game. Partner cashes out. Original depositor defrauds credit institution by claiming identity theft, and the bank is stuck in a sticky spot. That problem has caused so much trouble that many big banks refuse to allow many kinds of transfers of funds to gaming sites.

I quit dealing with Party Poker over two years ago, because I thought their policies were too invasive of privacy and too restrictive on some simple issues. I have since played PokerStars and UltimateBet, and most recently Full Tilt. I haven't noticed any shrinkage in recent months. PokerStars is the biggest of those three; they have weekly $215 buy-in tournaments that continuously seat 3,500 players or more (yes, the total prize pool always exceeds their $150,000 guaranteed minimum). Their annual World Championship of Online Poker, just getting started for this year, is already breaking all of the records it itself set last year.

Also, in the non-online poker world, the World Series of Poker Main Event was nearly three times as large this year as it was last year; they had to break the first day of play up over three days, having 1/3 of the field play their first day each day. Only after that was the field small enough that they could fit everyone in the convention center used for the tournament at the same time.

All indications point towards poker still growing, and online poker is at least stable. Maybe if Party Gaming stock is losing value, it's for some other reason. If they are actually losign players, then maybe it's because their players are moving elsewhere.

Trust, Trend and Truth

[curtisk]

Trust: it's not only whether or not you can trust the site/service that hosts the games, but 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. Sure, there's some software out there that tries to catch those scenarios, based on the action and betting patterns, but it can't possibly catch half of it.

Trend: Poker in particular is very trendy, and like all trends, it will pass, some will stay, but most will go.

Truth: At some point you will realize that you are not the next incarnation of Chris Moneymaker and never will be. No easy path for you to riches and fame. If you really love playing, you'll probably stick it out over the long term and may "make it" at some point, but most people today want the quick fix and lose interest if their fortunes don't come quick enough. That and the realization that it takes ALOT of time of your day if you are attempting to be "profitable" playing online. Again, think its an easy fix, then reality and truth set in.

And if you play "play money" games and freeroll tourneys, LOL, thats not real on so many levels.