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.

Maybe it's just this company

[gbulmash]

While Party-Gaming is having difficulties with retention and yield, it is quite possible that this is due to growing competition.

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.

Because gambling is ...

[waynegoode]

Perhaps people finally realized that gambling is a tax on greed and poor math skills.

Re:Because gambling is ...

[ranton]

You didnt understand what the GP post meant regarding the skill involved in Poker. Poker is different from most gambling because you are not playing against the dealer, you are playing against the other players. In almost any form of gambling you will eventually lose money because the odds are set by the casino. But the only thing you have to beat in online poker is the rake.

If you can win more money from your opponents than the casinos rakes in on each hand, then you WILL make money at poker. There are plenty of people who make a living off of poker. I know of two friends who are paying their way through college with online poker (one still gets over half of the money from student loans). I dont make that much money, but I havent ever had a stretch of more than a couple days where I havent increased my money online.

You CAN make money from playing poker, it is not gambling in the sense that you can beat the system in poker. You just have to have some skill, and a bank roll big enough to absorb losses from a few bad beats.

One Reason

[tktk]

Why have you stopped playing?

Maybe because the regular players have gone broke?

Gambling down?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

I stopped playing because...

[craXORjack]

My pokerbot started stinking up the house smoking those big stoagies, staying up for days at a time, using my credit cards on porn sites, having hookers come to the house, and drinking up all my liquor. Things just got out of hand.

Stock Market

[theNote]

This is the problem with companies going public that shouldn't.
The stock market is all about growth, not profit.
Have a compay that makes 100 billion trillion dollars a year?
Great, but next year you will have to make 200 billion trillion or else your stock will tank. Its not just about being profitable, stock is all about growth. If not you better pay one hell of a dividend.