{"id":45,"date":"2006-11-25T14:27:28","date_gmt":"2006-11-25T19:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dtrdev\/2006\/11\/25\/online-poker-playing-halved-in-october"},"modified":"2006-11-25T14:27:28","modified_gmt":"2006-11-25T19:27:28","slug":"online-poker-playing-halved-in-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/2006\/11\/25\/online-poker-playing-halved-in-october\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Poker Playing Halved in October"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Whatever you think<\/a>
\nof the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act’s (UIGEA)
\nmedium-to-long run impacts, the short run effects are clear. WaPo’s
\nblog reports<\/a>, “According to Nielsen\/NetRatings<\/b>, which tracks Web use, traffic to the top 10 Internet gambling sites dropped a staggering 56 percent in October” (via Iggy<\/a>).
\nPartyPoker, which promptly banned US players, apparently dropped from
\n7.5 million unique users in September to 2.5 million in October.<\/p>\n

In time, many players will likely turn to various work-arounds<\/a> or switch to sites like FullTilt and PokerStars so long as<\/a>
\nthey accept US players. But the switching costs aren’t solely
\nresponsible for the decrease in online poker playing. With online poker
\nand casino gambling booming before, sites like Party Poker were able to
\nliberally hand out bonuses to customers — free money just for signing
\nup or making a new deposit. These bonuses helped lure in new players or
\nbring back existing ones, and a larger playerbase meant they could
\nspread more games and increase the value of the site overall.<\/p>\n

Given the current uncertainty<\/a>,
\nI doubt these businesses can hand out large bonuses — at least, I
\ndon’t see any sites providing bonuses comparable to PartyPoker’s past
\noffers. In the short run, that’s also going to hurt businesses’ ability
\nto bring in players.<\/p>\n

See also: this interesting post at 2+2<\/a>, also via Iggy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever you think of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act’s (UIGEA) medium-to-long run impacts, the short run effects are clear. WaPo’s blog reports, “According to Nielsen\/NetRatings, which tracks Web use, traffic to the top 10 Internet gambling sites dropped a staggering 56 percent in October” (via Iggy). PartyPoker, which promptly banned US players, apparently dropped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1356],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dtrstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}