Cash game traffic numbers from New Jersey show that the second week of Pokerstars operations in the Garden State has again yielding encouraging results, with the online poker giant maintaining its lead in the dedicated market and averaging 160 ring game players a day according to statistics from the Pokerscout independent online poker monitor.
Over the past week Pokerstars has extended its lead over its closest rivals, with the 888Poker-WSOP alliance in second place with 140 cash game layers per 24 hours, and PartyPoker-Borgata in third place with a 95 player daily average.
It appears that Pokerstars has poached players as well as acquiring new punters; a month ago (before the Pokerstars debut) 888-WSOP was at 190 players and Party-Borgata at 140, indicating that both have lost a significant percentage of players.
Pokerstars reports that overall it appears that Pokerstars has boosted the New Jersey online market by an estimated 20 percent so far…New Jersey’s online poker sites combined now average 395 players, compared with the 330 recorded at the end of February.
In related news. Pokerscout reports that globally online poker sites in general experienced a drop in traffic (seven of the top ten sites had less cash game traffic than the preceding week, one was flat and two – MPN and iPoker – showed improvements).
Pokerstars remained the international top dog by a country mile with 17,000 players despite its announced rake hike, with 888Poker second on 2,300 players and iPoker third on 1,400.