Poker Talk: Playing the Twitch Card

On Monday a new item appeared in The New Yorker highlighting the growing popularity of Twitch streams by online poker players, in particular focusing on Jason Somerville’s remarkably rapid ascent to become the one of the site’s top stars.

The article -- “Can Live Streaming Save the Poker Industry?” by Cameron Tung -- does a good job contextualizing Somerville’s Twitch tale within the larger narrative of online poker’s quick rise in popularity during the mid-2000s and even more sudden drop-off post-Black Friday (especially here in the United States). Somerville’s own poker career of course directly reflects that surrounding story.

Like a lot of us, Somerville first got into poker in a big way post-Moneymaker, and like a decent percentage of that group made a career out of playing online that also came to include frequent excursions to play live events. And like a relatively small percentage of that group, he enjoyed significant success both online and live, earning him some renown within the community surrounding the game.

Black Friday then forced Somerville and all other U.S.-based online poker players to reevaluate their relationship to the game, and as we know Somerville eventually found a very creative -- and ultimately profitable -- option to pursue with his YouTube vids and eventual move onto Twitch.

It’s a short, easy read and as I say presents both Somerville’s story and the overall situation vis-à-vis poker in the United States ca. 2003 to the present fairly well. The only thing I really wonder about it is the question posed by the headline (which as we know sometimes isn’t the writer’s responsibility).

Tung points out -- drawing on PokerScout as a source -- that as far as online poker is concerned, “the global market has fallen off by more than half” since Black Friday. He thereby sets up a conclusion speculating about the “market” of online poker going forward and what impact Twitch (and, importantly, legislation) might have upon future growth.

I guess the headline makes it sound like online poker (or even poker in general) has reached a kind of crisis point and is in need of “saving,” which doesn’t quite seem to describe the current situation accurately. While hardly thriving as it did before (when the number of players was doubling every year, as the article points out), the “poker industry” doesn’t seem in danger of failing altogether just yet. Nor does that seem something likely to happen anytime soon, either. (I speak largely from the sidelines, from a country not presently part of the “market” upon which we’re focusing.)

Anyhow, the article -- the second poker-related piece within a couple of months in The New Yorker (with a poem about poker appearing within that stretch, too) -- is worth a look and as I say presents poker in a knowledgeable and even favorable way via Somerville’s story.

Ultimate Poker NJ Busts Out

The Atlantic City story this year has been something else, with four of the 12 casinos on the Boardwalk having already closed and a fifth one -- the Trump Taj Mahal -- having announced that it will likely follow suit in November.

When first hearing about the Taj possibly closing it did cross my mind that Ultimate Poker’s New Jersey site would have to find itself a new casino with which to align in order to continue in the Garden State. In New Jersey the land-based casinos get “online gambling permits” and can then partner up with technology providers who also are licensed to operate in the state. UP was the platform for Trump Taj Mahal Associates, meaning that without them Ultimate would need to partner with another casino in order to continue.

That ain’t happenin’, obviously. Late Friday the news arrived that Ultimate Gaming was both terminating its agreement with Trump Taj Mahal Associates and ceasing operations in the state (while continuing in Nevada). Their press release cited “multiple breaches” by the Trump group precipitating the break-up, the declaration of bankruptcy by TTMA a couple of weeks ago and listing of Fertitta Acquisitions (parent company of Ultimate Gaming) as a creditor owed nearly $1.5 million suggesting an obvious one.

Just two days later -- at 11:59 p.m. ET last night -- it was all over for Ultimate Poker as the New Jersey site stopped dealing hands. Players are now being told to cash out their funds, which represents one small silver lining when compared to the shutdowns of other, non-regulated sites in the past and subsequent troubles players have had retrieving their funds from them.

Of course, there wasn’t a heckuva lot happening at the Ultimate Poker New Jersey site, anyway. A week ago I was writing here about the Party Borgata site and the snafu it had during the Garden State Super Series. That got me curious about how the NJ sites were doing, and so I visited PokerScout last week and saw that while the Party site and WSOP.com’s NJ site both had 300-400 cash players (or thereabouts), Ultimate Poker had practically no one playing at all -- like just a table or two, if I recall.

Ultimate’s NJ casino site was apparently doing fairly well, earning half a milly per month in revenue. But nothing much was happening on the poker side, which makes the site’s swift closure decidedly less dramatic.

UP is doing better in Nevada, although has been behind WSOP.com’s Nevada site since shortly after the latter went online almost exactly one year ago. And the traffic in Nevada is only a fraction of what’s happening in New Jersey at the moment, making all of the numbers there very modest all around.

I have never played a hand on Ultimate Poker, having looked into it last summer while in Nevada but deciding not to bother with the hassles involved with getting up and running on the site. The fact that they still have no Mac-based client is kind of amazing, really, and has to be an obstacle that virtually ensures the site will never become more than a very minor player versus any competition whatsoever. (That screenshot is from the page that says -- just as it has for the last year-and-a-half -- that the Mac client is “in the works.”)

Speaking of, as I mentioned last week PokerStars is poised to enter New Jersey via the Amaya Gaming Group who hold a license in the state -- possibly within the next couple of weeks. And expectations are the site should easily outstrip all others immediately in terms of traffic, and in fact will become an interesting test case to see just how well a single-state site might be able to thrive.

In any case, the slow-moving start to “online poker 2.0” in the U.S. continues, moving much like a very slow-structured tournament with the stakes being almost trivial (relatively speaking). And, of course, the occasional bustouts.

Online Poker in the New Year

Been perusing some of the “Top Stories of 2013” lists on the various poker sites, including PokerNews where the reintroduction of online poker in the U.S. claimed the top spot on the list. The only other online poker-related story to make that list was the one concerning the process finally getting started for Americans who played on Full Tilt Poker to petition for the return of their funds (#4).

Of the 10 “most read poker articles” on Pocket Fives during 2013 (presented in two parts: 6-10 and 1-5), none really had to do with online poker.

PokerListings did a list of “The 20 Best Moments in Poker in 2013” (20-16, 15-11, 10-6, 5-1), five of which concerned online poker: “Isildur1 Wins SCOOP $10k Main Event” (#20), “Online Poker Becomes Inclusive to Rec Players” (#13), “Moorman Hits $10m in Career Online Earnings” (#7), “US Full Tilt Poker Player Claims Processed” (#3), and “Online Poker Returns to US” (#1). They also threw in the release of the BET RAISE FOLD documentary (#15), which chronicles online poker’s glory days.

Meanwhile on PL’s list of “The 20 Worst Moments in Poker in 2013” (20-16, 15-11, 10-6, 5-1) six had to do with online poker: “WSOP Fails to Get Online Poker Running by Main Event” (#12), “Delays Continue in Never-Ending durrrr Challenge” (#11), “Full Tilt Poker Remission Process Drags On” (#8), “PokerStars Does Not Get NJ Approval” (#6), “Sheldon Adelson Takes Aim at Poker” (#2), and “Gus Hansen Posts Epic $8.4 Million Loss” (#1).

And of BLUFF’s Top 10 videos of the year (by the great SrslySirius) just one concerned online poker -- a funny satire about the “rogue” U.S. sites presented as a “Shamelessly Honest Online Poker Ad” -- not that the format really lends itself to reports focusing on the online game. Though it does lend itself readily to lots of grins (check all of ‘em out).

(Have to say I’ve yet to listen to the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast’s episode recounting their Top 10 list of poker stories from 2013 -- I’m looking forward to seeing how Mike and Adam constructed their list.)

Glancing at PokerScout’s rankings of online poker traffic here at the start of 2014, PokerStars predictably continues to reign supreme with about eight times the traffic of the nearest competitors with the iPoker network -- which includes sites like William Hill Poker and others -- currently leading the chase pack.

Searching the rankings for U.S.-facing sites, Bodog/Bovada continues to find a place in the upper half of the list (according to PokerScout’s best estimates). But all of the others are unsurprisingly way, way down the page, with traffic in the hundreds (or tens).

I suppose comparing these lists could be said to highlight the American-centric nature of the poker news sites (or at least the ones I tend to visit). In terms of people actually playing online poker, there aren’t too many Americans doing so. Thus stories about online poker have become predictably scarcer on the news sites on which Americans do a lot of the writing and reading. (Indeed, that the return of online poker in the U.S. has topped some lists indicates as much as well.)

That said, it’s interesting also to think about how online poker has moved away from the center of the poker world over the last several years, in particular since Black Friday. I haven’t gone back to see, but I’d wager most “top poker stories” from a few years ago were related to online poker in at least a tangential way, with the online game seemingly affecting just about every aspect of the game not that long ago.

But now online poker is over to the side, big picture-wise. Will be interesting to see if it ever returns to the center, and if so whether that happens sooner or later.

Faraway Poker

While in Macau last week, we were all mindful of the reopening of Full Tilt Poker that happened Tuesday, November 6. There was even a minor buzz in the poker room at the moment FTP’s cash tables opened up, with people mentioning it to one another and wondering aloud about transferring money to and from their PokerStars’ accounts.

I called up the newly updated client on my laptop, actually, and a few of us looked in briefly as players began to take seats at the money tables. For us it was the evening, with the final table of the Asia Championship of Poker Warm-Up event going on before us. That was the final table featuring Johnny Chan (who finished seventh) and Joseph Cheong (who took third), with the Australian Jeff Rossiter eventually winning later that night.

I watched the number of players starting to climb a little -- not overly dramatically, but certainly increasing -- then closed the client. And really, I pretty much forgot all about Full Tilt Poker the rest of the week.

Looking at PokerScout today, I see that according to their tabulations Full Tilt has swiftly moved back into second position behind PokerStars as far as cash players are concerned, with about a third the number they are counting at PokerStars’ real money tables.

A couple of “Sunday majors” played out on the site last weekend (tourneys with $50K and $200K guarantees). Viktor “Isildur1” Blom -- now an FTP-sponsored pro -- is back on there vying for six-figure pots again on the $50/$100 PLO tables. And the FTOPS XXI schedule has been announced -- 35 tourneys totaling $7.5 million in guarantees starting in early December.

Meanwhile as far as FTP is concerned, we Americans piddle around on the free money tables, wonder about our balances (which now read “$0.00”), and read less-than-inspiring missives from the Poker Players Alliance regarding the DOJ-managed return of our balances.

According to the PPA, there is no timeline in place at present as far as the U.S. players’ return of funds is concerned. Says PPA Executive Director John Pappas who has been meeting with DOJ officials about it all, the “completion of a refund claims process is a long way away.”

Apparently a “third-party claims administrator” needs to be found -- with possible entities bidding on the right to assume that duty -- before anything else can happen, and even there no date has been set for when such an administrator will be put in place.

Over on PokerFuse, Dave Ferrara wrote a piece about “FTP Hoopla From Afar: A U.S. Player’s Perspective on the Relaunch” in which he wistfully laments being kept on the sideline amid the excited tweets, forum posts, and articles regarding FTP’s return.

Indeed, the “hoopla” tends only to accentuate the already well established feeling of powerlessness felt by the U.S. online poker player -- unable to play, wholly dependent on others for the recovery of lost funds, and with still uncertain future prospects for playing the so-called “American game” of poker online.

It almost seemed weirdly appropriate to have been 8,000-plus miles from home to watch Full Tilt Poker’s relaunch of cash games. As Ferrara’s choice of headline suggests, it does feel as though FTP 2.0 is all happening from “afar.”

Meanwhile, the return of our FTP funds is a “a long way away.” And for Americans, our regular playing of online poker is quickly receding into a distant past, perhaps to return at point -- unknown as yet -- in the future.

Stop Counting Me! Bodog vs. PokerScout

Here’s something sorta curious.

You might’ve heard how just a week or so ago Bodog changed its software so as to make it more difficult for tracking sites and those interested in “datamining” to do their thing. The site removed full tables from being listed in the lobby, thus making it harder to see at a glance what’s happening on the site.

Other sites have it set up as an optional feature to remove full tables from the lobby view, but now on Bodog you can’t see ’em even if you wanted to. As I understand it, they’ve also gotten rid of waitlists, too.

I report this somewhat second-handedly, as I haven’t really been on the Bodog site for quite some time. I used to play on it regularly, but long ago pulled my money from the site. I sometimes wish now that I’d left a pittance on there with which to mess around. But to be honest, when I thought of the possible futures for the sites on which I was then playing -- PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Bodog -- for a long time it seemed like the latter was the most likely to be the most risky on which to leave money thanks to its inclusion of sports betting.

In any case, I’ve heard the dataminers are starting to find ways to work around this new obstacle, but I’m not up on the specifics. Meanwhile PokerScout, the site that provides traffic info on all the online sites, found itself momentarily thwarted by Bodog’s new system and thus unable to track numbers. A story on PokerFuse from last week described the changes at Bodog as well as how they were affecting PokerScout’s ability to track Bodog’s traffic.

Apparently PokerScout was also able to overcome the new challenge and start reporting numbers again for Bodog, but meanwhile a brouhaha has developed between the two sites. I first noticed this conflict via some tweets between the two, then early this morning Bodog fired a fairly inflammatory-sounding shot via an article on Bodog owner Calvin Ayre’s site titled “PokerScout.com’s Extortion Attempt.”

It should be noted that articles appearing on Ayre’s site are occasionally of dubious origin and/or intention, many of them existing as fairly obvious SEO-grabs presented under the superficial auspices of news reports or editorials. Thus do I always find myself reading articles there with a measure of skepticism, knowing that they are often necessarily self-interested and/or biased in one way or another.

This article stands out, however, as it not only comments (negatively) on PokerScout’s efforts to track Bodog’s traffic, but flat out accuses PokerScout of trying to extort money from Bodog.

Say wha?

When making the change last week, Bodog explicitly referred (in another article) to its desire to stop PokerScout from keeping count of its players (which, it ought to be noted, is markedly different from the full-fledged datamining performed by other sites). In “The Death of the Poker Volume Tracking Model,” Bodog argued that since PokerScout “serve[d] no beneficial purpose to the poker industry other than to feed the sharks” with its data, Bodog wanted to help the non-sharks by keeping PokerScout from filing its reports.

As mentioned, PokerScout was nonetheless able to keep on tracking Bodog’s traffic, or at least that is what they claimed. As PokerScout explained (in an article posted yesterday), they are still able to estimate traffic at Bodog and thus are keeping the site listed. Also noted there was the fact that Bodog was the only online poker site that had ever asked PokerScout not to track their traffic, a request with which PokerScout decided not to comply.

In today’s missive, Bodog notes that in fact there were two reasons why they had earlier asked to be removed from PokerScout’s listings.

First was that desire to protect the non-sharks or “recreational poker players” whom Bodog claims are somehow being hurt by the information PokerScout provided. “The second reason,” explains Bill Beatty in today’s calvinayre.com article, is “the US Department of Justice had just indicted the top 3 poker sites listed in the PokerScout.com rankings.”

To be honest, I understand the second reason a lot more than I do the first. Sounds like Bodog would like to grow, but would also like for no one to notice they are growing, thus perhaps helping them continue evade being targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“It wasn’t a time where poker companies wanted to raise their profile,” continues Beatty. “It might have been putting a huge target on their chests. Potentially if Stars, Tilt and AP/UB had not been sitting at the top of these ranking sites, who knows if the DOJ would have had such a hard on to take them down.”

Beatty is being more than a little disingenuous here, I’d say. Stars, Full Tilt, and UB/AP had a pretty high profile even without PokerScout’s reports. Indeed, I think it would have been a pretty simple matter for anyone to conclude those sites were the four biggest worldwide back in April -- and by far the biggest U.S.-facing sites -- even if PokerScout didn’t exist.

In any case, then comes the bombshell from Beatty when he claims PokerScout said they would remove Bodog from the listings in return for “a seven figure extortion payment” which Bodog ultimately refused to pay.

PokerScout has tweeted a response that appears to deny the accusation. “More lies about PokerScout coming from the Bodog-mouthpiece website,” was the message. “What a surprise. So disappointing.”

Here comes Bodog, making a pretty serious accusation against PokerScout, characterizing the traffic-tracking site as having engaged in “unethical and potentially criminal behaviour” (i.e., the alleged extortion attempt). Meanwhile, Bodog continues to serve U.S. customers, thus subjecting itself to similar accusations from certain parties, including those who are in a position to do something about what they interpret to be “criminal behaviour.”

Like I say, sorta curious.

Getting harder to count how many are playing on Bodog, I guess. Meanwhile, in the poker world, it is becoming easier to count on such conflicts cropping up, not to mention increasingly weird ideas of what is and what is not “unethical.”

The Urge to Merge; or, Zero to Hero

Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of “Black Friday,” the day the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed its indictment and civil complaint against the two biggest online poker sites in the world (PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker) and the third-biggest one then serving the U.S. (Absolute Poker/UltimateBet).

While some Americans have (incredibly) continued to play on AP/UB despite being no longer able to withdraw (see Friday’s post), both Stars and Full Tilt quickly ceased allowing us Yanks to sit at the real money games. Stars has already facilitated the withdrawal of funds by U.S. players, and by now most have done so. I mentioned on Friday how I’d requested a paper check from Stars and received it last week (about two weeks after I’d requested it).

Meanwhile, Full Tilt continues to drag its feet, issuing yet another announcement yesterday in the form of a thread-starting post on Two Plus Two misleadingly titled “FTP Answers 5/15.” (The “answers” also appear over on the FTP FAQ page for U.S. players.)

There “FTPDoug” passes along the site’s statement that they continue to work “tirelessly” to ensure both the return of funds to U.S. players and the continued operation of the site for non-U.S. folks. However, the announcement gave no indication of when exactly Americans would be allowed to withdraw, stating only that FTP “underestimated the time it would take to work through” the unspecified “issues” that are hindering their efforts and that Full Tilt “will update our US players when [they] have more specific information to provide.”

Not good. Especially for the many pros, full-timers, and shot-takers who had planned to enter WSOP events with money they currently have tied up on Full Tilt.

FTPDoug goes on to say that U.S. players will soon be able to use their FTP points to purchase items in the Full Tilt Store again -- currently we cannot -- but will only be able to buy merchandise, not cash bonuses or (obviously) tourney tickets. Interestingly, PokerStars also allowed U.S. players to use their FPP points, though restricted us to exchanging them for cash, not allowing the purchase of any of the other products.

This, too, is a bad sign, I think, perhaps further indicating Full Tilt Poker doesn’t have the funds available to allow Americans to cash out. On the other hand, FTP may well have an abundance of teddy bears and key chains.

Meanwhile, U.S. players like me who only had funds on Stars or Full Tilt have been mostly waiting on the sidelines over the last month, perhaps jumping in the odd play money game here and there and/or starting to explore the other remaining options available to us.

At the moment the Merge network of sites has become the most popular for U.S. players. According to Poker Scout, Merge, though still miniscule when compared to Stars and FTP, saw its traffic increase by 77% from April 15 to May 9. That makes Merge more than twice as popular as Bodog or the Cake Poker Network, both of which also still take U.S. players.

I have a Bodog account, though it is presently empty and I haven’t played a hand over there in many months. I did open accounts on the Merge network since April 15 -- one on Carbon and another on Hero Poker. Just for kicks I opened one over at Sportsbook.com (another Merge site), too, before they shut their doors to new U.S. players on May 1.

Since these are “skins” sharing the same network (and thus the same player pool), it isn’t possible for me to play on more than one of these accounts at a time. The sites look and feel very similar, although there are small differences here and there, including the various promotions each offer.

I did spend a little bit of time looking into depositing (at Carbon and also Bodog), but didn’t pursue it very far. It certainly looked like I could get it done, but like many recreational players I wasn’t too interested in taking the extra steps. Not just yet, anyway.

So I piddled around playing some of the daily freerolls on Merge. I was playing on Carbon, although you can play these from any skin. About 2,500 enter these, and you have to make the top 24 to cash, so the odds aren’t great. Actually I think you have to make the top four to earn any actual cash, as the other spots only reward tourney tickets.

I’ve mentioned already how I managed to min-cash in one of these, a H.O.R.S.E. tourney, earning a $2.20 ticket that could only be used in a six-max SNG. There I finished second, for which I earned one real dollar. With still very limited options, I managed to lose most of that at a $0.02/$0.04 LHE table, then won a little back in a $0.06 tourney. All of which is to say my “roll” on Carbon is now a cool 45 cents.

Meanwhile I unexpectedly had a couple of opportunities over the weekend to play in some pretty lucrative freerolls on Merge sites -- one on Carbon and the other on Hero Poker.

I signed up for Carbon through Poker Source Online, thinking I’d eventually take advantage of a bonus they were offering once I finally deposited. When I logged on Saturday, I discovered I had a ticket to play in a special freeroll that afternoon just for new PSO folks, one with $2,500 prize pool. I joined the tourney -- a turbo-style NLHE event -- and was surprised to find only 34 players had registered. The top five spots paid, with $200 going to fifth and a cool grand to the winner!

Like I say, it was a turbo tourney, and so after the first few levels it quickly became an all-in-or-fold affair. I managed to hit a couple of hands early, and in fact enjoyed the chip lead with 20 left. I was still leader when it had gotten down to 15 or so when a hand arose in which I was dealt A-K. A super short-stack had pushed for about 2,000, then there was another reraise all-in for about 5,000 when the action got to me. I had about 15K at the time, and went ahead and reraised over the top. As it happened, the fellow with 5K had pocket aces, and so I slipped to 10K.

Some more misfortune ensued at the final table, and with seven left I found myself one of the two short stacks, watching the other five happily folding their way to the money. Ended up pushing my five-BB stack with K-10-suited to get bounced in seventh. Was kicking myself afterwards, mentally second-guessing whether or not I would’ve made the money had I turtled up earlier.

By Sunday I’d gotten over that missed opportunity, though it was still fresh in my mind when I joined another nifty freeroll in the afternoon, this one on Hero Poker. It was for U.S. players only, and featured a $30,000 prize pool. The top 300 finishers would each receive $100 plus a bonus to earn $100 more with player points. In the end, I think the six-handed NLHE event drew something close to 1,200 entrants, which meant more than a quarter of us would be making the money.

It also featured a nice, slow structure with 15-minute levels, which was good for me since it took me a good hour-and-a-half or more to get anything going in terms of collecting chips. Had built up some, then lost a meaningful chunk when somebody outdrew me with 5-3 versus my pocket nines. At one point I was down around 1,000 -- just a third of the starting stack -- when for the first time I checked the lobby to see the standings. I chuckled to see I was almost dead last, in 394th with exactly 400 players left.

Soon after that I luckily won an all-in with versus . Then I had some more good fortune when I rivered a full house in a BB-special scenario, allowing me to double up again.

I won a couple more small ones, then came a big hand in which an opponent with a big stack -- one of the top 10 at the time, I think -- minimum-raised from UTG and I called from the blinds with K-Q. The flop came K-K-3, and I check-called a smallish c-bet. The turn was a queen, and I checked again. My opponent bet about half the pot, I pushed, and he called with pocket aces. The river blanked and I was up over 10,000, which put me in about 110th with 350 players left.

My stack was above average, and while I wasn’t 100% sure I had the chips to do so, having the experience from the day before in mind I decided it was time to shut it down and start folding.

Early on I folded A-K, wincing a little as I did. I’d fold A-Q shortly after that. Then I folded A-K one more time. I folded a load of laundry during that stretch, too. Hell, I would’ve folded whatever you put in front of me -- paper, napkins, an omelet, you name it.

Turned out to be the right call, as I still had about 5K when a player went out in 301st. The tourney still played out, and I joked a little in chat with my neighbor on my left who had been short-stacked throughout the bubble period and in real danger of missing the money. “I’ll admit it,” I typed. “I tightened up my range there just a tad at the end,” as if folding 50-odd hands in a row hadn’t communicated that clearly enough. He responded with smiley faces -- the Merge games offer an amusing variety of them -- and something about being glad I did.

Yesterday’s tournament also featured something I’d never seen before on a site -- tourney-wide announcements that appeared as a speech bubble emanating from the small Hero icon on my Mac’s menu bar. Early on there were some jokes and welcome messages, then towards the end some timely announcements about how many players were left. I liked it, and found myself thinking about how more could be done with such a feature.

So now I have a bankroll, of sorts -- a hundy on Hero, plus a few coins on Carbon. I have to say I do like the interface at Merge. I’ve also used the live chat support a few times, which is a pretty cool feature for a site to have, too.

We’ll see how it all goes over there moving forward. Am nowhere close to that comfortable spot I was in pre-Black Friday when it comes to playing online, as I imagine is the case for most U.S. players. But for now I’m glad to be back in the game, even if only in a small way.

Hot and Cold

Was playing over on PokerStars yesterday afternoon when the site suddenly became inordinately sluggish. Eventually a message popped up in the chat box saying the site was experiencing “internet routing problems.”

At the time, I was at a six-handed pot-limit Omaha table. I’d started the session well, nearly doubling my buy-in early on after drawing out a straight to beat a player’s flopped set. After that hand, my opponent, MisterBlister, had rebought and I could tell he was angling to get into another big confrontation with me, but no opportunities had arisen for that to happen. At some point before the slowdown began to occur, the other players had left one by one, leaving just me and MisterBlister.

I have gotten into the habit of sticking around whenever that happens, as I generally feel pretty comfortable with heads-up play, whereas I suspect a lot of players of ring games tend not to prefer to play against a lone opponent. We rapidly traded small pots, and I could sense my revenge-seeking opponent was burning to find some hand with which to create a bigger pot. From my perspective, it was shaping up to be a good trapping opportunity, and so I, too, was lying in wait, hoping to pounce on an overeager opponent.

But then the slowdown started, made all the more noticeable because we were heads-up. Eventually it was taking a half-minute or more for the next hand to be dealt, and after we acknowledged to one another in the chat box that the site had indeed slowed, MisterBlister and I left, perhaps to renew our battle some other day.

Made me think a little about “hot” and “cold” players or play -- that is to say, the way some players sometimes appear to us as either desirous for action and thus more willing to take risks than most (“hot”) or purposefully avoiding conflict and especially risk averse (“cold”).

Players can distinguish themselves these ways quite dramatically in PLO -- perhaps more obviously so than in hold’em. There are those who “heat up” and start betting pot again and again, regardless of position or holdings. Then there are those who seem almost frozen, afraid ever to raise preflop under any circumstances, check-calling big flopped hands, etc. I even saw a dude check behind with quads the other day on a double-paired board -- no shinola!

Anyhow, MisterBlister certainly seemed “hot” to me -- and perhaps I did to him, too -- but we both cooled off quickly when the site began slowing down.

I noted just at the start of the slowdown that the site had about 195,000 total players (including play money), and marveled to see that figure dip down to 90,000 within just a few minutes. Soon, however, Stars corrected the problem and just like that was back up over 200,000 players. I ended up tripping over to Full Tilt Poker where I played another short session before signing off. Realized I am probably playing about 90% of the time on PokerStars these days, only looking to take a seat elsewhere when something like yesterday’s glitch occurs.

Glancing over at PokerScout, I see Stars continues to be the most popular site by a significant margin. In its tracking of real money ring game players, the site lists PokerStars as having averaged 26,000 cash game players over the last week. Full Tilt is next with 15,400, followed by three sites/networks that are not available to Americans, the iPoker Network (5,600), PartyPoker (5,300), and the Ongame Network (2,850).

Looking at other sites that are available to us Yanks, the Cereus Network (Absolute Poker and UltimateBet) is in sixth place (2,550), Cake Poker is in 10th (1,840), and Bodog has slipped to 14th (averaging just 890 cash players over the last week).

Pretty simple to see why I’m always on PokerStars -- it is definitely the “hot” site right now, while the others (especially Bodog) have turned relatively “cold.” Always plenty of six-handed PLO25 tables for me to join at Stars, whereas Bodog often only has one or two going, if that.

Of course -- as Bill Rini noted last month in a post titled “Is Online Poker Really Doing Well?” -- it is easy to get carried away with looking at the numbers of players, a figure which he says doesn’t necessarily tell us much at all about the overall health of a given site. Rini discusses this trend in which the “big keep getting bigger and the small get smaller,” but also notes how being bigger doesn’t always mean becoming more profitable. Despite rising numbers on certain sites, the industry as a whole isn’t necessarily thriving these days, says Rini. (Check out his post for some of the reasons why he thinks this is so.)

Meanwhile, we Americans look with trepidation at the calendar as December 1 draws closer, the day that “designated financial systems” must begin complying with those finalized regulations of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. (Which, incidentally, then-President Bush signed into law exactly three years ago today.)

And hoping something happens to prevent the possible slowdown that might follow as the games (potentially) go “cold.”