New Jersey Poker: 10 Days Later

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Saturday, December 7th, 2013 | Written by Adam Brown

10 days ago history was made in New Jersey when 6 casinos and online operators launched their intrastate poker sites. The following sites were the first to go live:

Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa (Bwin.Party)
Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort (Ultimate Poker)
Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino (Betfair)
Tropicana Casino and Resort (Gamesys)
Caesars Atlantic City (888)
Bally’s Atlantic City (888)

They soft launched on the 21^st so that the bugs could be worked out for their hard launch, which was set for November 26^th.

PokerStars wasn’t one of the rooms to launch because they were not able to secure their licensing in time. They’re still in talks with the NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement about their future in the Garden State.

Given that a few days has passed, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share some stats and what the first impressions of online poker in New Jersey has been.

Lets first start with the software.

Most problems that players experienced came during the soft launch. Players complained about things like timing out, trouble downloading the software, and making it past the location verification program. In fact, one player from Pocket Fives complained that he couldn’t get verified, even though he lived in the middle of the state.

That said, the most common complaint regarding the location verification software came from players living on or near the state border. Officials stated that this was just a matter of fine tuning the software, and that it’s being worked on as we speak.

Despite the issues with the geo-targeting, players from outside the state reportedly couldn’t find a way to play on a New Jersey site. Operators tested this using several different techniques (probably VPN / proxies), but failed to pass verification.

What did the traffic look like?

Although they got a 6 month late start compared to Nevada, New Jersey had an excellent turnout. More than 17,000 players signed up during the soft launch, and about 55,000 players signed up the following week. Granted, not all of those sign ups were from unique players; it’s expected that many players created accounts at more than one site.

Those are still impressive numbers regardless.

So are their daily statistics. Combined, they have seen a peak of nearly 850 players, which is twice that of Nevada. That shouldn’t be too big a surprise, though, given that the state of New Jersey is 3x the size of Nevada.

Were the players able to process payments smoothly?

Payment processing was as good as you could expect, given that credit card companies still need to be careful about who they process gambling payments for.

MasterCard ended up processing 8x more transactions than Visa did. Reportedly, players saw more success with direct bank transfers than credit cards.

Skrill (Moneybookers) also managed to go live in time for the launch. They’re the only e-wallet available to New Jersey players. They recently added an Android and iOS app for easier access.

Other banking alternatives passed on the launch. Popular e-wallet PayPal, as well as banks, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have stated that they will not be processing intrastate gambling payments for the time being.

So while the banking went ok, there is still room for improvement. I would expect this to get better as online poker matures over the next year or two.