US-Friendly Offshore Sites Outperforming The Regulated Poker Market

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Monday, June 1st, 2015 | Written by Lucy Brown

Each week continuing declines in the global online poker market are reported by tracking site PokerScout, but in the meantime the grey market continues to grow and outperforms its regulated equivalent. To put things into perspective, over the past two years the global .com iPoker market contracted by a worrying 23%, whist over that same period of time three of the most popular US-friendly offshore sites all noted growth in their online traffic, including Bodog up 43%, the Winning Poker Network (WPN) up 77%, and the Chico Poker Network up an impressive 125%. So what is behind their success? Is it simply because they now have a virtual monopoly over the huge US market, or has each of the different network’s achieved success through taking a more innovative approach than their regulated rivals.

Bodog’s Recreational Model

One of the ways in which Bodog has been able to gain an edge over its competitors is by pursuing an innovative recreational model which elevates the needs of inexperienced players above those of online grinders who make a living from the game. One such idea to allow recreational players to hold onto their money longer and get more entertainment from the game includes the introduction of anonymous tables in which the screen names of players are hidden. In 2011, Bodog became the first poker site to introduce such a rule which makes it impossible for professional players to track the activities of their opponents. Online grinders were then further disadvantaged by Bodog when the site prohibited the use of HUDs and other third party software which help grinders to track the playing tendencies of their rivals. These and other factors have seen Bodog become the third biggest poker room in the world with an average of 1,700 cash players at any one time, and while Partypoker, MPN and the iPoker network now all offer their customers some anonymous tables, most of the major online operators have failed to follow suit, including three of the biggest operators in the world, namely PokerStars, Full Tilt and 888poker.

WPN Allows Bitcoin Deposits

The Winning Poker Network (WPN) has also been quick to adapt to the demands of a challenging online poker environment by providing a high quality of customer service, and continually pioneering innovative customer centric promotions, including becoming the first operator to offer US online poker players a shot at a $1 million guaranteed tournament. Furthermore, WPN has the quickest cashouts of any US-friendly poker network, and was also one of the first poker sites to allow Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals at its busiest skins, such as Americas Cardroom and Black Chip Poker. Adopting the crypto currency has in turn helped the WPN to increase the traffic to its poker tables, and therefore the sites overall liquidity.

Chico Poker Network

The Chico Poker Network was acquired by Julian Holdings when it was still known as Action Poker Network and was suffering from a number of ills and “unforeseen circumstances [including] regulatory issues, banking issues, player bonus fraud, extended due diligence, etc.” The new owner soon put their customers at ease by announcing it would “unconditionally guarantee past and future payouts”, and the Chico Poker Network has since grown exponentially over the past two years. Recent significant boosts to the site’s traffic have come from a number of other innovations, including allowing the use of Bitcoins, as well as some attractive promotional incentives, such as offering a $50k sit & go rake race and giving players dealt four of a kind at its cash game table an extra generous payouts . This has provided a much bigger incentives for poker players to visit the site rather than its rival sites.

A Captive US Audience

In addition to the various innovations and promotions offered by Bodog, WPN and Chico Poker, these networks have the extra advantage of serving a huge US market of 319 million people. In 2009, for instance, it was estimated that around 10 million Americans played online poker regularly, with the second biggest market at the time the UK with 1.9 million players, followed by Germany (1.6m), then France (1.3m). In 2011, however, the US DoJ shut down the country’s unregulated iPoker industry, and since 2013 only resident of Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey have been able to compete online in their respective ring-fenced domestic markets. US-friendly sites have continued to fill the void in the US iPoker market by serving those Americans living in the country’s 47 other states, with Bodog, WPN and Chico Poker further emboldened by the fact US authorities have taken no notable action against such sites since Black Friday.