A number of online poker studies have been conducted over the last decade, commissioned by regulators, operators or other parties with a vested interest in the business. The University of Las Vegas’ Department of Economics is recruiting participants for a new research project in which the purpose is purely educational, with no consignments involved. Anyone US or Canadian resident 21 years of age or above that has ever played real money poker online is eligible to take part.

The purpose of the online poker study is to ascertain the general attitude of the poker playing population in regards to government regulations of online poker. Respondents will not receive any direct benefit for taking the study, but the results will be used to “inform the public debate concerning the regulation of online poker.”

The study is being conducted in dual part by ‘Principal Investigator’, Professor of Economics Bradley S. Wimmer of UNLV’s Lee Business School, and ‘Student Investigator’, Malissa Redona, an MA student at UNLV who is compiling the data to culminate into her Master Thesis.

The study, entitled Online Poker: Consumers and Regulation, is said to take between 15 and 20 minutes. As a point of reference, it took me just over 16 minutes to complete. The first round of questions identify a participant’s experience playing online poker; very straight forward and easy to answer. The survey gets a little more in-depth from there, asking about a player’s personal preferences.

First, the online poker study delves into the importance of an online poker room being regulated, followed by the level of security the participant is comfortable with.  Respondents are then asked about their typical stakes and rake contributions, how they feel about different rake structures and how important the average VP$IP% (percentage of times the average player Voluntarily Put Money In Pot) of an online poker site is to them.

Next comes some even more mentally challenging questions, where respondents are asked to consider what they would do in certain situations. A series of scenarios are presented. In each scenario, two options are given, A and B, with one site being regulated and one not. The player must decide, based on all of the additional criteria for each site (security level, rake structure, player volume, VP$IP%), which they would be more likely to play online poker at. In this way, the online poker survey can gauge just how important regulation is when faced with various other choices.

More hypothetical situations are then posed involving one-time lottery promotions in which the survey can judge a player’s desired level of risk. All in all, the online poker study will give researchers a scope of who plays poker over the internet, what draws them to the sites they choose and just how important regulation is to the general poker playing public.

Statistics show that the majority of US online poker players continue to participate at offshore websites that are not regulated in the United States. Only three US jurisdictions, Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey, offer a regulated online poker market at the moment, but even residents of those states are still being drawn to unregulated sites. The online poker study surely hopes to discover why players are attracted to these offshore destinations, and could eventually play a key role in helping US operators tweak their products to attract more players to legal venues.

Nevada’s newest online poker room, Real Gaming, is continuing its intransigent campaign to bring in traffic by announcing yet another exemplary promotion. Tonight at 7:00pm local time, the legal US poker site will be hosting not one, not even two or three, but six freeroll poker tournaments.

6 Freeroll Poker Tournaments Tonight

“Due to the extremely high demand we’ve seen, players have asked for MORE FREEROLLS.  So we’re going to give them to you!” read the promotional email sent out to all registered members of the online poker community. “Wednesday, December 10th at 7pm, we’re running the most freerolls we’ve had at once.  Make sure you don’t miss out and Register now!”

Real Gaming has been running multiple freerolls poker tournaments every day, but as the above missive suggests, the online poker room has never hosted so many of them at one time. These freeroll competitions cost absolutely nothing, so long as the player has a verified account and is physically located in the state of Nevada at the time the tournaments take place.

What makes Real Gaming’s freerolls so unique is that they are single table events, known as Final Table Freerolls. A maximum of just 9 players can register for each tournament, catapulting all participants into the final table for a 1-in-3 shot at winning a prize. The guaranteed prizes aren’t exactly exoribitant, but all winners are paid in cash.

Each of the freeroll poker tournaments offers a $5.00 prize pool, with 50% of the prize ($2.50) going to the 1^st place winner, 30% ($1.50) to 2^nd place and 20% ($1.00) to 3^rd. All players get 10,000 chips to begin with. Blinds start at 25/50 and increase every 8 minutes.

At the time of writing, there were 3 to 4 players already registered for each of the freeroll poker tournaments on the schedule; more than enough to meet the minimum requirement of 2 players before start time.

Anyone who wants to get an earlier (or later) start at one of Real Gaming’s Final Table Freerolls will have plenty of other opportunities to do so. Two freeroll poker tournaments are set to kick off at 8:00am, another two at 10:00am, 12:00pm, 3:00pm and 6:00pm. The last two freeroll poker tournaments of the night will begin at 9:00pm at the online poker room.

Real Gaming received regulatory approval to transition from soft-launch to full scale launch in late October, and the operator’s marketing department has been working diligently to drive traffic into the site ever since. The cash games have been stiflingly flat for the last two months, but the Multi-Table and Sit’n’Go tournament menus have been attracting more players lately. Ostensibly, it has been the operator’s intensified promotional campaign – a direct result of Ultimate Poker’s dissolution in the state – that is grabbing the attention of Nevada’s online poker community.

In the last two weeks alone, Real Gaming has added a number of generous promotions to the already abundant line-up. The Ultimate Match promo will match the deposit of any former UP member that deposits their withdrawal from Ultimate Poker, up to $3,000. Signing up a new account this month grants a free $20 no deposit bonus. Last week, Real Gaming announced a daily cash back giveaway worth up to $50 per day.

These new freeroll poker tournaments are just another addition to a superfluous list of promotions. The online poker room may have some very stiff competition in their only Nevada rival, WSOP.com, but this operator at least deserves a big, bold ‘E’ for effort.

The Carbon Online Poker Series was a highly anticipated, 76-event tournament series that members of the site had been looking forward to for quite some time. $2 million was guaranteed across the two week series that began on November 9^th. Unfortunately, just as things were about to wrap up last weekend, the server crashed, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

Server crashes aren’t all that rare in the online poker industry. What is rare, however, is when a crash leads to a major security breach. According to sources on the TwoPlusTwo poker forums, that’s exactly what happened at Carbon Poker.

Members of the online poker site who were playing in the final, $75k GTD leg of the Carbon OPS, as well as those participating in the Sunday Majors, began posting frantically on the forum. The majority of them were first complaining that they were logged out of the site with cards and chips on the table, and were unable to log back in. But when others started revealing that they were able to login, that’s when things got scary.

Those players who successfully logged back in were not logged into their own accounts, but alleged were given access to other player’s accounts. They were returned to the tournament tables that the true account holder was playing on at the time of the crash, able to use the money in those accounts to play. Even worse, they were able to view sensitive information on those accounts. And while the players posting this information on TwoPlusTwo were not using any of this information in a duplicitous way, rather trying to inform the community of the disastrous breach of security that was taking place, it’s impossible to say how many untrustworthy members of Carbon Poker were not so responsible.

To make matters worse, Carbon Poker seemed to be downplaying the incident in its initial response. One member of the forum posted the reply he got from Carbon Poker as follows:

“During a very brief window early this morning during a server restart, certain players using the auto-login setting were returned to another player’s session. You were one of the very few players affected. This view would have been visible only momentarily while the server completed restarting. We are confident that possible interaction with the account was limited, and we are taking measures to confirm that the situation is fully contained.”

The response was one of outrage, of course, and it didn’t help that (according to some posters) Carbon Poker was also responding to players who contacted support to report money missing from their accounts by telling them that no refunds would be given. As the ire of the community swelled, Carbon Poker officials apparently came to their senses and offered compensation. Players began sharing emails and confirmation that their accounts had been reimbursed for any equity lost during the crash.

The bigger question remains though – how could such a catastrophic breach of security be possible at an online poker room that, up until this incident, carried such a strong reputation? How could a server crash – something that isn’t uncommon, especially when so many people are logged in at the same time – result in such devastation as to allow players access to random accounts? And were players who weren’t aware of the situation reimbursed, or was that reserved only for those who noticed a drop in their account’s funds and complained about it?

Neither Carbon Poker nor the Merge Gaming Network has offered any public comments on the situation to date.

With the possibility of a regulated online poker market still up in the air in California, a local tribe has traversed the virtual countryside by launching a brand new online casino in New Jersey, Pala Casino. The Pala Band of Mission Indians launched PalaCasino.com after partnering with The Borgata in Atlantic City, and says an online poker venue is on the horizon.

Pala Casino received approval from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to launch the new Pala Casino dot-com, which went live late last week weekend in the Garden State. This marks the first time a real money, tribal owned online casino has launched under the authorized regulation of a US state, albeit located outside of the tribe’s home jurisdiction.

The Pala Band has been working diligently to increase the revenue at its Pala Casino Resort and Spa, situated on the Pala Indian Reservation just outside of San Diego, California. With 2,000 slot machines, nearly 100 table games and an assortment of 10 inviting restaurants, the 500-guest room facility is now in great shape, leaving the tribe with nothing more to do than wait on California legislators. The tribe has been anticipating the launch of regulated online poker in the Golden State, going so far as to contract American poker pro Phil Ivey as its brand ambassador last year, but the tribe had apparently grown weary of playing the waiting game.

“We will operate only in New Jersey and that means the product will change and improve over time; the player journey, issues related to geolocation, the gamification of the sign up process so that it is more engaging for the player,” said Jim Ryan, CEO of Pala Interactive, which operates the new Pala Casino website. “All this attention to detail will mean that the 90 plus games that we will be offering will be the best they can be for our customers.”

The tribe announced long ago that they intended to enter the online casino industry, but considering the landscape of iGaming in California, it makes sense that they would choose a more fertile ground for their operations. New Jersey has by far the highest population of the three states that have authorized online poker and/or casino gambling, and despite suspected market saturation, Pala feels thy will be able to gain a strong enough foothold in the Garden State.

“We had a solid weekend and we have yet to start marketing,” Ryan explained the tribe’s enthusiasm for the Pala Casino website. “We believe we are breaking into the New Jersey market at the perfect time.” The extension of the product to include an online poker room is expected to occur as early as the first quarter of 2015.

As for Phil Ivey’s former sponsorship deal with Pala, that has likely dissolved considering the current circumstances. Ivey’s relationship with The Borgata isn’t the best right now. He is currently in the middle of a lawsuit, filed by the Atlantic City casino, in which he is accused of cheating the Borgata out of $9.6 million by exploiting a defect in the cards at the Baccarat tables.

Each week, former Congressman Ron Paul authors a weekly column on his personal website, Ron Paul Institute, where he shares his views on current political matters. This week, he tapped into the hearts of America’s online poker community by writing a piece entitled, ‘Internet Gambling Ban: A Winner for Sheldon Adelson, a Losing Bet for the Rest of the US’. The article blasts Adelson’s campaign to push a new bill, Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA), while supporting state’s rights to regulate online poker, lottery and casino gambling as they see fit.

RAWA was introduced earlier this year on dual platforms; to the House of Representatives by Rep Jason Chafetz of Utah, and to the US Senate by Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp, has backed the bill every step of the way, vowing to spend “whatever it takes” to get online gambling banned across the United States, even if it means swiping the rug out from under states like Delaware, Georgia, Nevada and New Jersey, where some form of legal internet wagering is already taking place.

The opening statements of Ron Paul’s column defined the term “crony capitalism”, aka “cronyism”, a as common practice in which “politicians write laws aimed at helping their favored business beneficiaries”, (i.e. Adelson and his virtually unlimited billions worth of campaign donations). Paul pointed the finger at Congress, which was expected to vote on RAWA in the lame duck session, calling potential passage of the legislation “a favor to billionaire casino owner, Sheldon Adelson.”

Paul accused supporters of the online poker ban of masking their motives, saying they “publicly deny…a desire to curry favor with a wealthy donor. Instead, they give a number of high-minded reasons for wanting to ban this activity.” Paul cited such excuses as iGaming benefiting criminals and “even terrorists!”

In direct opposition to that common political scare tactic, Paul argued that “criminalizing online casinos will not eliminate the demand for online casinos. Instead, passage of this legislation will likely guarantee that the online gambling market is controlled by criminals. Thus, it is those who support outlawing online gambling who may be aiding criminals and terrorists.”

Furthermore, Paul appreciated the fact that “many supporters of an Internet gambling ban sincerely believe that gambling is an immoral and destructive activity that should be outlawed.” But he then went on to explain that, “the proposed legislation is not at all about the morality of gambling. It is about whether Americans who do gamble should have the choice to do so online, or be forced to visit brick-and-mortar casinos.”

Ron Paul said that RAWA “has no place in a free society”, comparing a blanket ban of regulated online poker to forcibly preventing people from reading biased, pro-war publications. “The proposed ban on Internet gambling is a blatantly unconstitutional infringement on our liberties that will likely expand the surveillance state,” wrote Paul. “Worst of all, it is all being done for the benefit of one powerful billionaire. Anyone who thinks banning online gambling will not diminish our freedoms while enriching criminals is making a losing bet.”

Interestingly enough, on Monday evening, just one day after Ron Paul’s column appeared, the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) said an inside source had confirmed that the hearing to discuss RAWA had been stricken from the docket. If true, the federal bill to ban online poker will not be voted upon in the lame duck session.

Real Gaming went live in Nevada in February of 2014, giving the state’s other two online poker sites, Ultimate Poker and WSOP.com, a new rival to contend with. Month after month, Real Gaming attracted only a few players to tables due to its requirement by the Nevada Gaming Control Board to remain in beta testing mode. That changed last month with the regulator’s approval for a full-scale launch of Real Gaming, and the marketing team has been throwing out one promotion after another to drive traffic into the online poker site.

One of the latest additions to the Real Gaming promotional line-up is a Sit & Go Awards campaign. Best of all, it’s not a leaderboard style competition where only a select few win a prize. Every member of the online poker room can reap the rewards, in cold hard cash, just for winning 10, 9-player SNGs in a calendar month. The size of the prize will be based on the buy-in level of the tournaments.

For example, winning 10 of the cheapest SNG’s on the menu, with a buy-in of $1.07, will award $5 in cash at the end of the month. The highest prize of $150 is awarded to all players who win 10 SNG’s with the largest buy-in of $32.10. The following chart depicts all SNG levels and their respective awards.

The rules of the online poker promotion state that all qualifying SNG’s must have a full, single table of 9 players, and must occur between the hours of 2:00pm and 10:00pm daily.

Real Gaming also introduced a High Score of the Hour promotion in which ring game players can earn cash prizes for generating the highest Loyalty Score during specified hours throughout the day. Every single active table can award its own prize, based on the stakes level being played. As such, if there are 30 active cash games, then 30 players could be eligible to win a prize.

To become eligible for a prize, players must earn a minimum Loyalty Score during the qualifying hour of play. Minimum scores are decided by the stakes of the online poker table, with cash prizes scaling from $2 at micro-limit stakes of $0.01/$0.02, up to $30 at $2/$4 stakes. The following chart shows the stakes, minimum Loyalty Score and respective prizes.

The High Score of the Hour promotion takes place four times daily, at 2:00p, 5:00pm, 8:00pm and 11:00pm. Only Loyalty Score (LS) earnings for hands that are dealt and completed during the promotional period will count towards the accumulation of LS (i.e. 2:00:00pm to 2:59:59pm).

In addition, to help spread the word and generate even more online poker traffic, Real Gaming is offering Power Up rewards for players who boast their High Score of the Hour win over social media outlets. If a player wins a High Score of the Hour prize, then visits the Power Up link at the online poker room, they can use the links provided to Tweet their winnings, or ‘Like’ and Comment their win on Real Gaming’s Facebook page. Doing so awards an additional $1 Power Up prize, and there is no limit to the amount of times a player can receive Power Ups.

When it rains, it pours. There’s a reason that saying became so popular over the centuries, and it couldn’t provide a more appropriate description of the online poker news headlines flooding France at the moment. In the last week alone, Winamax has reclaimed the top spot in the French online poker market, PokerStars has cancelled its intended stop in Paris along the French Poker Series (FPS), and a meeting between players and the state’s internet poker regulator, ARJEL, actually ended on a positive note.

Winamax seizes #1 spot from PokerStars

In what could be the most surprising story of the entire month, Winamax has arrogated the title of #1 French online poker site from PokerStars.fr. The former leader held onto a slight lead for awhile, but a recent dip in activity has dropped PokerStars down to an average of just 900 concurrent players over the last 7 days, while Winamax’s numbers rose to 1,250. The original online poker site of France now maintains a sizable 35% lead over PokerStars in the region.

PokerStars scratches Paris off French Poker Series

The Paris leg of the FPS was set to kick off on November 21^st, 2014 with a series of events leading up to a $1,100 Main Event. Unfortunately for professional poker players all throughout Europe and beyond, legal issues resulted in the closure of the Cercle Cadet, the live poker room where the FPS Paris was slated to take place.

The poker room (among others) was raided by French authorities on October 14^th. With no insight as to when the location will be allowed to reopen, FPS President Cédric Billot said, “it was impossible to find, in such a short time, another trusted partner that would allow us to organize the FPS in Paris and in optimal conditions.”

PokerStars.fr assured live and online poker players who had already qualified via satellites to play in the event that they would receive some form of compensation. “We are really sorry to be forced to cancel this FPS stop,” said a representative of PokerStars.fr, who then alluded to a possible means of recompense when he added, “…we still have some other great events for our players as the ones in Deauville, Namur, Prague, or even the French Championship of Online Poker (FCOOP),” are still scheduled to take place.

Positive Meeting between ARJEL and French Online Poker Players

A long-awaited meeting was held this week that allowed French online poker players to voice their concerns about the ring-fenced market to ARJEL, the state’s regulatory body.  A multitude of issues were discussed, but added to the agenda at the last minute was the collapse of Europoker.fr and the absence of 6-figures worth of player funds. Online poker companies are required to keep segregated accounts, holding all player funds separate from company funds, to ensure that they will be able to fulfill account withdrawals should the company go under. However, when EP MEDIA’s subsidiary, Europoker, went under, only the amounts deposited by players were held in the segregated accounts.

There was no money in the account to cover players who exchanged their bonuses and tournament tickets for cash, nor additional funds to cover the value of bonuses and tournament tickets that had not yet been cashed in. ARJEL assured members of the defunct online poker site that their legal director, Frederick Guerchoun, would be discussing the matter at length with the EP MEDIA’s liquidators.

Like most pastimes, online poker is considered a seasonal activity in some regards. There will always be players on the virtual felt, but the height of their numbers tends to wax and wane with the change of the season. Early spring was a high point for the online poker market in New Jersey, while the approach of summer amputated the rate of participation. Likewise, fall was expected to bring players back into the computer-based gaming realm, and after taking quite bit longer than anticipated, the Garden State is finally reporting a notable growth of 8.7% at the cash game tables.

To what do we owe the imminent return of online poker players? The advent of autumn is now a month past; that clearly wasn’t enough to bring them back. Attractive land-based poker events in nearby state’s, like the Parx Big Stax VIII in Bensalem, Pennsylvania certainly didn’t contribute to a resurgence either. With that series now behind us, though, we can safely attribute the boost in New Jersey online poker traffic to the fresh marketing tactics of the state’s top operators.

One operator in particular really went all out in the month of October. WSOP.com started by enticing new players to make their first deposit (by Friday, Oct 31^st) with a promotional drawing that will award a trip for two to Las Vegas. They also issued an APP leaderboard race, delivering $5k a week in cash prizes for the rest of the month. According to last week’s cash game traffic tracking data, by targeting both new and existing players, WSOP NJ was able to generate the largest increase in traffic, up 14.3% from 112 to 128 players on a 7-day average.

Despite enjoying the most impressive increase in online poker players, WSOP NJ has yet to usurp the role of #1 brand in the Garden State. That title has belonged to the Party Borgata network, operator of Party Poker NJ and Borgata Poker, since the market first went live last November. The state’s leading online poker network experienced a 6% increase in the average number of cash game players over the same time period, with the hosting of a double-value $100k GTD tournament taking most of the credit. However, it should be noted that the traditional $50k GTD hasn’t been drawing enough support to meet its guaranteed prize pool of late, and regardless of the twofold guarantee that drew 512 players – twice that of the prior week’s event – it still fell short. Party Borgata was forced to splash the pool with just over $5,000 to meet the $100k GTD mark.

Although the rise in traffic at 888Poker NJ was comparably negligible, growing 3.3% from 60 to 62, it’s still worth mentioning in this context. 888’s big promotion of the season is a twice daily $1,000 freeroll that new and existing players can earn tickets for, and considering the relatively low level of traffic cash games are drawing to begin with, it presents quite an opportunity for grinders to generate a profit. And that, in turn, is getting palpable results all across the New Jersey online poker market.

If we take a step back in time to 2011, when the Black Friday of Online Poker struck in the US and American players were scrambling to find new, trustworthy online poker sites, Lock Poker was at the height of its game. Thousands of players could be found gathered around the site’s virtual felt at any given time. The poker room’s reputation escalated, the promotions were affluent, games were juicy; why go anywhere else? But everything changed in late 2011 when player’s first started complaining of delayed payments.

Lock Poker’s reputation began to take a slow but steady dive as more and more online poker players criticized the site’s sluggish cash outs. What started as an annoyance, with no payments coming for a few weeks, turned into a plethora of irate customers who had been waiting months, and eventually years, to receive their money. By 2013, it was estimated that Lock Poker owed around $1 million in unpaid cash outs to customers in the US, as well as some in other regions of the world. Now, a new calculation has tripled the amount to approximately $3.2 million, including the funds held in accounts by players who have not yet bothered to request a theoretically futile withdrawal.

One avid poker player has taken upon himself the task of tracking Lock Poker’s extensive debts over the last few years. Known at the popular online poker forums of TwoPlusTwo as “IHasTehNutz”, he gathers information from players who have and have not received due payments from the longsuffering poker room and keeps an updated tally of all funds paid and owed (with many, many more being owed than paid). According to his computations, Lock Poker potentially owes a lot more money than originally believed.

At present, there are 394 members of Lock Poker awaiting a payout. Those combined withdrawal requests total $941,270.96. That’s where the original debt of about $1 million came from. However, IHasTehNutz recently calculated in the amount of money those same players still have in their accounts – the amounts that were not yet requested for withdrawal due to limitations per payout request – and that total came to a staggering $2,236,160.52 across 205 player accounts.

Ostensibly, if ever the 394 players who are owed $941k receive their funds, the 205 of them that will still have money on the site will want to withdrawal that amount as well. Thus, adding them together, Lock Poker potentially owes $3.2 million to its players. And if the operator can’t afford to pay $1 million, what’s to say the other $2.2 million will ever be dispersed?

It certainly doesn’t help that Lock Poker’s reputation has plummeted to well below sea level. With thousands of regular visitors a few short years ago, the online poker room’s spiral into ill repute has left the site with an average of around 30-35 concurrent players. At that rate, it doesn’t seem feasible that Lock Poker will ever make enough money to pay back the existing arrears, much less the inevitable future liabilities from players who still hold balances.