Poker Trends
Below are three gaming trends to watch with avid curiosity for the next year or two. Trend #1: Legalizing new forms of gambling A shared idea by gaming executives has been the notion that states looking to fill budget gaps will turn to things like sports betting and iGaming. The idea itself is nothing new. Playing Trends in Video Poker The following is taken from Power Video Poker, the Only Video Poker Book You'll Ever Need! Trends are a fact of life in gambling. They occur in virtually every gambling game ever devised. Blackjack dealers go on streaks and win nearly every hand. 3 Poker Trends that Never Caught On Come up with a brilliant idea in the poker world, and you're going to make money with it. Poker players are always looking out for the next big game or the next big trend. Increase in Online Poker Activity. Since the lockdown, there has been a massive increase in online. Six Asia poker trends of 2019 Asia-Pacific, Featured Asia Pacific January 14, 2020 by Triccia David. It was a dizzying year of poker in Asia with barely a break in the live tournament scene. Players had plenty to choose from as festivals sometimes overlapped.
If there’s one positive that’s come out of this global health pandemic, it’s the increase in interest shown for online poker. Google Trends reveals some telling data about the growth of the game over the past few months, and it shows many poker players are now shifting their focus to playing cards on the internet.
The data also indicates that, while online poker’s popularity is higher than before COVID-19, interest has declined a bit since many card rooms around the world began reopening in late May and early June. In Las Vegas, for example, where poker is more prevalent than anywhere in the world, 14 of the 31 poker rooms have reopened since June 4.
With the partial return of live poker, the need for online poker has slightly declined. But there are still millions of people around the world, especially in the US, who prefer live poker but still aren’t comfortable going to a casino. And that won’t change any time soon. Thus, why internet gambling is more popular now than five months ago.
What is Google Trends?
Google Trends is a guide website owners use to find out what is trending. They use this information to determine what type of online businesses are profitable and see what people are searching for on Google, the world’s largest internet search engine.
Google Trends doesn’t reveal total number of searches for a keyword or key-phrase. Instead, it shows a graph of how popular a certain key-phrase is in relation to when the search term was at its most popular point. The scale runs from 0-100, with 100 being the peak of popularity and 0 being so low that there isn’t enough data available. If the scale is at 50, that means the search term is 50% as popular as it was during the peak.
What does Google Trends tell us about online poker’s current popularity?
Google Trends tracks data back to January 2004, which is right about when online poker started becoming popular, just after Chris Moneymaker won the most important Main Event in WSOP history. In March 2005, Google Trends indicates the search term “online poker” hit its peak and hasn’t since been topped.
From March 2005 until January 2010, interest in online poker remained high and then began a slow decline. In April 2011, when the Black Friday scandal hit, the popularity for the game, as the graph indicates, took a nosedive before flattening out in April 2016.
And then, due to COVID-19, the graph spiked back up in March 2020 and then again even further in May 2020, where it reached a score of 47, or 47% of its March 2005 peak.
How does the May 2020 rise compare to interest in online poker since Black Friday? From October 2013 until March 2020, interest was at 20% of its peak or lower every month. So, that means Google saw more than a 200% spike in searches for “online poker” in May 2020.
Poker isn’t quite back to its pre-Black Friday popularity. But, as Google Trends proves, the game is back on the rise and the interest in online poker is far greater than it was before COVID-19 struck.
In an age when technology is advancing at rapid speeds, it may seem that trends in an industry such as online poker, which relies heavily on technology, would develop quickly and be short-lived. In fact, the tendencies of some of the biggest online poker operators in the world have shown that the companies exhibit a measured and calculated approach.
Instead of a landscape defined by diverse initiatives executed by nimble actors, online poker is more of a copycat industry that relies heavily on demonstrated successes and small iterative change. These traits tend to produce distinct trends in the industry that can span years.
Looking back at the year that passed, the industry as a whole exhibited several characteristics that were either widely adopted or successful enough for us to expect these trends to continue in 2019 and perhaps beyond.
The State of the Online Poker Industry Spring 2019, a report by Poker Industry PRO detailing and analyzing a wide array of aspects of the online poker industry over the past year, identifies several of the traits that are expected to have a significant impact on the immediate future of online poker.
Online Poker Trends
The following passages are excerpts from the coming report which will be available to purchase in April and will also be made available to subscribers of Poker Industry PRO.
- Trends expected to drive the industry in 2019
- Operator financial data and analysis
- Regulated market developments and outlook
- Significant events to follow in the coming year
- Knowledge and expertise backed by best-in-class Data platform
- Special features and interviews with the some of the industry’s most important decision-makers
Marquee Online Tournament Series Growth
The heavy investment into flagship tournament series and the concomitant consumer interest has been highlighted in the previous two State of the Online Poker Industry reports. The position of the high-profile series as a key growth driver and marketing tool that helps fuel growing player activity, remained just as strong (if not stronger) in H2 2018, and the trend appears to be continuing into 2019.
The various record-breaking festivals and subsequent successes are too numerous to list. In August, during the high-season for online poker festivals, the top eight dot-com and dot-eu operators announced schedules that guaranteed a combined $170 million in prize money, the largest in online poker history. Almost all boasted of bigger schedules than in prior years. For example, WCOOP alone guaranteed $70 million and became PokerStars’ largest ever festival. Despite the high-level of ambition attributed to those guarantees, over $215 million was paid out in prize money.
Stagnation of Traditional Poker Promotions
Poker Trends 2020
Among top-tier online poker operators today, the main strands for customer acquisition and reengagement are online poker tournaments, ambassadors and streamers, live tours, rewards programs and new products; the standard online poker promotion has noticeably fallen out of popularity.
By the summer of 2018, [most traditional online poker promotions had] disappeared completely. The few promotions that have run since were often targeted at specific markets or in rare instances were small additional bonuses to support an MTT series.
Rewards Refactored
Run It Once Poker launched with its most innovative rewards concept to date: Splash the Pot. The new rewards distribution mechanism is part of the loyalty program that returns over 50% of the rake collected back to the players in the form of random “splashes” of money added to pots. The frequency and amount are related to the total rake collected in the previous hands. The idea was warmly welcomed by players and has already been copied by one competitor.