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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the most fish of all? Ok, so that’s not how the story goes, but it is in fact a highly important question to ask if you are an online poker player. When the UIGEA was passed in the United States 4 fateful years ago, the United States player pool begin experiencing a massive shift in player’s level of proficiency. Prior to that law going into effect, the industry was flooded with casual players who either watched the movie Rounders, or were captivated by a remarkable run by Chris Moneymaker to burst in from obscurity to capture the World Series of Poker Main Event.
However, with the UIGEA came a new reality – that inexperienced players, commonly known as fish would be leaving the game, never to return. This had an extreme ripple effect as the better players now had to actually play better poker as their opponents were just as, or even more, skilled than themselves. One of the bigger ramifications was that, at the time, the most frequented poker room was Party Poker, but the UIGEA essentially forced them out of the US market.
In a recent study, it turns out that Party Poker is still the site that holds the highest percentage of losing players. The study, conducted by a player tracking website called PokerTableRatings recently concluded that just a scant 7% of Party’s patrons have played over 50,000 hands and have a profit to show for it. This means that 93% are break-even or losing players. By contrast, other poker sites boast ranges of 12%-18% of winning players. At any given time, just 10% of Party Poker’s players at the cash tables are winning players which essentially means that every full ring game, on average, only contains one winner and 9 non-winners.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the toughest online poker room to beat is PokerStars, who boasts 30% winners at the tables at any given time, making it all the more difficult to be a winner at that site if you are a newbie to the game.
Should the UIGEA be repealed, it would seem that the floodgates would open and the sharks would once again descend to PartyPoker for an online feeding frenzy.
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