PokerStars will be ten years old on Sunday Dec 4th 2011. Time flies and this milestone shows how mature online poker has just become.
By mature, if you look at the top three poker sites, PokerStars, Party Poker and Titan Poker, it seems that at the moment no one can take their leading position with respect to traffic. It also seems that it would be nearly impossible for any new entrant to seriously compete with these main brands.
Take the case of Full Tilt Poker, and the reason why the Bernard Tapie purchase could be a smart move, is that it is probably the only way to reach the top of the poker league tables nowadays. Tapie is paying a high price, but if they can regain their leading spot and directly rival with Party Poker, then it will be a great move for them. There are many hurdles along the way but it is Tapie’s specialty to make money from companies no one wants, like Adidas in the 80s. Note that as Full Tilt was given the green light to reenter the US market when it gets legalized, they could even rival with PokerStars themselves, which will not have access to that lucrative market.
There are many new online poker operators entering the market all the time, but they are all small players and many do not survive past one year. The cost of entry is not that high, as they can join an existing network such as the iPoker or Microgaming network, saving a lot on infrastructure. But then the only way to gain traffic is through marketing and this is an ultra competitive field.
Regarding the PokerStars 10th anniversary, they want to celebrate the event by breaking another Guinness World record, the largest online poker tournament ever. This tourney has a $1 entry fee with a guaranteed prize pool of $250k and a guaranteed first prize of $50k. They expect over 150,000 players to join this historic event.
PokerStars keeps on innovating, breaking records and offering interesting promotions. This is how they maintain their position of number one online poker room, by a large margin over the number two. If you like side games such as playing blackjack online, then they do not offer that as they only have poker games. But if you like online poker, PokerStars is certainly one of the best property on the market and it is not expected to change in the near future.
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