New Jersey’s WSOP And 888poker Combine Player Liquidities

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Tuesday, January 13th, 2015 | Written by Shane Larson

The New Jersey online poker market is dominated by two main licensees, namely the Borgata Hotel Casino whose online partner bwin.party has the state’s largest site with Party Borgata, and also Caesars Atlantic City, whose partners WSOP.com and 888Poker occupy second and third places respectively. Up until now, however, Party Borgata has managed to maintain its top spot by combining the liquidities of PartyPoker.com and BorgataPoker.com, but that may all be about to change after WSOP.com and 888Poker’s All American Poker Network (AAPN) have now followed suit and partially combined their player liquidity.

The move is likely to be quite seamless as the two sites already use 888.com software, and commenting on the implications for the future, All American Poker Network CEO David Licht, an 888 holdings joint venture with Avenue Capital, said:

“This is an excellent step forward for us and should help in building a larger audience and player base for online poker in New Jersey. Shared liquidity will help create a better player experience, we hope will attract a diversity of players and begin to bring poker to a broader audience once again.”

A Matter Of Necessity

While competition helps provide healthy choices for consumers in most industries, as far as online poker is concerned too much competition can lead to not enough players to go around for each site, resulting in a fractured player base with poor variety and quality of games for all those involved. Preregulation, WSOP.com had hoped that there would be enough interest in the game to be able to go it alone, but the reality has proved that notion a fallacy and so the two former rivals, WSOP.com and AAPN, have now decided teaming-up will provide them with the best strategy for survival.

Another factor not lost on the two sites is the fact casino games have proven the more lucrative proposition for operators, and so as long as these sites can retain their poker customers, there is more chance they will subsequently be around to spend money at their virtual roulette and blackjack tables. As a recent report released by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement called “Achievements to Date and Goals for the Future”, explains:

“At the launch of Internet gaming in New Jersey, there was a perception that online poker would predominate over slots and other online games. This prediction has not been correct. From inception through November 30, 2014, poker accounts for only 25% of New Jersey’s Internet revenue while the remaining 75% consists of other authorized casino games.”

PokerStars Entry A Major Incentive

While New Jersey’s most popular site Party Borgata currently has an average of 160 players over a week period, according to PokerScout, WSOP (110 players) and AAPN (100) have the potential to give Party Borgata more serious competition after combining liquidities and could soon take over the state’s top spot. However, any celebrations may be short lived as this week State Senator Ray Lesniak said that by March PokerStars could launch in the Garden State. The world’s biggest poker site can then be expected to dominate the local industry, as it has done in all the other markets it has entered, and so WSOP and 888 combining their operations is likely seen as a necessary step to counter the imminent threat posed by PokerStars’ return.

Partially Combined Liquidity

Despite being described as only a partial combination of liquidity, WSOP.com and 888Poker’s arrangement does seem to cover the majority of their player pools. These include low stakes NLH cash games of up to $0.25/$0.50, fixed limit games of up to $0.50/$1.00, as well as Sit-and-Go tourneys up to $5, and four tournaments with prize pools of more than $130,000. Commenting on what WSOP.com and AAPN customers can expect in the future, Director of Online Poker at WSOP.com Bill Rini, said:

“It is important we continue to experiment and look for new ways to create stickiness. Customers used to playing on our site will not notice anything different, except more robust action and bigger prize pools. We also hope this will help expand the market by offering more variety.”

The partnership also marks the first time the All American Poker Network (AAPN) has had more than one site on its network, and will likely prove a blueprint for a similar arrangement expected to be adopted soon in Nevada, where the AAPN is expected to include WSOP.com, Treasure Island, 888poker room, and eventually all three of Delaware’s online poker rooms.