Well, it's that time again where I do my quarterly review of online traffic trends.  Here's the link to last quarter's piece. So over the past 12 months, PS went from 27K cash game players to 29K cash game players.  And FT went from 16K to 16K.  Obviously, these year over year numbers can vary greatly depending on the date.  But all of the "sky is falling" talks from earlier in the year look to be unfounded.  We're pretty much where we were a year ago - maybe a tad better.  This is actually surprising considering some of the negative things that have happened this year - including a few processors having difficulties, France and Italy requiring poker sites to be domestic, and the poker sites banning players from WA state.

After having observed the trends for a whole year, there is definitely some seasonality.  The lulls occur around the summer (WSOP time), and the peaks occur in the winter (not as much to do outside, presumably).  FT's volume ranged from a low of 14K, to a high of 19K.  And Stars ranged from 24K to 35K.

What is a little disappointing is that FT seems to be having a hard time gaining share of the online poker market.  I think they have done all the "right" things to make the games "better."  They introduced Rush poker, which IMO has got to be THE best poker invention since the hole card camera.  They raised the min BI on all the tables, improving the game quality.  They redistributed their rewards system to make it "fairer" to all players.  However "good" all these moves may have been, I think FT may be at risk in 2011 of losing some market share.

Their biggest shortcoming seems to be the lack of appreciation of the high volume player.  The whole Weighted Contribution Rake / Black Card mess was very disappointing.  In this highly competitive online poker environment, as win rates go lower, the value of player rewards go higher, and it's just very difficult for FT to maintain its share of midstakes grinders.  And it could be the start of a dangerous spiral - the fewer the number of midstakes games available, the more likely it is that other multitabling regs will leave.

As much as I like FT, I had to cave in and play my first hands on Stars this year (post tomorrow).  I needed to start playing more on Stars for several reasons: game availability, game selection, and risk diversification.  For the rest of the year, I'll probably split my play 75/25 FT to PS, just so I can make an informed decision on what to do for 2011 at the end of the year.