Now that regulation *may* be upon us, I think this listing of the poker losses of various countries is interesting:  Poker Table ratings of top countries.  It lists a "majority" of the hands played on Full Tilt and Party (note that the biggest site, Stars, is excluded) over the past two years.  I really wish they excluded Party because those guys can change their screen name regularly, so that is probably throwing off the "player" count.

Since poker is a zero sum game, the -$905 MILLION is the amount that the two sites took in rake (but it's actually more, since PTR captures "most" but not "all" of the hands).  You may have noticed that as usual, the USofA is #1 baby!  We rock!  USA!  USA!  USA!  O wait...

All joking aside, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of players come from the US.  However, it looks like Canada and the Scandinavian countries are the hands down winners if you factor in loss rates and losses per capita (didn't post the latter graph).  Maybe something about the freezing cold and not that much to do.  It's also interesting that the short stacker countries of German, Russia and Spain all have very low loss rates.

One of the provisions of the bill is that for the first few years, a regulated US market will be domestic only - which means only US players can enter.  So if the US had to create a domestic poker market, it looks like there will be a sufficient base upon which to build - especially if the poker market quadruples, as estimated.  This is obviously not the case for France and Italy, which have also set up domestic poker markets.  On the margin, it looks like the game quality will improve slightly - the US loss rate of $7.27 is larger than the total world loss rate of $5.86.  It is not clear if this is because on average the US plays higher stakes tho.  I thought this table was interesting when it first came out a month or two ago, but it's even more relevant now.