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Tony Hallett's After These Messages: Online poker
A real internet gamble

By Tony Hallett

Published: Wednesday 15 June 2005

We at silicon.com recently wrote about the seemingly unstoppable rise of Google - and the upward trajectory of its stock. After hitting a certain milestone, plenty of commentators turned their own 'Is it worth it?' musings to the subject of whether the search company is involved in a mini internet bubble all of its own.

I wouldn't be so concerned about that. If I were a financial analyst (though there's little chance of that happening) I would be one of those inclined to call Google a 'must hold' stock. No, more worrying to me is what's going on in the online gambling space.

Gaming will be one of the cornerstones of the digital world - a vague statement that could mean many things, I know. What I'm trying to say is that game playing, whether for money, for tokens or for the sheer fun of it, will be big over all kinds of connected devices. PCs, TVs, mobiles - you name it. It's something to do with being human.

And right now, nothing seems to be hotter in game playing than poker. In the real world, this ranges from the number of friendly, back-room games that seem to be springing up, on a scale not seen for a long time. Then there's the TV coverage of poker tournaments, with now even a dedicated poker channel for UK satellite viewers as well as sundry other shows from several other broadcasters, many featuring celebrities and poker pros.

And, of course, there's what's happening online. Well over a dozen online poker sites are trying to grab players and in many cases succeeding, it seems.

I know about this because I and the rest of the British population have been deluged with advertising for poker sites for at least the past year. Sure, we get the odd press release come through the silicon.com newsdesk but these are mainly about the use of technology at places such as Betfair or William Hill. After all, this is a truly innovative and interesting space.

No, what I'm thinking for the purposes of this column is the mass of messages that are bombarding us and how it feels like the good old (bad old?) days of 1999 or so.

Off the top of my head, consider these poker sites: 888.com, empirepoker.com, ladbrokespoker.com, paradisepoker.com, partypoker.com, pokerroom.com, pokerstars.com and vccasino.com.

I have seen nearly all plastering ads in the most unlikely and likely locations for months. The effort doesn't seem to be letting up.

Now I write this as a poker player. I love to play a game with friends but chances to get the whole motley crew together are few and far between - so I play online too. My main site is pokerroom.com. It does the trick for me and seemingly for plenty of other people. (An email earlier this week tells me they're about to deal their billionth hand.)

I've looked into others - often for purely journalistic reasons, you understand - but it is a pain to have to register again and again, let alone download playing software, which many encourage even if there is a 'lighter', often Java-based client available.

So to the meat of this column. Knowing how people flit around from one site to another, and that for many the poker craze will ebb, are some of the goals of some of the sites realistic in the long term?

Way back when, it seemed it was impossible to move without seeing advertising for internet job recruitment services. Sure, some survived but how many went to the wall? I feel like the poker sites, with an addressable market only so big and their ubiquitous ads, are in a similar boat.

Within the past two weeks we reported on the IPO of PartyGaming - for a staggering £5.8bn. Yes, that's billion. Basically it would be the biggest IPO ever on the London Stock Exchange and put the company straight in on the FTSE with a higher value than stalwarts such as British Airways and Sainsbury's.

Does that sound right? Maybe a number of the poker sites and bigger gambling groups with their poker arms - the likes of Ladbrokes, William Hill and Victor Chandler, of vccasino.com - have the wherewithal and experience to ride the ups and downs over the long term. But I can't help but feel some of the smaller players will face consolidation.

This happened in the jobs market and happens in many areas that go through periods of rapid growth followed by a cooling off.

Poker isn't the only thing in vogue right now. Las Vegas, the world's gambling capital, is also hot, literally and metaphorically. It has gone more upmarket in recent years and TV shows such as the original CSI and originally entitled Las Vegas show some of the other sides to Sin City. Hell, even Selfridges went for a store front theme of 'Vegas' just the other month.

But unlike trips to Vegas, online poker playing isn't legal in the US. This is another factor that could have serious implications for some of the big poker sites. (Not that you'd know it from the number of Americans at the virtual tables. The pokerroom.com service I use, originally set up out of Sweden, is dominated by those saying they're playing from places in the US.)

At silicon.com in coming weeks we will be looking at the way the world of gambling uses technology and what it can teach the rest of the user community - like a few other areas within a category broadly defined as 'entertainment'.

But Vegas chic will dissipate at some stage. Online poker players will settle on a service they like the best or find most convenient - or simply one that outlasts the current hype.

Be lucky out there, players and providers.