H2 January 2010 Poker Update
05-Feb-2010
January 2010 saw an average of 137,200 real money Internet poker (excluding the Italian regulated market) players as a very busy start to the year generated a record activity. Activities level slowed during the second have of the month, which is not generally the case at this time of year.
During January there was 26% more activity on the sites that H2 cover than during the same period 12-month ago and 5.1% more than in December 2009. The majority of activity continues to be at lower value tables; 73% of player volumes in January
On 30 January 2010 the H2 Online Poker Player Volume Index was 4,899 just ahead of the 4,750 seen during the last week of December. The H2 index actually reached a record level on 16 January at 5,368 when bad whether across much of the northern hemisphere encouraged people stay in front of their computers with a drop off in activity seen after PokerStars broke the World tournament record with over 149,000 entrants.
With PokerStars now gearing up for their 40th billionth (to put this in perspective this is 4 times the number of iTunes downloads that Apple have achieved to date) had promotion H2 expect the latter part of February to be extremely busy as was the same period 12 months ago when they were celebrating their 20th billionth hand. PokerStars and FullTilt continue to place a stranglehold on the sector with their market share in terms of player numbers having increased from just over 30% at the beginning of 2007 to 59.5% during January 2010.
H2 now expecting the gross value of the Internet poker business to reach US$1.34bn compared to US$1.17bn for the same period last year. It should be noted that this number includes bonusing, which due to the competitive nature of the sector, particularly in Europe, has trended high over the past 12 months.
H2 GAMBLING CAPITAL PLAYER VOLUME INDEX
BASE 100 1 JANUARY 2003

Source: H2 Gambling Capital, February 2010
REAL MONEY POKER PLAY BY BLIND/BUYIN LEVELS – JANUARY 2010

H2 Internet Poker Stakes Definitions
Source: H2 Gambling Capital, February 2010
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