THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL POKER

Sunday July 22,2012 : POKERSCOUT UNDERSCORES THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL POKER
 
Independent online poker monitor adds social networking poker to its roster of industry information
 
The independent online poker monitor Pokerscout has underscored the growing importance of social networking free-play poker by adding the sector to its reportage.
 
The new section tracks seven day average play/virtual money hands across the industry, and the initial numbers have little surprises, especially at the top end of the list.
 
The San Francisco-based Zynga social gaming giant dominates with 120,400 ring game players per day over the week…more than twice the 50,000 daily players across the entire real money ring game industry, and four times the 30,000 players on the other eight sites tracked for play-virtual money combined.
 
After starting out on Facebook, Zynga Poker has expanded its offering to other media, including dedicated mobile apps for Android and iOS platforms, and applications on other social media sites like Google+, MySpace and Tagged.
 
Zynga's closest rival is the Isle of Man-based online poker specialist Pokerstars with an seven day average daily free player count of 24,800…way ahead of Party Poker on 2,500; 888Poker on 1,100; Merge Gaming Network on 320; ClubWPT on 300; Ongame Network on 270; iPoker Network on 140 and Microgaming Poker Network on 67.
 
Whilst the low numbers of play-money players at Ongame, iPoker and Microgaming may initially be surprising, observers have pointed out that this could be due to the sign-up policies of these companies, which require that users create accounts before observing games.