At Party: January 2005 sign-ups, less than 30% still play there(+more

[grinin]

Think "Growth Rate"

It is most likely that the online poker industry will continue to expand with an ever increasing amount of money being wagered. As in most new industries, rapid growth rates occur in their infancy and begin to slow as the industry matures.

In general profitable players tend to stay and fish tend to go away. Making for a higher concentration of profitable players in the existing player base than the concentration of profitable players in new recruits. During this period of rapid growth profitable players have had continuous infusions of fresh new fish $. However, some of the fish will always turn into profitable players and thus the volume of existing profitable players has also directly increased.

Once the growth rate peaks and starts to decline (the industry is expanding just at a slower rate) the amount of fish $ per profitable player will decline. Eventually some profitable players will not be making as much and will determine that their time is better spent elsewhere. Once the growth rate stabilizes, the amount of incoming fish $ will stabilize and so to will the profitable player volume.

Put another way, the insane growth of the industry has led to a greater amount of $ being available from all of the new fish who say "cool, online poker lets check it out" then blow a $1,000 their first month. Unfortunately on average these fish only come back and blow another $178.64 per month thereafter. Once the rate of new fish coming into the system begins to fall, there becomes a problem.