iGaming Alberta Act

You're already in a world market, GG,PS..... Why would you want to join Ontario miniscule market?

Who knows, maybe you'll end up joining the United States

if and when this happens im moving to alberta btw. Theres rumors it might join the Ontario pool since making a pool with only 5 million is less attractive then 20 million. IT definitely won't join the states

Because Canadians are bad at poker and euros are good duh

Shhhh don't tap the glass.

Ring-fenced pools attract more fish because it's legal / regulated. There is less friction for depositing (you don't have to use crypto - which most people still don't understand how to use) and it's not seen as shady, and the site is highly unlikely to run off with your money. Plus security is perceived as better (whether that's true or not in actuality).

The other part, is many of the sharks don't have access to the ring fenced pool. I have seen the difference in difficulty pre merge and post merge for Michigan (US) players - and it definitely got harder after the merge ... mostly because there are more sharks "schooling" on to the same rec players ... e.g. more sharks per table. Still beatable but noticeably harder.

I imagine this effect is exacerbated on ROW sites, which is just part of why they're so much more competitive. The skill bar is raised since the pool is larger - the weakest regs get pushed out - recs lose faster and faster and liquidity drops. With more sharks logged on and playing multiple tables, the tables are filled mostly with sharks. Partly because there are just a higher number of sharks by giving access to a most or a huge chunk of the world, but also because of human behavior (fewer people will start a table than join a table).

The more fenced in a pool is, the fewer sharks there will be, simply because fewer sharks have access to the site. There are still enough recs to have a decent size pool for the fewer number of sharks to feast on. It's actually a mutually beneficial relationship compared to combining pools - recs lose slower - sharks win more.

And of course there are countries where the average player is worse at poker. Regulation probably attracts the worst players regardless of country though, and ringfencing keeps the pool softer.

Ringfencing is only worse than ROW pools for people who are outside the geographical fence ... at least as far as cash games go. For those of us in the US, don't listen to the people who are saying more states in the MSIGA = better for cash games.

Can't speak to the effect on MTTs, but I have to imagine this happens there too, albeit maybe to a lesser extent than cash. A better model would be to keep the cash games ringfenced or have several geographically fenced pools ... try to keep the population in each fence capped around 10 million (that is what Michigan had before the merge - and it was a healthy pool)

See, Ronald Coase on the Tragedy of the Commons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of...

I believe that ring-fencing of newbie players, prior to exposure to sharks is an adjustment that could lead to better, longer lived Poker Sprats, something every poker company should champion in their self-interest.

Certainly think it’s similar to the “Tragedy of the Commons” concept in many ways - however I think there is a slight difference because what happens when pools merge is you end up with fewer tables overall … e.g. if each pool averages 10 tables before and you merge them, the new pool will end up with more than 10 tables but fewer than 20 … probably somewhere around 15 … and those tables will have more sharks.

This could be easily solved by poker sites in a variety of ways - but the easiest solution would just be to keep each state’s player pools separate or maybe cap each cash game pool to a population base of about 10 million (the size of Michigan’s population ).

not always true. some ring fenced cash games have more action then their global poker site counterpart because there's more recs to reg ratio. The amount of country's that can legally play and give recs in the global pool is so small now its not worth competing with Brazilians and Russians who can live off of 8 bucks an hour. but if you cut those people out (in a wealthy rec heavy market) you can still get a healthy ecosystem more similar to the early 2010's

This is the same thing I’m saying for the most part

I don't know... I think Saskatchewan is coming to it also very shortly(LOL). 5.5 billion wagers on Play Alberta the 23/24 fiscal year.. I think there could be some pretty bad players who would prefer legality over current options.

Wtf ? A rational, informed discussion thread has broken out on NVG ?????

Nice to see, please post updates. I am interested in the topic. (I had thought there was a First Nations territory in Alberta that already licensed online gambling.)

(Many years go, I ran an online poker business licensed in Canada which managed to cut a deal with the Calgary Flames to put the brand logo into the ice for one of the face-off circles for marketing. Unfortunately, the NHL freaked out and made the Flames remove the logo. Apparently, I could buy television time but could not "mess with" the playing surface. One of our competitors got everyone dinged on stadium marketing because it paid the New York Yankees to place its logo literally on 2d base.)