Merry Christmas, my fellow PokerStrategists!

I have to apologize that neither I nor my co-bloggers Korn, Dami & Stefan wrote anything in the last two weeks. We remembered it a few times and at least Korn and I began to wrote a post but threw it away because we thought it was not worthwhile reading.  But maybe we should leave that decision up to you?

You may wonder about the title of this post: what king? What death? Well, the last few weeks were full of discussions about the future of poker. The UIGEA, WTO duels between the EU and Antigua vs USA, the seasonal winter boom, poker in asia, legal situation in Germany… many topics, many thoughts.

But in the end, what counts is sheer numbers, isn’t it? So lets look at that. Before the US markets were closed for most of the poker rooms in mid 2006, PartyPoker had its peak of players simultaneously playing at the real money tables of 16,960!

A long time has passed, and due to the US thingy, PartyPoker had to give the position as a market leader to PokerStars, who did not leave the homeland of poker. Last week, the number of real money players online at PokerStars topped 19,900 for some minutes! Most probably, as January to March are known to be the best months for online gambling, PokerStars will hit the magical mark of 20,000 online players in early January!

This is a small piece of information that sums up the development of the poker markets: it’s difficult, and there are people fighting against it, but still - growth! This is great news for us, because the winning players of PokerStrategy profit vastly from a growing poker market with growing numbers of customers for all of use. Fish on!

Only one day – and two premium newspapers report about PokerStrategy!

Okay, one of the articles is older (Nov 29), but dear Tom (our IT boss) brought it to my attention today: it is a one-page article in the best reputated weekly newspaper in Germany, Die Zeit. The article is well-balanced, going into the problems of gambling addiction on the one hand, but also praising poker as a difficult game where the better players will win money.

The article in German. If you do not understand German, I’ll provide you with a small abstract: Around the example of Patrik Neckelmann aka Patrikskjold, one of our Black Members (German blog of Patrikskjold), it evolves thoughts about Poker that were developed in an interview with him by some reporters of Die Zeit. Comparisons to chess, tic-tac-toe, and scissors-stone-paper and an abstract about the legal situation in the US and Germany finally leads to a longer paragraph about PokerStrategy.com and it’s business model. Thanks for your support, Patrik! :)

I can link the next article, but most of you won’t be able to read it – myself included. It was published by a finnish online newspaper just today. Our Finnish Community Manager Simo kindly provided us with a rough English translation which I want to copy/paste in here for you who might be interested:

Source: TALOUSSANOMAT

Internet poker gives money for free

10.12. 14:10. Everybody gets $150 free money to poker. A poker school called PokerStrategy promises to give that money. There is a requirement that you have to start to play as a member of the school. Officials say that it is illegal to promote poker.

International poker school PokerStrategy promises every member of the school $50 for free.

- After you have played enough, you’ll also get a 100 dollar bonus, they say at the web page of the gaming school.

That amount of dollars is a bit above 100 euros.

Poker school promises also that the offer is completely free and it does not bind in any way. The money has to be spent for internet poker.

Poker school gets a reward from companies that run internet poker. The school directs players to the companies, and they get their share from the pots played.

The better the players of the school play, the more the school wins. That’s why the school tries to train its members as good as possible.

Via internet, the school teaches for example the rules of poker from the beginning on and some strategic principles. They also promise teaching while which you can follow the play of professionals from a video.

You can also ask professionals about their strategies.

The poker school is run by a company called Swerford Holdings, situated at Gibraltar.

The law of lotteries states that it is illegal to promote illegal lotteries. “Promoting” means advertisement material and resembling activity.

Poker is a casino game of chance, at least partially. Sari Peltopakka, senior inspector of the Ministry of the Interior, says that poker is covered by the law of lotteries. She does not, however, comment on the case of PokerStrategy.

According to Peltopakka, the Finnish law may cover international business. She refers to a recent case.

- Supreme Court of Finland decided that a game was held in Finland, although it came from Aland Islands (simo: the case of http://www.paf.fi).

Author: Ari Kapanen

http://www.taloussanomat.fi/urheilu-ja-vapaa-aika/2007/12/10/Nettipokeri+jakaa+rahaa+ilmaiseksi+/200731262/382?rss=4

Writing or let´s better say remembering that you have a blog is really hard. Maybe I should make a reminder in Outlook that I have to post something interesting every x days. The funny thing is, that I am not the only one that got lazy. Lazy means not that we don´t work enough. We just have no time for writing blogs because there are so many cool (and annoying) things to do at PokerStrategy!

Our Content and our Community-Managers are actually searching for nice speakers. We are doing a lot of new videos in a great new format. German users know it already from our weekly psychology video series which is unique in the poker world and helps a lot. You can expect more and more in the future.

Our new SnG section is great and it should go online this week. First in german and later on in every language. The weekly content on our german website will get a new archive in a couple of days. You can expect a lot of new (old) content from the past to browse and learn! The content week is also something that will be available in every language in the near future. The guys are already working hard on it.