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Six months ago, PartyPoker looked in much worse shape than today. The average number of occupied seats at active cash game tables was sometimes even below 4,000. Since a week or so, this number is above 6,000 on a 7 day average - a strength PartyPoker hadn't seen in a year.
Now, the stock market and player lows of last autumn / winter already seem forgotten. PartyPoker seems to be back on track, with improvements in their VIP system and software in the recent months and still a steady stream of fishes that still favour the big name brand that PartyPoker still is.
Looking at the recently released quarterly report, one can see their upswing especially in an early indicator: the number of new real money player sign-ups on PartyPoker. This number, mainly constituent of players new to poker (thus mostly fishes) might allow a projection of future cash game traffic:
| Quarter | New Real Money Player Sign-Ups |
| Q1 05 | 33.900 |
| Q2 05 | 42.200 |
| Q3 05 | 55.700 |
| Q4 05 | 72.600 |
| Q1 06 | 103.200 |
| Q2 06 | 106.400 |
| Q3 06 | 129.900 |
| Q4 06 | 130.400 |
| Q1 07 | 209.800 |
| Q2 07 | 134.200 |
| Q3 07 | 110.400 |
| Q4 07 | 118.600 |
| Q1 08 | 130.900 |
| Q2 08 | 104.300 |
| Q3 08 | 92.100 |
| Q4 08 | 117.700 |
| Q1 09 | 132.700 |
As you can see, this number of new players has not been reached for nearly two years! Take this signal and combine it with the recent year-on-year growth of the whole poker industry of an estimated 25%, and you will have a lot of arguments against all those people who forecast the end of the poker boom since years.
