New Jersey Online Poker Passes Up Nevada on Strength of Busy Weekend

It didn’t take long for New Jersey to topple Nevada from the top of the regulated online poker charts.

New Jersey, which rolled out regulated online gambling last week, rode a strong weekend to traffic totals that give a hint as to the market’s true online poker potential.

Based on data from PokerScout.com as of noon EST on December 2nd, here’s how the two states stack up:

• New Jersey: 808 players at 24hr peak / 312 players rolling 7-day average
• Nevada: 443 players at 24hr peak / 195 players rolling 7-day average

PokerScout tracks cash game traffic only, and counts each seat filled as a player.

WSOP.com leads the Nevada market, while Party / Borgata is responsible for roughly half of the New Jersey market.

NV still outperforming NJ proportionately

With a population roughly one-third the size of New Jersey, Nevada is still performing better on a per capita basis.

Also worth noting: New Jersey has four unique online poker networks on offer, while Nevada’s market is made up of just two. And New Jersey is riding a wave of mainstream media attention following the state’s launch of regulated online gambling.

But Nevada’s per capita lead may be the next to fall.

New Jersey is also in the early stages of its online gambling rollout, and there have been a variety of issues – primarily geo-location and deposit problems – that could be depressing participation.

And research indicates that a majority of NJ residents are under or completely uninformed regarding regulated online poker and gambling.

Delaware continues to slowly gain traction

After a slow start marred by technical issues and marked with little fanfare, Delaware (population ~917,000) is enjoying modest, yet identifiable growth.

PokerScout puts the 24 hour peak for Delaware’s sole online poker network at 56, with a 7-day average of 22 players.