The analysis of the Market Pulse report for June 2008 is out.

The traffic in the top online poker rooms was down as compared to May 2008. This was expected because the attention of the poker industry has been focused on WSOP 2008 all of June.

What is unexpected is that the fall in traffic is only marginal.

The top ten online poker rooms are Poker Stars, Full tilt Poker, Titan poker, Party Poker Mansion Poker, Everest Poker, Doyles Room, Ultimate Bet, Absolute Poker and Bodog Poker. The average daily traffic in June at Poker Stars was 12,856, which was almost double of the second busiest poker room Full Tilt Poker. Ultimate Bet, Absolute Poker and Bodog Poker hovered around the 1,000 mark. Taking all these ten rooms together the traffic fell in June as compared to May by a little over 2%. The fall was not uniform. Some poker rooms, namely Poker Stars, Doyles room and Absolute Poker showed increases, while the rest registered a fall in traffic. The traffic in Doyles Room doubled. The biggest loss came in Mansion Poker with the traffic falling to almost half.

Market Pulse also reports the last six months average traffic and the last 12 months average traffic. For the ten online poker rooms combined there was a fall of over 5% when compared with the last six months but a gain of almost 1% when compared with the last 12 months.

The last 12 months give a clearer picture because they smoothen the high seasonal winter traffic. The trend is that online player traffic is increasing and this is linked to a large extent to the increase in tournament prizes over the past year. Comparison of individual poker rooms brings out a mixed bag result. Poker Stars, Full tilt Poker, Titan poker and Doyles Room have shown increases whereas the others have shown decreases as compared to the last 12 months average. If one takes Doyles Room as an exception, the trend is clear. Traffic is moving to the bigger rooms from the smaller rooms. Size does matter. Scandals at the Ultimate Bet – Absolute Poker combine seem to have rocked confidence in the smaller rooms. Besides larger rooms defray costs over significantly more players and therefore operate on lower house edges.

Market Pulse does much more than track traffic. It follows almost a million hands being played online every day and weans a number of useful statistics from them. These statistics are compiled into meaningful reports and updated in real time. Market Pulse is the most comprehensive view of online poker. Market Pulse is a proprietary tool of Pokerlistings.

Another parameter that Market Pulse tracks is average pot size. For many players this is more significant than the traffic. As far as average pot size is concerned the smaller online poker rooms tend to score. Pacific Poker, which did not figure in the top ten according to traffic, had the largest average pot size at $47. Poker Stars the online poker room with the highest traffic had an average pot size of $18.90 in comparison.