By Peter Laurrell | October 9, 2008

With election campaigns escalating, international tensions between superpowers rising and a global economic meltdown overwhelming billions of citizens worldwide, a lot has been going on in the way of frontpage news. So much so that I wanted to take a quick minute and catch you up on some Party Poker news.

• Party Poker’s third installment of the popular Big Game played in the famed Poker Den has ended with the US’s own Mr. Omaha, Robert Williamson III coming out the big winner. With a more than $63,000 net profit in the minimum $10K buy in $25/$50 game, Williamson was at the top of the 21 player field including: Roland de Wolfe (who finished down $50,000,) David Williams (who finished down $40,000,) Phil Laak (who finished up more than $20,000) and girlfriend Jennifer Tilly (who also finished up around $10,000) in addition to some surprising success from online qualifier Bodo Sbrzesny who cashed out of the Poker Den with $22,850 more than the $20,000 Party Poker staked him to. Of course, more than $50,000 was doled out by Party Poker to online players during the Big Game III through special $1,000 “Party Pots” randomly designated by the site which awarded a cool grand to people playing on Party Poker every hour while the Big Game III was running.
• German professional player Soraya Homam took home the first prize in the second of Party Poker’s prestigious Women’s World Open annual $3,000 USD buy-in No Limit Hold’em Ladies Only Poker Tournament. Soraya was part of a final table which featured much in the way of top non-US female poker talent: Eliza Burnett, Michelle Orpe, Kyla Kalimar, May Maceiras and Stefanie Bergener. The 46 year old Homam, attributed her success to a unique source of inspiration: “My luggage got lost on the flight over to London and I was down about that. When it was located and arrived, I felt I had a new lease of life. I know it sounds strange but it gave me more confidence and made me feel much more comfortable at the table.”
• UK TV show Bingo Night Live is running a potentially world record freeroll bingo game with the winner looking at a possible £60,000 in winnings. Players can sign up online for the game run under the growing umbrella of PartyGaming plc at www.itv.com/bingonightlive and if more than the 62,605 record players signs up and wins the jackpot on or after October 10, the winner will receive the largest bingo payout in the history online gaming according to the Guinness Book of World Records at £60,000.
• The recent revamp of Party Poker has begun to show signs of significant progress. For the first time in nearly 4 months, Party Poker is regularly registering peak hours of traffic in excess of 10,000 players. Not only that, Party Poker’s a daily average traffic rate of 4,950 over the week from October 1-7 is a nearly 80% recuperation of the player losses experienced at Party Poker over the past six months. I know I’ve written extensively on why you should really be thinking about investing in PartyGaming plc (listed as PRTY on the London Stock Exchange,) here is yet another reason to add to the laundry list – upward momentum due to re-investment in infrastructure in an extremely recession-proof industry (gaming) during a large scale international economic downturn.

Good luck with navigating through this mess if you’ve got money in any of the negatively affected markets and remember that, historically, gaming markets are not only recession proof, but tend to do well during times of great economic troubles. Just an amateur’s food for thought.

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