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There appears to be a resurgence in live poker, according to the PokerPages Industry Index, an industry standard when it comes to measuring the growth in Live Poker. This puts to rest all the recent speculation that Live Poker was experiencing a downtrend.
"The World Poker Tour really carried the torch this month, representing 45 percent of the total buy-ins," said PokerPages Founder Mark Napolitano. The World Poker Tour (WPT) hosted its $25,000 Main Event Final this month with record success. "We are continuing to see players favoring the WPT's big buy - in events over the World Series Circuit Main events - as we continue to see slower than expected growth from the young WSOP Circuit."
There were a record number of entrants for April, with most of the growth coming from the non-series events, which jumped 44 percent from last April to over 29,000 entries.
"This is a great sign for the industry," says Napolitano. "This means that we are starting to see more players entering the game from the ground up, growing the base of long term players." April's overall entrant's index resides at 142, representing over 31,400 entries, a 42 percent increase over April 2005. Entries are also up for the year, totaling more than 113,000, putting the year-to-date index at 122, a 22 percent growth over 2005.
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