Staggering

Earlier in the week Pokerstars had a server restart, and upon the server being back online I was unable to login. I would enter my username and password successfully, get prompted for my RSA token and enter that correctly - and then nothing would happen. The issue corrected itself in about an hour and a half, and it was confirmed by support (hours later) to be a server side problem. During that time, I was troubleshooting on my end to make sure nothing was amiss. The last thing I looked at was my notes.xml file, containing all the player notes and color coding I have generated on Stars while grinding.

Nothing was wrong with the file (years ago there was bug in the Stars client that would corrupt one's notes.txt, which I why I was suspicious), but what I was shocked to discover was simply how many players I have color coded since the functionality was implemented (a little over a year ago I think, maybe as much as 18 months). The number was over 54,000. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of these players were of the recreational variety, as the regular pool plays many tables at a time and doesn't change all that much. I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised, but to think just how many players must deposit to support the poker ecosystem at small stakes is nothing short of staggering. Granted, a lot of recreational players have to throw $500 on Stars for me to end up taking six figures a year out of the economy, especially when so much of that money goes to rake. That being said, it just doesn't feel like I'm color coding all that many players any more - though after checking the file again it seems over the last two days I've added ~200 or so entries. Even though game quality may not be great, it's tough to argue that the advertising team at Pokerstars isn't attracting a lot of new recreational players.