Ingo Fiedler

The Market for Online Poker

Although online poker is a gold mine of data, until now nobody knows where the players and their money come from. It seems that the knowledge about the online poker market has not been able to keep up with the speed of its evolution in the past years. This paper is the first to shed light on this matter. We use data of 4,591,342 poker identities from the Online Poker Database of the University of Hamburg (OPD-UHH) collected over a six months period from 09/2009 to 03/2010. We find that the USA is still by far the biggest market with 1,428,823 active players and 650.5 million US

The Gambling Habits of Online Poker Players

net revenues in 2009. However, with regard to the number of internet users in a country Hungary is the biggest relative market: One out of 57 Hungarians with internet access plays online poker for real money. The two main drivers of the proportion of online poker players per internet users are GDP per capita and culture. Using the data from the OPD-UHH, future research will be able to break down the market also on a regional level within countries and to examine inter and intra country differences in the playing habits of online poker players.

Online Gambling as a Game Changer to Money Laundering

Online poker is a data goldmine. Recording actual gambling behavior gives rise to a host of research opportunities. Still, investigations using such data are rare with the exception of nine pioneering studies by Harvard Medical School which are reviewed here. This paper fills part of the vacuum by analyzing the gambling habits of a sample of 2,127,887 poker playing identities at Pokerstars over a period of six months. A couple of playing variables are operationalized and were analyzed on their own as well as connected with each other in form of the playing volume (

Antitrust in Two-Sided Markets: Is Competition Always Desirable?

rake a player has paid in a time frame). The main findings confirm the results of the Harvard studies: most online poker players only play a few times and for very low stakes. An analysis of the relationship between the playing habits shows that they reinforce each other with the exception of the playing frequency which moderates gambling involvement. The average values of the playing habits are considerably higher due to a small group of intense players: the 99% percentile player has a playing volume that is 552 times higher than that of the median player (US

Neue Formen von Social Gam(bl)ing

2,685), and 1% of the players account for 60% of playing volume (10% for even 91%). This group is analyzed more thoroughly, and a discussion shows that the first impulse to peg intense players as (probable) pathological gamblers is wrong. Rather, future research is needed to distinguish problem gamblers from professional players.

Marktumfang und Marktstrukturanalyse Gaming und Gambling

1.6 billion criminal proceedings are transferred yearly into the legal system by money laundering (UNODC 2011). Only about 0.2% are identified and confiscated. The manifold negative consequences of money laundering are devastating and threaten the functionality of capital markets (Unger 2007). An important aspect of money laundering is that it is a necessity for organized crime. Without money laundering most crime would not pay. This paper analyses why the relatively new market of online gambling provides different opportunities to launder money cheaply and its consequences.

Definitionen von Gaming und Gambling

The main objective of antitrust interventions is to assure competition in markets to benefit consumers. This paper challenges this common approach by examining the case of a satellite broadcasting network with monopoly power. First, satellite TV is identified as a two-sided market. It is then analyzed in the framework of the canonical model for two-sided markets developed by Rochet & Tirole (2004). The main finding is that the satellite network maximizes his profits by choosing a price formation which maximizes the overall welfare of all market participants. Even if the satellite network uses his monopoly power to introduce a fee to receive satellite TV, it would do so only until the semi-elasticity of the amount of consumers in regard to the per-interaction-price equals the one of the TV stations – exactly the point where welfare is maximized. It is therefore concluded that antitrust cases have to take a more in-depth look at two-sided markets before deciding that competition is best for consumers.

Das Phänomen Geldwäsche

In diesem Kapitel wird ein detaillierter Einblick in verschiedene neue Formen des Social Gam(bl)ing gegeben, die sich im Bereich zwischen Gaming und Gambling bewegen. Wahrend es sich bei eSports im Grunde um teilweise hochdotierte Wettkampfe in virtuellen Geschicklichkeitsspielen handelt, weisen die anderen neuen Spielformen Charakteristika des klassischen Glucksspiels auf. Insbesondere werden verschiedene Wettformen im Rahmen von eSports angeboten, die in den folgenden Abschnitten erlautert werden. Dazu zahlen eSportsbook Wetten, Game-mediated Betting und Head-to-Head Betting.

Wirksame Parameter in Sozialkonzepten

In diesem Kapitel werden die Unterschiede zwischen Gaming und Gambling durch den Vergleich der Kommerzialisierungskonzepte beschrieben. Ein Fokus liegt dabei auf der Konzentration der Nachfrage der identifizierten Spielformen, welche als Indikator fur Sozialschadlichkeit fungiert (Fiedler et al., 2017). Es wird gezeigt, dass sich die klassischen Geschaftsmodelle von Glucksspiel und Gaming stark unterscheiden, wahrend die Ertragsmechanik der relativ neuen Erscheinungsform von Pay2Win Spielen der von klassischen Glucksspielen ahnelt. Allerdings mussen fur den Gamingbereich die Erkenntnisse zu der Nachfragekonzentration und damit den Geschaftsmodellen auf theoretischer Basis verbleiben, da die Zahlungsbereitschaft von Gamern ein wohlgehutetes Geheimnis der Branche ist und kein Datensatz dazu offengelegt wurde.