It was not a big surprise for online gambling analysts when the world's most popular online poker room, Party Poker, began falling in its popularity position last week. Publicly owned Party Gaming, hitherto sat in the number one spot for as long as most online gamers can remember. However, after Party Gaming's announcement to cease hosting U.S. players at its online casino, 888, poker room Party Poker, and all other affiliated online gaming properties, the company's numbers naturally began to slip.

Statistical figures collected from numerous sources, including iGaming News and PokerSiteScout, revealed that Full Tilt Poker, which has been a strong contender in the gaming industry for quite some time, pushed ahead of Party Poker in popularity by signing approximately 480 more players than Party Poker, Full Tilt averages 3,992 new players per week, while Party slipped to 3,513 per week on average.

Continuing to lead the pack is Poker Stars, who averaged an astounding 8,075 new player sign-ups last week. Using their very own proprietary software, Poker Stars decided to keep doing business with U.S. players - a decision that has so far proven to pay off very well. This, coupled with an aggressive marketing strategy that has included name-branding commercials on the Travel Channel (advertising PokerStars.net, which is a play-for-fun version of the .com site) has helped bring Poker Stars to the forefront of online casino gaming.

Although they are are ranked further down in popularity, Ladbrokes poker room continues to steadily draw increased numbers. Hardly being affected by the U.S. ban, Ladbrokes has been quite busy expanding its gaming empire, including online casino operations and land-based strategies, including a speculative buyout of Irish betting shop operator, Betdaq.