While catching up on some of the back reading I couldn't ignore the press release from Partygaming concerning their predictions that the growth of online gaming will slow over the next months. Partygaming (LSE: PRTY) is traded on the London Stock Exchange and the stock lost about $4 billion dollars of its value. The press release only states that the company expects to see slower growth in the future as the exponential growth enjoyed through the start-up period begins to plateau. All is as expected and the industry is in great health and will continue to produce substantial future revenues.

The company issued a statement that offered some highly speculative reasons for the slow down including the televised broadcast of the 2005 WSOP on ESPN. People watching the shows aren't playing on Party or something like that. I think it quite likely that the poker fans watching the WSOP are soon sitting in front of their computer trying to emulate the live poker action they just witnessed. Of course, everything I've said about this is also highly speculative and should be taken as the word of a fool. Should I ever figure out the intricacies of the habits of the masses toward the stock market I will hang up the camera and laptop and enjoy the rest of my days on a warm beach somewhere.

Is this the end of the poker boom? Hardly. Triple digit growth for any Internet gaming site will probably soon history. Today's announcement may be Partygaming's acknowledgment of the new Internet kid on the block, WPT (World Poker Tour) Enterprises (Nasdaq: WPTE) and Sportingbet (LSE: SBT), which controls Paradise Poker. The increased competition from the dozens of pop-up poker sites has diluted the market. Land based poker players are a fickle bunch that will quickly replace one brand with another for the slightest reason, they're not noted for long-term brand loyalty. They also tend toward congregating in large crowds, in other words, they like to play in full games in large rooms. I believe the Internet poker players have similar traits; so, why would the biggest poker room ever fire off a press release with the grim news that their growth will be reduced to rates closer to other legitimate businesses? Do they want the investors to hunker down and weather the storm or sell out and head for the hills? Should I be worried about any of this? What if poker is here to stay and home computers are the fad?