Ever wondered why Backgammon and other skill games become a niche market, attracting players considerably less in numbers than those attracted by real money poker games? Backgammon tournaments hardly see as much fanfare as poker games played with real money and the user base of such skill based games has remained incredibly smaller even though the average number of players participating in online casinos continues to go up every year.
In the last five years itself, skilled games have seen a huge drop in favour and it is believed that the biggest reason behind this is the inability of these games to generate meaningful rake revenues. This means that the rake per player, per hour, in these skill games is much less than the rake revenues in poker games that involve cash prizes. The promotions on these games have become less generous as the casinos slowly lose interest in them. The players, who enjoy these games, still grab any opportunity to show their skills enthusiastically. However, since the casinos themselves are no longer interested in promoting them as much as other high raking games, they hardly get the opportunity to play a good game.
Some of these games are also considered too skilful and players soon lose their interest. New players find it difficult to beat their skilled and experienced opponents, finally deciding to take their money to some other game.
Another reason why the skill games are no longer as popular is because their has been a slow and steady rise in players who use artificial intelligence in the form of software that allow players to gain advantage over their human competitors. While most of the modern, high traffic online gaming websites are well equipped to deal with such bots that try to connect to their network, sites which are already facing trouble raking in decent revenues from the skill games, may lose out.
Skill game enthusiasts are trying to keep their favourite games alive, but with the aggressive marketing of real cash poker games, who knows how long they will be able to.
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