As professional gamblers, we provide a service. Weaker players put their $100 in a game with us, not because they expect to win, but because they expect to have fun. By ensuring the fish have more fun, we can ensure that we get more rematches.
First, we have to ask the question, why do the fish play at all? They want to experience high stakes poker. The money is a way to get that experience. It is the cost of entertainment. This explains why there are more regs and fewer fish online at noon on a Wednesday. Most people don't pay for entertainment on a Wednesday morning. They think, "I work hard all week, I'm going to deposit $100 and make a Friday night out of it."
What has changed now that we've entered a recession? People still want to pay for entertainment. But a dollar means more to them, psychologically. So where they might have deposited $100 on a Wednesday night for entertainment, these days it seems more likely that they would wait until that $100 can bring them the best entertainment that online poker has to offer. This would explain why the average number of online players has consistently increased, even with the current legal climate of online poker and in the midst of a recession.
