Cryptologic which provides online poker and online casino software announced today that the their Q2 results would be worse then expected. This sent their already badly hammered stock to over 16% free fall. In the last 3 years the stock has come down staggering 92.8% which makes it most likely the absolutely worst performed online gambling stock during that time frame.

Even from the poker player’s perspective the downfall or Cryptologic has been both magnificent and disturbing. Few years ago the Cryptologic network was known to have the absolute softest poker games on the planet. The people who back then played the games as big as today’s $300/$600 fixed limit games (majority of the action at the network was in UK pounds) claim that people who are today able to beat $5/$10 fixed limit games would have made fortune out of those games with their skills. Back then online gambling powerhouses such as William Hill and Betfair were located in the poker network and everything seemed to go their. But then Betfair announced that they would be leaving the network and start their own poker site (funnily enough Betfair announced just couple days ago that they are leaving behind the stand alone poker site and joining the ongame network) and from that point on everything began going down hill. First, thanks to the smaller number of sports bettors who were just learning poker, the games became significantly harder to beat and that resulted that many of the high raking customers moved to greener pastures. Which in turned the site to nearly a ghost town and when that happened even the smaller stakes players began to leave. So not that long ago after the Betfair’s departure Cryptologic was forced to merge with the international poker network or otherwise they would simply not have had any players left playing at their site.

However clearly that move to merge with the international poker network (also known as the boss media network) hasn’t worked out as planned, as can be seen from their quarterly results. Though admittedly as they also provide casino software for several big online companies there is also that part of the story. And maybe it is the casino part of the company that ends up saving the company somewhere down the road, at the very least they just signed a relatively big partnership as Betsafe online gambling company announced just a few months ago that they are now offering their users downloadable Cryptologic casino games.