I say forget about SEO this late in the game beyond the very basics.
Sure optimize your pages with keywords here and there to bring in a trickle of search engine traffic, but if you think you are going to get good SERP's for new poker site nowadays..........well most people are just deluding themselves with wishful thinking.
The opportunities for getting mega traffic in the poker niche today are in Web 2.0
It amazes me that poker affiliates, in general are so far behind the times when it comes to traffic generation in 2007.
Create poker strategy tutorials on video for your site.
It's very easy with today's technology.
Create video screen capture poker site reviews.
And then submit them to U Tube and Google Vids....etc
Start a
blog and Squidoo lens......
Capture the name and email address of every visitor you possibly can and stay in touch with them via newsletters.
Build a community of players.
Loyal customers who trust your opinion and expertize.
Stand out from the crowd. Almost nobody is doing this.
That is a huge opportunity for you.
Build the most useful, friendly poker affiliate site on the web and you can tell Google to fuc*-off.
Your site will eventually become very popular just by word of mouth alone.
That's the internet world we live in today.