Party Poker puts the screws to players!

[Penguinfan]

It would appear that the giant upgrade Party did today was to seperate itself from it's skins like Empire. THIS SUCKS. I am sure they did this just to **** everyone playing on a rakeback deal through one of the skins.

You can no longer play on Party tables through other skins it looks like, currently at Empire there is ONE pot limit Omaha hi/lo table running and it has six players :cursin:

Greedy bastards.

 

[dr. freeze]

yep...totally agree

the best poker sites to play at are obviously where the fish are

the fish dont necessarily go to where the best deal is for the player -- as in rakeback or best rake structure

bad for us

 

[BleedDodgerBlue]

PartyGaming Plc
New platform launch

PartyGaming Plc (?PartyGaming? or the ?Group?), the world's leading online gaming company, announces today that it has taken a further step towards establishing a new fully integrated PartyGaming operating platform. This platform will, on launch, offer a variety of different games but with a common systems architecture allowing each of its nine million registered PartyPoker customers to use a single account and a shared purse across the Group?s gaming brands.

As part of today?s development, the Group has moved the PartyPoker.com brand and all of its players to the new platform.

Historically, PartyPoker players have shared the same poker-only system with players from each of the Group?s four white label poker clients or ?skins? (being Empire Poker, Coral Eurobet, Multipoker and Intertops). Following today?s move, PartyPoker players will now play on their own private tables and benefit from a number of new and exciting products that are exclusive to the new platform. The new platform includes non-poker games such as Blackjack, as well as added features to the poker product such as Side Bets and Deal-Making in poker tournaments. Once the fully integrated platform is launched in the first half of 2006, players will then be able to click through and play on PartyPoker, PartyCasino and other new PartyGaming products that are currently being developed, all using a common account and a shared purse.

The skins? poker players will continue to have full access to the existing poker system. They will also now benefit from the release of several new product enhancements comprising ?beginners? tables? ? these include ?micro-limit tables? and low buy-in tables ? and $50/$100 and $100/$200 tables. PokerNOW.com, which was acquired by the Group earlier in the year, will continue to operate on the existing poker system with the skins.

Commenting on today?s announcement Richard Segal, Chief Executive said:

?We are on track to deliver our exclusive Party-branded integrated platform that will include additional products and services, enabling us to focus on optimising cross-selling opportunities. We believe that today?s development is an important step towards cementing together the inherent strengths of all the Party brands and is in the best interests of our customers and shareholders. In conjunction with this exciting development, we will continue to maintain and support the poker system we provide for the skins.?

 

[Penguinfan]

They can spin it any way they want, bottom line is they are breaking it off in the ass of players who were playing on the skins for a rakeback deal.

 

[Lockport7]

Rakeback will be offered in the next week at Party. It won't be as high as before at the other skins but it will be in the 20's.

 

[BleedDodgerBlue]

Rakeback will be offered in the next week at Party. It won't be as high as before at the other skins but it will be in the 20's.

everything I've heard and seen says it will be nowhere near the 20's. Looking more like the lower teens.

Dikshits a dik. I think full tilt and UB will benefit most from this mess. Party fell flat on its face with its IPO and earnings statements and now must face the consequences.

 

[saint]

From raketherake:

We do not know the exact ins and outs of what has happened or why, but
it seems like Party Poker has divorced itself from its skins. They seem
to have done this suddenly and without telling anybody including the
skins!

This will NOT affect your rakeback at all if you play at a skin
(Eurobet, Empire or Intertops)

A lot of players have emailed us stating they would like to switch to
play at Party Poker itself and can we offer them a deal

The answer is yes but we won't be able to create the account for you.

We are able to offer a reward scheme with Party which will effectively
give you a 22% return there (we only get 25%). This is not as high as
the other skins but we will hopefully be able to improve this as we
build up the volume.

If you want a code to sign up with Party, please email us and we will
send you one.

If you have an existing account there (particularly one that you have
not used recently) you may have to close that one first in order to
create a new account. You will also need to use a different email address.

See http://www.raketherake.com/PokerParty.html for more details

If you see people asking for a Party Poker scheme in the forums, please
feel free to point them in our direction (mentioning you code for a
referral fee obviously!!!)

Best regards

RTR

 

[Lockport7]

Saint,

Thanks for the update from them.

I am with another affailiate where I am getting 28% and this morning they assured us that they would be in the 20's range at Party. A good friend of mine runs the affailiate, there shocked this was completely out of the blue.

I don't think it is going to hurt PartyPoker though, I truly don't. They did this based on numbers, and I am sure there a lot of complaints about the big players going to skins instead of party. There are a lot of fish at Party, more then any were else online. I've talked with a lot of friends that play full time in the bigger games and everyone is upset but they will move back to Party.

The consensus right now is if you have a Party account that has been idle for 60+ days you will be able to take advantage of the rake backs once there set. The affiliates are working on getting some sort of other deal as well for people that play on both.

On the plus side:

You can now play 10 tables at one time on one account at Party. This is really key to the fulltimers. I have been playing on Empire for about a year and have been running two accounts at one time so that I can 8 table.

PartyGaming isn't stupid, they know there numbers and I would say about 85% perecnt of people don't know anything about rakeback. It's going to be hard for other skins to survive, and I for one am not hesistating to move over to Party as I like the interface the best of all things online.

I do find it funny that they did this update/skin killing on a busy Saturday. I think that was to send a message to the rakeback people. I mean they could have done this at 4 am on Monday morning but they cut there whole system offline for close to what 4 or 5 hours?

Seth

 

[Lockport7]

BTW..........

As of this morning, I got a 3% raise to 31% for Empire.

Doesn't really matter to me that much but Empire is trying to keep its players, hardcore

 

[ndnfan]

I really don't believe that this came as such a shock and out of the blue to the skins, etc. like I keep reading about everywhere. Heck, I heard about something like this possibly happening around a month ago:

http://www.madjacksports.com/forum/showthread.php?t=204700

Nonetheless will be interesting to see how things develop. Just wish I was fast enough to do some 10-tabling. LOL.

 

[Penguinfan]

One more thing that hurts us player believe it or not is the addition of black jack and the sidebet option.

Certainly you can just not play them if you don't want to, but eventually this has to come to a legal battle here in the US and the argument of poker being a skill game, not random chance was going to help win that battle, with the addition of the two new options it gives morons like Kyle that much more ammo to shut us off.

The whole thing stinks if you ask me.

 

[BleedDodgerBlue]

One more thing that hurts us player believe it or not is the addition of black jack and the sidebet option.

Certainly you can just not play them if you don't want to, but eventually this has to come to a legal battle here in the US and the argument of poker being a skill game, not random chance was going to help win that battle, with the addition of the two new options it gives morons like Kyle that much more ammo to shut us off.

The whole thing stinks if you ask me.

forget the legality issue. Fish are much more likely to lose more money at blackjack. Less money for them to donate with. Party will swallow their money much quicker than bleeding it out in rake.

 

[Penguinfan]

forget the legality issue. Fish are much more likely to lose more money at blackjack. Less money for them to donate with. Party will swallow their money much quicker than bleeding it out in rake.

Yep, thats another good point, or at least another one to add to the list of reasons this sucks out loud.

I just don't understand why so many sites are against rakeback? If you are giving an affiliate 30% of a players revenue what do you care how the affiliate distributes it?

I signed up for PokerShare to get 30% rakeback and know at least one person for sure that went with my affiliate to get that deal and just three days later they did away with the rakeback program there as well. Fortunatly for us the players that already had a deal in place get to keep it for good.

What is there problem with rakeback players?

 

[Sun Tzu]

Can you all put this in english for non poker folks

 

[Penguinfan]

Party Poker allowed other site called skins that looked identical except for the color scheme to share tables, meaning you could be playing through Empire Poker and sit at the exact same tables as people playing through Party Poker. This created an extremely large pool of players. If you were playing through one of the "Skins" you could get a rakeback deal from an affiliate and get up to 30% of your rake paid back to you every month.

Yesterday Party did an upgrade to it's software severing ties with the skins. If you played through Empire there are now far less tables running, far less fish and the end will likely be near for these platforms.

 

[bjfinste]

So do you think Empire will still be able to function on its own? Or is this pretty much the death of that site?

 

[Penguinfan]

Good question. Some affiliates are already stating that they will be able to increase your rakeback to 31% because of this.

The selection of games has decreased tremendously in just one day though.

I play mostly pot limit Omaha hi/lo and couldn't get a table worth playing last night or today.

As far as I am concerned it looks like the death of Empire.

 

[THE KOD]

so why not just go over to Party Poker.

 

[BleedDodgerBlue]

so why not just go over to Party Poker.

because break even players who thought they were winners will now discover that the only reason they were making money is rakeback and will soon find out that they can't cut it, thus diminishing the player pool. sharks will quickly eat the fish and break evens will give up.

 

[Lockport7]

so why not just go over to Party Poker.

Eventually it will happen for everyone that wants to play a lot of cards but if I were people that wre playing on the skins, I wouldn't move just yet as rakeback will be offered in the next week and I wouldnt wanna miss on that.

I.E. Scott a guy playing 1000 200+15 tournies a month is now going to be missing out on 4200 extra dollars a month.

It's a huge deal even for those that play the lower levels and like the others have said breakeven lpayers with rakeback become winning players and make some nice change. Now that that is gone a significant number of fish will be gone as well.

I don't think Empire and Euro will die quickly as they still have 5,000 players playing consistently at one time. But where I used to play 8 tournies at one time, now I am struggling to get more then 2 going at the same time. And games besides No Limit holdem in the tourney sector are pretty much done.