Party Poker split from affiliates (merged)

Lafortezza

Any of you who play on Party/Empire/skins will have know about the shutdown this afternoon for a few hours.

Party poker is now split from its skins/affiliates. So if you are playing on Empire poker you are only going to be playing against other Empire/Multipoker/eurobet/pokernow/etc. All the regular Party Poker players are totally seperate and you won't be playing against them.

So if you have a rakeback deal or anything your table choice is severly restricted. Afaik you can't get a rake back deal on the pure Party Poker site itself. This sucks cock bigtime imho.

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.

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.”

Quotes above are from a 2+2 poster who apparently is a reputable Party Poker spokesman.

NickyOD

The Party network tables are no longer linked. This is bad. This is reall bad. Damn!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=3618556&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&vc=1

Lafortezza

So all skins/affiliates players play together, and all Party Poker players play together, there's no crossover whatsoever.
That explains why there was only 9k people online tonight instead of the usual 70k

Another long thread on the topic is here

Another one here

Marq

I've been reading the threads on 2+2 for the last hour and a half in utter disbelief. this is one of the worst things that could have happened to professional or semi-professional online poker players.the combination of soft competition and large rakeback have made the party skins the ideal place to play cash games. Now it's all gone.

There is not a single 2/4 or 3/6 Omaha Hi/Lo game going on empire right now.
Black Saturday indeed.

this couldn't have come at a worse time for me.

Ah well. Back to stars for the 45k gtd in 20 minutes.

Lafortezza

It's good business sense for Party apparently.
All the skins/affiliates will lose custom because the rakeback dependant players will go elsewhere as the tables become too tough. (Since they are mostly only playing against other rake back players).

Party will still get the majority of n00bs and fish cos it's the biggest site with lots of advertising.

The good/rakeback dependant players will reluctantly move to Party because that's where the action and bad players are.

You can now make a sidebet on whether the flop will come all black or all red on Party. Ingenious.

henbane

This explains why I was the fish tonight...

Party Poker Pot-Limit Omaha High, $0.25 BB (8 handed) converter

saw flop|saw showdown

UTG+1 ($42.68)
henbane ($36.37)
MP2 ($15.50)
CO ($4.95)
Button ($48.05)
SB ($35.25)
lafortezza ($26.60)
UTG ($26.60)

Preflop: henbane is MP1 with 6s, 8h, 5c, 7d.
2 folds, henbane raises to $0.85, 4 folds, lafortezza calls $0.60.

Flop: ($1.80) Kc, 9h, 5h (2 players)
lafortezza checks, henbane bets $1.75, lafortezza calls $1.75.

Turn: ($5.30) As (2 players)
lafortezza bets $5.05, henbane raises to $20.2, lafortezza raises to $24 (All-In), henbane calls $3.80.

River: ($53.30) 8s (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $53.30

Results in white below:
lafortezza has 2c 3d Ah 4h (one pair, aces).

Outcome: henbane wins $53.30.

Tekkit luke!

bohsman

Could be a good thing, will still be tighter when the reload bonuses are offered but after that there will be more fish than before, also it may become easier to handpick a game instead of going on a waiting list and hopeing you get a good game.

Anyone do the maths on the side bet? 8/1 on a all red flop when youre holding 2black cards. True odds anyone?

bohsman

Also rumours that rakeback is coming to party, you can now 10table and you can do automated deals in tournaments - Im guessing this means you dont need to call a host.

Pokerstars is now bigger than party, enjoy the soft games at party till rakeback is introduced

NickyOD

This is my worst ****ing nightmare. talk about -EV. Normally 3 X $50 SnGs fill up in about 20 seconds. Now there is only one open and we've been waiting for 7 players for the last minute. What a disaster.

bohsman

Nicky, think its time to leave empire - the majority of players in the cash games are multitabling to clear bonuses and are playing very tight, this time next week I reckon all Empire players will be on Noble poker software

NickyOD

bohsman wrote:

Nicky, think its time to leave empire - the majority of players in the cash games are multitabling to clear bonuses and are playing very tight, this time next week I reckon all Empire players will be on Noble poker software

Party have been very underhanded with this change. It's not even clear if Party Gaming notified their skins of this changeover. Eurobet have locked their cashiers!!! Also Party have contacted the rakeback sites with new affiliate offers which means a lot of players on Empire/intertops and Eurobet will get offered better rakeback deals to move to party.

Marq

I really doubt these rumours of rakeback coming to party. Party hate the very idea of rakeback. They hated that players on their network were getting it on empire and I'd say that's half the reason that this move went through. Anyway, even if it did come in most of us already have party accounts so short of creating entirely new identities (we totally new NeTeller accounts) we wouldn't be able to get it.

I'll probably stay at party to clear my monthly reloads and play in the only good Omaha8 games available, but I'll probably be about 22% less profitable without rakeback (Omaha pots are BIG!).

EDIT: Was looking at the rakeback/affiliate forum on 2+2 and it certainly does look like the rakeback rumour may be plausible. Craig from raketracker.com is claiming that they'll be able to offer rakeback to anyone whose party account has been inactive for 60 days. that'll be me not logging in for another seven weeks.

Imposter

Marq wrote:

EDIT: Was looking at the rakeback/affiliate forum on 2+2 and it certainly does look like the rakeback rumour may be plausible. Craig from raketracker.com is claiming that they'll be able to offer rakeback to anyone whose party account has been inactive for 60 days. that'll be me not logging in for another seven weeks.

Crap. I'm just playing the current bonus.

I think Party just want a bigger slice of the pie for themselves so offering rb themselves makes more sense. Not allowing players with existing accounts to switch affiliates would lose them money so that does seem stupid from their pov.

Lafortezza

Marq wrote:

EDIT: Was looking at the rakeback/affiliate forum on 2+2 and it certainly does look like the rakeback rumour may be plausible. Craig from raketracker.com is claiming that they'll be able to offer rakeback to anyone whose party account has been inactive for 60 days. that'll be me not logging in for another seven weeks.

I was pmed with details of a possible rake back deal on Party from a guy on 2+2, I gave him my email and he said he'd get back to me.

If you have a rakeback deal on Empire with a Neteller a/c, can you use that same Neteller a/c to play on Party Poker (if you create a totally new account)?

Marq

yes you can. if you get details of party rakeback will you please pm me about it?

bohsman

Imposter wrote:

Crap. I'm just playing the current bonus.

I think Party just want a bigger slice of the pie for themselves so offering rb themselves makes more sense. Not allowing players with existing accounts to switch affiliates would lose them money so that does seem stupid from their pov.

Thats about 3hours play to clear the bonus. I wont be playing there again for a while if the 60day rumour is confirmed

Imposter

bohsman wrote:

Thats about 3hours play to clear the bonus. I wont be playing there again for a while if the 60day rumour is confirmed

I'm only 2 tabling and i've also been playing Omaha which is slower but anyways it'll be cleared at the latest next weekend and then i'll have to wait out the 60 days if it's possible to switch. Another problem is that I have a Party and an empire account both of which use the same Neteller account.

valor

if anybody gets details of Rakeback at Party, give me a PM please

Lafortezza

Please keep any requests for, or offers of rakeback off threads, put a line in your signature (Go to your UserCP, then profile options to edit this), saying "I am looking for..." or "I am offering..."

I've spent a couple of hours today looking through the 2+2 forums which are still full of conflicting threads with different information about what's going on and whether rakeback is available on the standard Party Poker software and site.

I've exchanged a few pms and I've looked at a few rakeback sites and it seems that there *is* rakeback available on Party. I'm waiting on a few people to get back to me so if I've any info I'll put it in my sig and you can pm/email me then.

One thing to be careful of is independant punters setting themselves up as rake back affilliates for Party. They will offer you 25% or whatever and you'll likely get that for the first while.
But for this to continue the rakeback operator needs to be continually recruiting people to his deal. If he stops then the rakeback can get halted for everyone signed up to him. I *think* the above is accurate but it's mostly just gathered from what I've read on different forums.

So bottom line is, if someone offers you rakeback, ask him for a website where you can find out more detail, ask him for the names of reputable 2+2 punters that can give you a reference to say if he is legit or not.
Be careful basically!

Cianos

Big shake up to the industry alright, it will be interesting to see how this unfolds over the coming months. One thing that worries me is that this could mark the initiation of Partys conquest to monopolise the whole industry...leaving a lot less choice for players as smaller sites go under. I cant imagine the skins hanging on to many players for much longer. I wonder what % of their players are winning players, and what % of their revenue comes from them.

With everyone speaking of moving to Party, to follow the fish, this could be a very smart move on Partys behalf. I wonder if their recent stock performance has scared them into pulling this as an ace-up their sleeve (forgive the pun) type move to please their shareholders?

Another thing to worry about is the fact that they will be hosting BJ and other purely -EV games. This will result in fish blowing more of their BR away from the poker tables, and straight into Party's pocket.

Maniac gets busted for the 3rd time in a cash game...the whole table is laughing. Will the fish top back up, or will he say "f**k this, maybe I'll win it back with a few hands of Blackjack". Arg.

RoundTower

bohsman wrote:

Anyone do the maths on the side bet? 8/1 on a all red flop when youre holding 2black cards. True odds anyone?

Are you sure it isn't 7-1? If it was 8-1 I think you could make a fortune.

Lafortezza

It's "8-for-1" which is 7-1

Ste05

This is an ingenious move by Party IMO, as far as I'm concerned the only real reason people played on the Skins was to get RB, and so they were pretty much all the good players, so now they're all playing against each other and Party have moved to protect all their fishes from these big bad sharks,

Imposter

Ste05 wrote:

This is an ingenious move by Party IMO, as far as I'm concerned the only real reason people played on the Skins was to get RB, and so they were pretty much all the good players, so now they're all playing against each other and Party have moved to protect all their fishes from these big bad sharks,

They still need to have RB though as otherwise they'll lose a lot of business from break even players who are still playing because rakeback makes it profitable for them. these are generally quite high volume players too which is surely what every network wants and needs especially in the long term.

NickyOD

Playing on the party network last night I noticed the tables were incredibly soft, since the better RB players weren't there.

Lafortezza

NickyOD wrote:

Playing on the party network last night I noticed the tables were incredibly soft, since the better RB players weren't there.

And from the short session I had on Empire last night, which would have a larger proportion of RB (and possibly better) players, I noticed the games were much tougher and tighter with smaller average pots
A good business move my Party as the better players will likely forego rakeback and follow the fish to plain ol' Party.

hotspur

Really this was a very likely course of action for Partygaming and I'm not surprised. There are huge party skins like Empire which Partygaming doesn't own. All was fine until the industry began to cash in on its profitability. Empire was in talks last month with Sportingbet over a $1.4 billion takeover by Sportingbet. This caused panic with Partygaming. How could they let it's main skin fall into the hands of competitors? And what then of the other skins? Unless they did something they could have found themselves with other firms taking the skins players out of their network on their own terms and leaving Partygaming with a smaller player base on their network. It was mooted among some industry analysts that Partygaming would put in a rival offer for Empire. But I didn't consider this very likely. I doubt that Sportingbet's "talks" over a $1 billion+ takeover were genuine, could well have been a deal to get publicity for Sportingbet while Empire got to put pressure on Partygaming to make an offer for it. Well Partygaming didn't take the bait, and rather than pay over a billion for it they have taken the, in my view, sensible decision to preempt possible future efforts by others to take control of network players by taking all the network players into Partygaming. Now it's possible that this is just to drive down Empire's stock market price (you should all have become stock market bears immediately when you heard this and sold Empire shares ) to a lowe rand more realistic level before putting in a bid. But it could also just be an attempt to take the Empire players into Partygaming, which makes it a bold and interesting move. I feel sorry for those of you on Empire rakeback programmes, but don't quit Empire just yet, wait to see how they respond because they will have to do something juicy to retain their player base from defecting to Partygaming, competition is always good for the consumer :0) Although by Christmas Partygaming will probably have most of the players from the skins. Anyway how any of you can stand to play using *that* software is beyond me! Maybe it's time to make a patriotic switch to Paddy Power and the Tribeca network! Or give your senses a break from gaudy interfaces at Pokerstars. And you know Fulltiltpoker has turned into a decent site over the past few months, it's a lot looser than it used to be.

Lafortezza

Personally I'd say I'll make the move to Party. Plenty of bad players, it's possible to get rakeback (I think), they use Neteller, and you can use pokertracker.
I don't actually know why people play on PPP apart from the Irish slant and a nice interface. They don't support Neteller or pokertracker, its tricky toget rakeback, and the playerbase is very very small.

Culchie

hotspur wrote:

And you know Fulltiltpoker has turned into a decent site over the past few months, it's a lot looser than it used to be.

Sssshhhh :cool:

The STT's there are so so soft.

hotspur

Actually I always found the STT's on Fulltilt more difficult than elsewhere, though I haven't bothered playing them for a few months. They used to be so tight it was hilarious, $20 sit n goes on Fulltilt used to play like the $320 ones on Pokerstars. But the cash game on Fulltilt has become nice and easy, and it was nice to see Prahlad Friedman playing on the 50/100 NL under his old Spiritrock name recently. The interface is nice enough if you turn off the avatars, put background as plain black, and turn off the sound. But still it annoys me that they won't ship their bonus store stuff to Europe (I want those shades boohoohoo), and their far too stringent time clock is still a major disincentive to play the bigger cash games there, although Pokerstars has gone the other way and given far too much time on their clock lower down.

bohsman

Ive moved back to cryptologic, getting rb from 5 different sites and they each have a monthly bonus of $40 to $90 but best off all they only have freezeouts

Ill continue to play the bonuses on Party but untill rb is offered thats about it.

NickyOD

Since moving to Party from Empire my ROI in SnGs has gone through the roof. It's so much softer without the skins players. There will definitely be RB on party soon so its all good.


Uuuuh. Wow. Party players really ****ing suck.

***** Hand History for Game 2855854050 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $50 Buy-in + $5 Entry Fee Trny:16482110 Level:3 Blinds(25/50) - Monday, October 10, 13:41:45 EDT 2005
Table Table 67231 (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 7
Seat 1: NickyOD ( $940 )
Seat 3: jgotti ( $1070 )
Seat 4: ALLAN1948 ( $470 )
Seat 5: xandersam ( $2950 )
Seat 7: happyjack12 ( $965 )
Seat 8: rrobb2003 ( $1065 )
Seat 10: lber7700 ( $2540 )
Trny:16482110 Level:3
Blinds(25/50)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to NickyOD [ Kh 7h ]
jgotti folds.
ALLAN1948 folds.
xandersam folds.
happyjack12 calls [50].
rrobb2003 folds.
lber7700 calls [25].
NickyOD checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6c, 2c, 7d ]
lber7700 bets [325].
NickyOD is all-In [890]
>You have options at Table 67291 Table!.
happyjack12 folds.
lber7700 calls [565].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qs ]
** Dealing River ** [ 5s ]
lber7700 shows [ Qd, Td ] a pair of queens.
NickyOD shows [ Kh, 7h ] a pair of sevens.
>You have options at Table 66930 Table!.
lber7700 wins 1930 chips from the main pot with a pair of queens.
NickyOD finished in seventh place.
NickyOD has left the table.

Imposter

rounders123 - from his blog wrote:

im going to say something controversial and unqualified as usual now.
there is currently some consternation amongst players with party poker apparently splitting from their affiliates. this seems to be affecting peoples rakeback deals etc etc. well i think that if youre a good enough player you shouldnt have to worry about rakeback or bonuses. if you really need this to remain or get to being a winning player all you should be concerning yourself about is winning at the tables you play regardless of soft opponents and rakeback deals..........period. should be lucky that there is any such things as rakeback deals in the first place. imagine padraig parkinson and scott gray way back then when there was no such thing as the internet and no rake back deals at the casinos they played and them complaining about the fact........ no nor can i.

Sorry rounders but nowhere's safe
The reason I posted it Iis I think your opinion is a little naive.

I agree that good enough players can still do well without rb but players who have rb do play without thinking about it. It only becomes a factor after you have played. When Nicky was posting his 10k hand updates a while back he was getting $300 or so in rakeback for those hands. A lot of serious players play a lot more than 10k hands a month. That's a lot of money to lose out on if rb wasn't available. Party is/was also apparently the easiest game so it's understandable that serious players want ot play there.

Another issue to consider is why is rake so high for online casinos? Surely they have nowhere near the overheads of B&M casinos (as can be seen from Party's profits for last year). Rb is a way to give some of that back to some of the players. They could of course reduce the rake across the board but that's hardly likely to happen.

As for the casinos they do have rb of sorts with comps for regular and/or high stake players and also reduced hotel costs in US casino cities.

Lafortezza

Originally Posted by rounders123 - from his blog
im going to say something controversial and unqualified as usual now.
there is currently some consternation amongst players with party poker apparently splitting from their affiliates. this seems to be affecting peoples rakeback deals etc etc. well i think that if youre a good enough player you shouldnt have to worry about rakeback or bonuses. if you really need this to remain or get to being a winning player all you should be concerning yourself about is winning at the tables you play regardless of soft opponents and rakeback deals..........period.

If you earn $400 per month playing poker, that's great. Would you like an extra $80 for free? Of course. That's what rakeback gave you. It allowed break even players to play 8 tables at once for 50 hours a week, not earn a cent from actual good play, but make a profit from rakeback.
Some people saw it as a perk for being a regular high volume player. Someone playing 3000 hands per month, who technically might be paying less rake per hand because of rakeback, is going to make Party richer than weekend players who log in for a bit of a gamble.

rrtt

Oh no you don't, I've yet to see you make a post that actually contributes to the community on here, instead you seem perfectly happy to drop in and pimp.

Banned for a week. Read the charter. Please pm me in a weeks time in case I forget to unban you, ty gg

Laf.

Marq

The wonderful thing about rakeback is that it can turn a losing week into a break-even or winning week. I have heard it argued that a lower rake is essentially the same as rakeback, but it's clearly not. If you are losing when the rake is lower, you're still losing, whereas with rakeback it's still possible to lose and come out ahead.

Iago

for anyone who is interested (sites found when you google for "rake back Party") are offering rakeback on Partypoker as of today.

20% up to $2000
25% over $2000

I've no idea if this is a good or bad deal or if there are better deals available, just thought it might be of interest to posters on this thread.





Edit: I've banned 1 poster so far for pimping specific sites regarding rakeback. I don't want to have double standard for regular posters. They are easily found using google and 2+2 to search around a bit.

Lafortezza

There's load and loads of sites offering rakeback on Party since the changes were made. The thing is that the Terms & Conditions when you sign up to Party Poker itself clearly state that rakeback is not allowed and may lead to funds being frozen or your account being banned.

To date Party have turned a blind eye to alot of this, people were allowed to have rakeback through affiliate sites because these affiliate sites (like Empire/Eurobet) kept a steady stream of new accounts coming to the Party network.

So it's technically against the rules of Party, and until they actually make a statement or you find a rakeback guy who you actually trust, you should be very very careful about signing up.

jimbling

my rakeback guy (for empire) has just informed me that he is in talks with party, and there first offer was for a rakeback of 25%. He is trying to get them to up it... but he reckons thats the min we will get. I also got a 3% raise from empire once the split was made... to try and keep the business.

not a bad result for something that looked all doom and gloom....

Shortstack

I am sure you will get rakeback on Party soon. Affiliates can now see what tracker is bringing them what revenue. The only trouble is they can easily switch it back off again which makes it impossible for the affiliates to see who is due what.

In my view Party are being very clever about this. They state that they are against rakeback because they do not believe in the business model. As soon as they split from the skins the tracker details are available again allowing affiliates (although against Party's affiliate deal terms) to believe they will be able to do rakeback deals. My guess is that they switch the faciltity off again within a few months when all empire/eurobet affiliates have signed up a ton of their clients, leaving all the punters without the rakebake they signed up for.

bohsman

I got an email from my rb suppliers saying that they were in talks with party and wouldnt rush into any of the shaky agreements being made at the moment

NickyOD

I don't think any of the affiliates would enter into the agreement without comfirmation of the timesframe. No rakeback company is going to screw their own customers over by agreeing to have rakeback for only a couple of months. I say Party will change their spots and go with rakeback full time. 25% minimum.

jimbling

have ye heard the news.....
that guy just got back on to me.... he was told a min of 25% rakeback by partypoker this morning... they called him back and called the whole thing off. The heads have decided no rakeback of any kind :mad:

thats the word on the street anyhow :rolleyes:

Lafortezza

Yeah, couple of threads on 2+2 about some "meeting" that was had by the Party decision makers.
There has been alot of shady moving and a severe lack of transpareny shown by the affilates/rakeback providers (and I suppose by Party but they hold all the chips so to speak). So many of them have been saying "I'm in talks with Party..", "I'm waiting for a call from my contact in Party...".

Nobody has just come out and said what the situation is.
It's only a couple of days since the big bombshell, so I'd give it a couple of weeks and things could change.

Shortstack

jimbling wrote:

have ye heard the news.....
that guy just got back on to me.... he was told a min of 25% rakeback by partypoker this morning... they called him back and called the whole thing off. The heads have decided no rakeback of any kind :mad:

thats the word on the street anyhow :rolleyes:

I knew this would happen. If I was head of Party I would make the same decision. The pro's want to play the fish, why waste money now on super affiliates when they have the biggest fish pond in the world?

It sucks for the regular players having part of thier income taken away but they will still play anyway.

Imposter

Shortstack wrote:

I knew this would happen. If I was head of Party I would make the same decision. The pro's want to play the fish, why waste money now on super affiliates when they have the biggest fish pond in the world?

It sucks for the regular players having part of thier income taken away but they will still play anyway.

Will they though? Or should I say will they play as much?
UB, prima and I think full tilt have rakeback in place. There are fish there too. Add to that the amount of money that can be picked up - at the moment - through bonus whoring and I can see some of the lower level pros/high bolume players splitting their custom a lot more than they did before.

From a business point of view obviously Party want to make as much money as possible but if/when the market starts leveling off or falling then a loyal player base will be the most important asset they have. Not having rakeback available is going to put a big dent in the numbers.

Culchie

Imposter wrote:

Will they though? Or should I say will they play as much?
UB, prima and I think full tilt have rakeback in place. There are fish there too. Add to that the amount of money that can be picked up - at the moment - through bonus whoring and I can see some of the lower level pros/high bolume players splitting their custom a lot more than they did before.

From a business point of view obviously Party want to make as much money as possible but if/when the market starts leveling off or falling then a loyal player base will be the most important asset they have. Not having rakeback available is going to put a big dent in the numbers.

Well, it's a game of poker.

None of the sites would want to give rakeback if they could get away with it.

Similar thing happening in the petrol business & retail industry around loyalty cards. Look at Shell, Esso, Texaco etc... all withdrew their loyalty schemes.

Party are the market leaders, and to a certain extent are setting a trend that others will be closely monitoring. They are in the best position to be able to lead the market, and change to Plan B if it is required.

If it shows that having no rakeback is not adversely affecting their business, all the others will follow suit as well.

Loyalty is build on brand and emotion and customer service rather than discounting/rebate schemes.

From Party's point of view, why give rakeback if it's not required?

Imposter

Culchie wrote:

Loyalty is build on brand and emotion and customer service rather than discounting/rebate schemes.

I agree with everything you said but this bit. Party's customer service is known to be one of the worst there is. There interface is also derided by most players. They have a brand because they are the biggest site atm but in poker money talks and bonuses and rakeback is money.

The percentage profits that these companies have is ridiculous. Players will play where it's chepaest for them to do so with all other things being equal. If the fish start migrating to other sites in bigger numbers then Party won't have the same draw for serious players. Online poker is still trying to find it's feet and if the reports are true that Party is not going to ever offer rakeback (or reduce it's rake) then it's a kick in the junk for players and imo they'll eventually leave (or at least not play as much) when better value is to be had elsewhere.

Culchie

Imposter wrote:

I agree with everything you said but this bit. Party's customer service is known to be one of the worst there is. There interface is also derided by most players. They have a brand because they are the biggest site atm but in poker money talks and bonuses and rakeback is money.

The percentage profits that these companies have is ridiculous. Players will play where it's chepaest for them to do so with all other things being equal. If the fish start migrating to other sites in bigger numbers then Party won't have the same draw for serious players. Online poker is still trying to find it's feet and if the reports are true that Party is not going to ever offer rakeback (or reduce it's rake) then it's a kick in the junk for players and imo they'll eventually leave (or at least not play as much) when better value is to be had elsewhere.

and I agree with you about Party's reputation, however if they do hold their numbers, the others will follow....and if all the other sites offer no rakeback either ... "wotcha gonna do about it?"


You also might not like Party (me neither) however they are massive market leaders, and they seem to be setting the trend of the business as they see fit.

Remember now that if they don't let Empire etc .. " Piggyback" on their player base with their rebate schemes, it now means that Empire et al have to now go and spend a fortune on marketing activity to attract new customers.

As I said it's a game of poker, in the corporate sense.

Party have the strong hand though, they can revert to Plan B.


Edit Just recieved a marketing e-mail from Pokerstars saying they are now the world's largest Poker site

AFAIK Pokerstars don't have any rebate structure, so that's #1 and # 2 in the market who no rakeback scheme.

jimbling

okay... its not over yet.... it looks like the heads are still locked away in a room somewhere, figuring the whole thing out....

there may still be hope

NickyOD

This decision is costing me about $200 a week. If I was playing full time it would be $600-$700 and I don't even play serious stakes. Imagine the the money lost by the players at say 40/80. I'm not really certain how things will swing now. The prima network is quite fishy too. I can see it benefiting greatly from this move. For some players (probably me included) I will still make more money on Party even without rakeback but that won't be the case for everyone. If Prima grew in size I would seriously consider moving. Party will now get players from the skins joining there site as will other sites offering rakeback. Eurbet/Intertops and Empire will lose out in a big way.

What's the largest site on the prima network? I wonder if they would consider a similar move.