Party P dishonest - fact, not theory

Para has been taking licks lately on speculation and heresay.


I think party is worse, because the way they have run this PPM promotion is sick.


First off, they are billing themself as the home of the $1mill poker tournament, for a mere $22 entry


FACT: they are not the home of the mega tourney, a cruiseship in the pacific is. All you can win with Party is an ENTRY to the tourney, which translates to 8-10 K.......not a million. I guess if i ran an online poker site, and I marketed you can win $150 million at our site, and it only costs you $10 to enter promotion, then find out all it is a powerball lottery ticket we are giving away, don't you think i would be overselling and marketing what i am really offering???


PARTY ProMOTION: After paying only $22 for a ppm entry, if you win you qualify for the semifinals, where you will face other ppm winners to compete for 100 finals spots. You can only qualify for the semifinals twice at most. Everybody will start with $1000 tournamnet chips in semifinals.


FACT: Everyone that paid for ppm entries under the rules we had marketed the promotion under will be screwed because we reserve the right to change the rules after the fact to our benefit.

FOrget about competing against other ppm winners in the semifinals, we are just going to give spots away to anyone that cares to enter freerolls for us. It doesnt matter to us that you paid us according to the belief that we would honor what we said we would do.


And gues what, now that you have paid and qualified, we are changing the rules. Not everyone starts with 1000, people who play at our site get even more depending on how much they play, so unless you now start playing here, you won't have a chance in hell of winning. Oh, and about people only being able to qualify twice, they can now qualify 5 times.


All I know is i don't trust them, and i will never enter another promotion of theirs. Nothing wrong with the way they run it (ie. 5 times players can qualiffy, earning xtra chips thru realmoney play) per say, if thats the way they advertised it to begin with and all players knew rules going in.


But theres something very wrong with advertising it one way, and then switching after games have already started. One of the big incentives to me at the time to qualify was that i did the math and figured chances for very good if i could make it to semifinals...so i entered and entereds until i did......i would have never done that if i knew the rules were going to be as is now, and thats deceiptful.


Shame Partypoker...

I was reluctant when Party first opened to

start an account there.The PP Million rules were

5 pages of small print.In addition I get seasick!

The site is ok but I agree with your assessment regarding their promotions.

Dear Anonymous,


I'm sorry you don't feel PartyPoker is behind the PartyPoker Million. The fact is, we are. Card Player Cruises is hosting and conducting the finals for us on a cruise ship. The event is a combination of online poker with a 'live' championship event (that will be televised by the Travel Channel).


You are right that after a few weeks (back in Sept)we changed our original plan to allow players to qualify five times rather than two. (That was because players requested this.)


We have advertised that you can win $1,000,000 for $22. You can. We have never hidden the fact that players can accrue additional chips for Round 1 of the Semi's by playing in live games/tournaments on PartyPoker. Obviously, we hoped players would play in live games on our site.


The least anyone will start Round 1 with in the Semi's is $1000 in chips and the most will be $3000. In Round 2, everyone will start with $1000. (For your info, Round 1 will consist of three players on nearly every table and Round 2 will consist of a ten-handed table.)


In our lifetime, you will never see better value in a poker tournament. (This promotion will take in less than $500,000 and we are paying out $1,250,000.) The PartyPoker Million has provided the impetus for bringing players to our site which was the purpose of creating it. We are happy to be identified by the PartyPoker Million and proud to provide our customers this opportunity.


I'm sorry you're upset, but I honestly don't know why you are. We're trying to do the best we can to maintain integrity. For example, we could have allowed players to buy directly into the Semi's (generating a lot more revenue for PartyPoker), but because we didn't announce it originally and felt it was unfair to those who have put in a lot of effort to qualify, we didn't.


Mike Sexton, Host

PartyPoker.com

First off Mike, i appeciate you coming here and addressing this in person here.


So the way i understand it then is PartyPOker is indeed the one paying the $1000000, or just the entries?


There is nothing wrong with using the PPM as a notice getter and big splash to get new users to play at your site. and giving extra chips to players for their realmoney play there is OK too. You say it was that way all along, but it didnt seem that way to me, and other players i know of.


I guess the biggest quirk i have is just how much in the past couple of weeks leading up to big event you are artificially saturating the pool for the semifinal entries. You just said that you want to honor and be fair to people who paid multiple times early on and qualified the hard way, yet now you guys have been "giving" away tons of tournement entries as well as even semifinal entries. i just think that its not totally fair to us who did qualify hard way via 'paid' ppm entries, because ultimately, we are the ones paying for it in reduced chances to win.


Doesnt cost ppm anything to increase semifinal pool, and the latecomers get the easy way into the semi's and multiple chances at regular ppms.


i understand some of the points you are making, but i hope you also understand whee i am coming from.

Well, I went in with my eyes open. After playing my free entry, for signing up, I went to the web site to read the rules and other small print items, my Dad told me it was more important to read the small print than than the large print.


I started playing there live to "juice" up my second round chip start. Thank god I did, I have won more live than the cost of a seat. I played about 45 times and won my five, but I also got 3-4 free entries.


Yeah, I wish they never gave another free entry, but I got them at the start and this was always part of the deal. New players and player appeasements for problems got free $22 seats, also a couple of beta tests of the tournament sofeware..


It seems the house is taking at least a 1/2 mil. beat on this, but I'm sure that the live action has made up for some of this. While I'm not going to cry big tears for any casino losing money on a promotion, it seems that PartyPoker isn't screwing anyone with the small print.


Have a nice day.


MS Sunshine

My take on this is that party would have been much better served by looking after it's current players than by giving away entries. Any site that gives this amount away will get a play from me. To KEEP my play they will need to do things at least as well as paradise. I had a problem with a cashout that Mike looked after personally. Thanks Mike. Unfortunately Mike has been the only one i can get a straight answer from. Today ( friday ) i got a response to an email i sent on tuesday. Not good enough!! Mike your staff have lied to me on two occasions. I have documentation. I want to continue to play at party, please give me a reason to. I am not some bitter loser. I've beat the game for 1000s at party and won five entries ( 13 tries ).Your staff are a reflection of you Mike, you should expect better.

13 times? I hate you. I think I saw you on the grassy knoll Nov. 23 1963. Yeah, BIG hair", it was you.


Really Jen25, most regular players respect you. I would rather play in the "other" game than yours. I have been put on hold by e-mail at Party, but having Mike's and the CPC's group e-mail address gets immediate response. So, unless it's important everything works out, but it's nice to be able to hit the "I WANT AN ANSWER NOW" button when you want.


MS Sunshine

I have also been frustrated with inept customer support (both "live floorman" and e-mail) at Party Poker. I've been promised compensation for software bug-related losses which I never received. In addition, I reported some very suspicious play (i.e., apparent collusion) and was promised a follow-up report which never arrived.

"I guess the biggest quirk i have is just how much in the past couple of weeks leading up to big event you are artificially saturating the pool for the semifinal entries."


I understand your point. Yes, we did provide 200 Round 1 winners of the Warm-Up tournaments as well as 20 seats into the Semi-finals. But, we wanted to provide incentive for players to play the Warm-Up tournaments and to test our software for exactly how the Semi's would take place.


We haven't (and won't) placed anyone into the Semi's (other than the 20 Warm-Up winners).


This tournament is the best value poker players will ever see. And first prize is $1,000,000.


Best of luck to everyone in the PPM Semi-finals.


Mike Sexton

The backers of PartyPoker do a great job. I have had a few problems or inquiries which they handled very quickly and fairly. For example when the site disconnect problem was really bad, they compensated me my losses for hands I could not properly "act" on. (Flopping a set of Queens for example, and then a disconnect before I could act on the flop).


Couple other problems, they gave me free PPM entires, and / or resolved the problem quickly.


And they do indeed have the best Promo in poker. Like MS, I have won a lot more playing the soft games at Party, than what I spent bagging the 5 semi final entries.


I notcied they also were responsive in changing the "freeroll" rules for those of us who qualified 5 times already, by giving 5 time qualifiers $100 for a freeroll win, since they couldn't benefit further from a PPM entry.


I have had problem with the online floor help being unknowledgable. Failing to understand for example, why I complained about an "all in" cheater who timed out in O/8 with A,2 when the flop had a 3 and 2 high cards, he bet and then timed out when I raised my set...after all the floorman opined, "You won the hand anyway"....) yes, sometimes floorpeople don't "get it" and are unable to address concerns properly, but I think those folks are the lower paid, first line, echalon, and real problems can be escalated up the food chain with good results if necessary.


Cashouts have been immediate also, whereas I had a huge problem cashing out of Planet once.


All things considered, Party's been a good site for making money, has good customer service, and the best Promo going. Hard to fault all that.