[Billman]

Here's what I see as the fundamental issues here:

1. Party has crappy software yet they are devoting their efforts to stamping out rakebacks instead of improving the user experience. That's gotta be the worst buddy list implementation I've ever seen. I've personally written better chat/buddy programs. It's not that damn hard. So what's the big deal? It speaks volumes about where their loyalties are. They don't care about players, affiliates, or even partner skins. It's about putting as much cash into their pocket as humanly possible while this poker craze is still hot.

2. There's no logical reason for Party to go public other than to make the owners really, really rich (instead of just rich or really rich). See #1 for more evidence of this. Online poker is a massive cash cow. It generates far more money than they can spend on expanding the existing operations, so why raise even more money?

3. For everyone who keeps claiming that Party has the best games and big players won't go elsewhere because the fish are all at Party, you must have missed that whole dotcom thing a few years back. Plenty of companies came and went very quickly. Many got very big, very fast, and went out of business just as quickly. The fish might not know how to play poker but most aren't completely brain dead either. If another site starts offering a compelling alternative they'll go there. Right now, Party is competing in a market of business retards. I played tens of thousands of hands a month on Paradise for over a year and then took my business elsewhere when they couldn't spread enough games at my limit for me to have any chance at game selection. You know how they're trying to lure me back? Every six months they send me an offer for a $50 reload bonus. $50!!! Are they completely clueless or what? Do they not see Party or UB or FullTilt offering double, triple, that amount almost monthly? Plus Paradise didn't even offer an affiliate program to the public until just a few months ago. Gee, I wonder why they went from being serious competition to one step away from complete obscurity.

The point is, the money in online poker is really starting to become serious. It's going to start attracting people who actually know what the hell they're doing and sooner or later somebody is going to come along and clean Party's clock in a big way. My prediction is that the Vegas casinos are going to lobby for legalization (maybe when Bush's term is up) and then throw a few hundred million at the problem. For guys who spend that kind of dough on water fountains, they should be able to put together a marketing campaign that makes the PokerStars and Party television ads look like Ronco Pocket Fisherman spots (which they already do but there's no real competition).

4. Party already screws its affiliates. They've recently started doing stuff like presenting a pop-up ad during signup that offers them some sort of bonus code that can be used in conjunction with the affiliate code but many people coming from affiliate links just use the Party bonus code and voila, Party doesn't have to pay the affiliate. A lot of the affiliates are stomping mad about it but Party is happy playing stupid and simply stating that the user can use both codes and the affiliate still gets paid.

Party's biggest problem is that they need to show growth. They're too stupid to actually grow the company legitimately so they're slowly screwing everyone around them in the hopes nobody will notice until it's too late. It's like that putting a frog in water and then slowly turning up the heat. By the time it gets too hot, it's too late.

How do you offer a rakeback without giving away the store? How about you do it based on hand played. Play 10,000 hands you get X%, 20,000 hands Y%, etc, etc. People saying they can't do it aren't thinking creatively enough. You keep your big dogs happy because they're already playing tens of thousands of hands a month and it gives an incentive to newer players to play more raked hands! Do you think that Party hasn't considered this? Of course they have but since they're only looking at this in the 1 - 3 year timeline and it's much more profitable for them to simply shut down affiliates who offer rakebacks stealing away players who signed up directly with Party and where Party was getting 100% of the rake.

The top 20% of Party's affiliates likely generate over 80% of the (affiliate related) new customers anyway (I've run affiliate programs for online retailers and this is pretty much the norm). Everybody else is simply giving them free advertising. As long as they keep that top 20% from sqwaking too much they're happy. That's another reason why they get all motivated to stop rakeback deals. That top 20% doesn't want to have to compete with people willing to share some of their profits with the players.

I anxiously await some real competition to come to this market. The only move Party will have left will be to compete which is in all our best interests.