[Maulik]

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poaches their long term growth potential for short term profit

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What they did this weekend was the exact opposite. By having many hours of downtime on a Saturday and because of the time it will take for skin players to migrate over to Party (many, like me, aren't playing at Party at all right now until the situation with rakeback, etc., is sorted out), they are giving up a lot of short term profit. But this is great for their longterm financial growth because it will lead to a situation where everyone who used to play on the skins now plays on Party, which means that they get to keep the rake that used to go into the pockets of Empire Poker, etc. They are sacrificing the rake they would get this week by running things smoothly in order to cut off the "middlemen" that they don't need anymore, which is a good business move.

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why did they decide they would want middlemen in the first place? I understand the need outside of the United States, but the rest like Empire and such seem useless.