Empire Reload May 10th

[Uglyowl]

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I really don't think they look at it as much as 'competition' as others seem to think.

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Bob, I have to disagree with you here (for once). The money pond for pokerrooms is only so big and there job is to grab as much as possible.

Also look at what happened to Paradise. They were the once unbreatable room and wouldn't they love to switch places with Party now.

[KingOtter]

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I disagree, Party has hit critical mass a la Ebay (think about it, why not use a million different cheaper auction houses out there?)

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Because only 15 people use the cheaper auction houses and it is hard to sell what you want to sell? Or buy what you want to buy?

KO

[scotty34]

You would think so, but I'm not sure if they recognize that. If they realize players are only playing "good" cards, this would imply they know what "good" cards are. They would then start to do this themselves, and cease to become complete fish.

When I first started playing, I always thought of "tight" and "loose" as two different playing styles, each with their own respective advantages and disadvantages. You could choose to play either, and as long as you played your strategy well, you could do well at poker. I now know this is clearly wrong, but didn't understand this concept when I started.

[PuckNPoker]

Exactly the number of people is too small. Even at the bigger auction houses, you go with Ebay and their higher cost because the number of people willing to pay for your items is higher. Increased number of people = Increased money for you. Even with higher fees..

See the analogy?

[RunDownHouse]

There's two opposite forces in effect, I think. The first is the network effect, similar to Moore's law. The network effect boils down to: the value of any network is equal to the square of the users of that network. A simple example of the power - and benefits - of the network effect is the telephone. The first phone was useless; there was nobody else to call. The next few phones added increased the utility of all phones, but not by a ton. However, eventually there were enough phones that NOT having one made you worse off, and from there the network just grows in utility. Party has the same thing going on with its player base, and that makes it difficult for anyone to leave that network.

However, online poker is unique in a few respects. The substitute networks out there can't compete in terms of player base, but they can make it up in other ways. Bonuses, rakeback, and the like are great ways of lowering switching costs for users of other networks. Likewise, Party removing these features (or lowering their value) lowers switching costs. Another way in which online poker is interesting is that, at its base, there is no differentiation between products. There is no substantial difference in the product offered by UB and by Party - the only difference lies in player base and the packaging. That's why whores don't mind switching sites for a bonus at all, but they typically have one site as a home base. The temporary bonus makes one site more profitable while its in effect, but afterwards the player base and the packaging (graphics, interface, etc) are what dictate who plays where. This is why its all the more mind-boggling that a site like Absolute can't get its act together.

Bob, I was mostly talking about players leaving the Party network, while you seemed to discuss players joining one network over another. Still, there are a couple things I disagree with. First, if Party doesn't care about the size of other networks, their management is lackadaisical at best. As I stated above, the bigger other networks are, the better they are. If other networks can close the gap in player base, they'll essentially become near-perfect substitutes for one another, with the only differentiation coming from graphics and incentives to play. In that case, players would leave Party in droves, because of its higher rake structure, meh interface, worse bonus structure/frequency, etc. And remember, if Stars, for example, can add 1.5 new players for every 1 Party gets, the Stars network will be catching up to Party in terms of utility in an exponential fashion. So Party had damn well better be concerned with the player bases of other sites.

Another part of your analogy I disagree with is the comparison to B&M rooms. The scalability is obviously much, much greater for online sites than B&M.

The point of all this is not whether or not Party can stop other sites from starting up. The barriers to entry in the market are so low, with no real way of raising them, that they can't. They can, however, increase the loyalty of current players, attract brand new players to their network over that of others, and induce the users of other networks to switch to their network. They can't differentiate their base product, so they have to do it in other ways - namely bonuses and rakeback, since their interface is all ready decent and an improvement likely would not be significant. The recent changes in rakeback and bonus structures are horribly thought-out steps backwards in terms of improving their competitive position in the industry.

This turned out to be quite a long post. Thanks to those who made it this far, and comments and criticism are encouraged.

[RollaJ]

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I think "y" (y being the total possible bonus) is most important Id much prefer y=$1,000 with a 20 x requirement

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no, cause that means you only get 5 cents per raked hand. I can do a 10x and earn the same amount of bonus money in half the time, and there are plenty more bonuses I can jump to before I ever have to settle for a 20x.

if your scenario was true, everyone would be playing at Full Tilt, Noble Poker, Poo Mountain and Poker Host. what a nightmare!

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<font color="blue"> Game selection, quality of opposition, user interface, a place I trustt my money with 99.9999% </font>

[Timer]

Party Poker can definitely be caught, but not the way the other sites are going about it. They just don't have the follow-through. They don't think things out so they can hit the ground running. Take Games Grid for example. These guys had a good shot at making some inroads, but they dropped the ball. Once you attract a new player it is paramount that you keep them playing there.

I was talking with a large California B&amp;M manager about barring some real [censored] players, and he replied that I was probably right, but that they hate to lose even ONE player.

Any new site obviously has to have incentives to draw people away from the established sites, but many of those playing at the established sites can't stand playing at them. They want to leave and are looking for reasons to leave. Along comes somebody new with great incentives but s.hitty software. Or, decent software but lously incentives.

Most of the new sites won't fix obvious problems quickly and are laxidasical about the little details. It's paying attention to the little details that make great business men and women.

I'm reminded of a small card room owner. Every time he walked through his joint he would pick up any small scrap of paper--sweep out the bathrooms--notice peeling paint on one of the walls--and he would fix all of these things immediately. He paid attention to detail and listened to his customers. His small room was nearly always full with lots of loyal customers. He later sold out to a casino for a tidy sum. As soon as they took over the place was empty.

I'm almost tempted to try and start an online poker room. I've got some good ideas about what to do to get some business and keep it, but it would be a long, expensive uphill battle. But I'm beginning to think it just might be worth it.

A lot of these big sites, in my opinion, have only one direction to go--down.

[sthief09]

why are people saying it's not a big change? for one, rakeback just became more profitable than clearing a bonus for me. two, it cuts anyone's hourly rate. if it took 3 and a half hours to clear 700 raked hands, it'll now take 5 hours to clear 1000 hands. thats $20/hr instead of $30/hr. how is that not significant?

[frank_iii]

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why are people saying it's not a big change? for one, rakeback just became more profitable than clearing a bonus for me. two, it cuts anyone's hourly rate. if it took 3 and a half hours to clear 700 raked hands, it'll now take 5 hours to clear 1000 hands. thats $20/hr instead of $30/hr. how is that not significant?

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Bingo.

[Mr_J]

Yeh I've only just got into ring and only had 2 accounts (rakeback). Geez. Had to do the party reload, the pokernow signup, now in the pokernow reload, now I've got to do the empire signup, empire reload, intertops and multipoker signups and the party compbonus. And this is only at the party skins...I guess this means empire will be next.