will party go the way of paradise??

[PokerPaul]

Paradise was at one point the runaway leader and busiest site in online poker.

They were in fact a near monopoly about 2.5 years ago, and had many more players at their site than all other sites combined.

Of course they knew that, and as such had the least amount of giveaways, they actually charged the customers the credit card processing fees. they were taking as much as they could from the customers without sharing the wealth.

then new sites started to popup offering comparable software, service etc., but much more incentives to players to play there instead.

Paradise continually lost marketshare, and while their numbers climbed since then slightly, they have completely lost out on the whole poker boom that has gripped the world in the last 2 years.

Now paradise has stagnated somewhat, and i doubt they are even in the top 4 anymore. Can't say i feel sorry for them, nor do i feel the need to return there ever.


Now party is the runaway leader. And unfortuanately, some parallels to the monopolistic paradise can be drawn.

All i can say is that i hope they don't bite the hand that feeds. But it sure does appear that way so far,,,

[BreakEvenPlayer]

Party is the leader and will remain the leader due to its aggressive marketing (i.e. WPT commercials). Nowadays a few others are making commercials but I think Party will continue to dominate the competitors as far as players are concerned (Which isn't to say things aren't profitable for the other major sites).

[jasonHoldEm]

Paradise's problem was mostly marketing related. I don't think Party will be challenged for the market leadership until someone else mounts a major marketing offensive...even if their software continues to suck and their support staff have no clue. Gambling is more about the brightest lights than the best place to play (unfortunately for us).

jHE

[Starkey]

Apart from the facts like Paradise is a solid number three (check pokerpulse.com), has never had more players online than they're having these days, has a stable environment that rarely crashes (way more stable than party), is running tournaments now that are only comparable to pokerstars, and has software that is arguably ahead of all its competitors, you are absolutely right.

Paradise was a leader because they were the only game in town. You can't compare Paradise software to the crappy Planet software, and that was the only option for a while.

Now that the market has matured, the worthy competitors have taken their place along side (or ahead) of Paradise, as would be expected in any maturing market.

And given the steps Paradise has taken recently to regain that market share they've given up, I look forward to seeing what they'll come out with next.

If you haven't checked out their multi-table tournaments, I suggest you do. They rock.

[Senor Choppy]

The reason Party overtook Paradise was because of an untapped source of players that Paradise never had access to (whatever sort of person watched WPT and then rushes to his computer with credit card in hand). Paradise still has around the same number of players they once had.

Even if the same were to happen to Party, the equivalent would be UB maybe, starting to advertise to some other untapped source of players, with them reaching 100k players and Party stagnating at 30k. It's hard to imagine where they would find this large pool of potential players.

Barring prolonged downtime at Party for whatever reason, it's hard to see them going away regardless of whatever aggressive marketing the other sites may have in store (unless we start seeing Super Bowl ads with Phil Hellmuth and gang). It seems that the current situation with 3 or 4 large sites all doing at least ok will remain the norm for a while.

Somewhat related, it's truly amazing that we went from 1 real poker site to 3 or 4, and in the process customer support has gotten worse and we're paying more in rake.

[Jim Kuhn]

Paradise has alot more players than they had two years ago. They would have special promotions and the site would bog down with 2500 players. We would see less than ten hands per hour. They had huge server issues on those occasions.

[N4CER1]

Ya Party Poker just had all of the TV coverage from the world Poker Tour and that is why they have so many players...That is whay Poker rooms around the country are doing so good right now....

[theBruiser500]

How are Paradaise's tournaments good?

BTW, I forsee PokerStars becoming the number 1 site in the future because partypoker sucks.

[subq]

[ QUOTE ]

Now paradise has stagnated somewhat, and i doubt they are even in the top 4 anymore. Can't say i feel sorry for them, nor do i feel the need to return there ever.


[/ QUOTE ]

Your kidding right? Paradise is alive and well. In fact, they are edging out UB on pokerpulse lately and coming in at top 3rd. Their software is much better than Party. Their support is arguably the best of all sites. All Paradise needs is a good marketing person to come in and they could be a force to reckon with.

I personally think PS has the best software in the industry right now.

It doesn't take much for a smart marketing person to get aggressive when they see what Party has done. In addition, I would rather have everything in order before I started marketing aggresively that way I could take the load. PS and Paradise both seem to have that part down.

[Beach-Whale]

Yeah - Paradise has always taken it slow, and then when they release something new, it's almost perfect from the start. Almost. It's not like the other sites, that release buginfested software and change it later. Maybe.

I don't understand why so many like PokerStar's software. I don't think that the feel, or look, of PS's software is very good.