If you are about to sign up for your 15th Party account-read this

[Subby]

I don't understand the reputation Stars seems to have. It is the second biggest poker room on the Internet. There are tons of fish.

[EvanJC]

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my take is that there are plenty of fish all around, with perhaps an exception of Stars.

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fyi, i've seen a fish or two at stars ^_-

[Dave D]

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Party Poker says no rakeback network wide (way back when) so everyone leaves them and signs up with skins to get rakeback. As the customer I think everyone is OK at this point the reality is the customer sees a value and they go for it (though the customer did realistically know something was up when they had to set up their 5th neteller account in there grandmothers dogs name).


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Umm, moving to the skins was always technically illegal. That's why you couldn't make a Eurobet account on a computer that has ever had party software on it.

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the reality is there are few new customers in online poker. They are now part of the problem.


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There's no way that's true. Party has 9 million "users" (nevermind that a lot are duplicate accounts). The population of the US is 300 million, nevermind the rest of the world. The market isn't anywhere near saturation.

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So Party cuts the skins and in effect picks up a bunch of percent they used to pay them. Affiliates are panicking and customers are panicking. Affiliates were making a fortune picking off players, though the relationship was relatively insecure, after all they were stealing those customers


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I think this is fundamentally incorrect. I don't think they were "stealing" players. Why should someone be penalized just because they signed up before rakeback was offered? Why shouldn't consistant players get rakeback? Casinos do it. Other sites do it. Why should the new guy get rakeback, and not the guy who's been playing for two years? Why not reward the loyal member? I think the fundamental misconception is that rakeback should be used *exclusivly* to get new users. Personally, I have no problem with the core users getting rewarded for their loyalty.

I think the fundamental flaw was with Party's policy/attitude of not wanting existing users to get rakeback.

The bottom line is that rakeback is pretty much standard in the industry these days. It may not have been two years ago, but it is now. What party should have done is simply give rakeback on its own (or allow the affilaites to do it) and make it MGR based. This is standard "buy 10 get 20% off on the 11th" marketing. I'm more likely to play more if I get rakeback, especially if I'm a marginal player. It's as simple as that.

The issue is all about how elastic the demand for poker is for the avg frequent user of Party. If party believes that people will play just as much (or close to it) without rakeback, as they did with rakeback, then they made the right move.

BUT I think this is way wrong. The bottom line is that a lot of people probably started trying other sites thinking "ok, well this just pushed me over the edge, I've been meaning to try full tilt for a while anyway...". Party is becoming less and less the "best" site to play on every week. Other sites are only getting better, and people are more and more likely now than before to substitute some other site for party, maybe not completly, but give other sites more time than before. And for the other sites, its all about getting as much exposure as possible, so they win.

[MicroBob]

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... the reality is there are few new customers in online poker.

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you see all those TV commercials for Party poker???

Do you think they are marketing for the 'current' players to just come back and play more??
Partly...but they are mostly going after NEW players.
And I don't think they spend millions of dollars if they couldn't get (or weren't getting) new players.


The idea that there aren't new players online is idiotic.

[MyTurn2Raise]

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Umm, moving to the skins was always technically illegal. That's why you couldn't make a Eurobet account on a computer that has ever had party software on it.


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This is a misperception I am seeing constantly on these boards.
No, it wasn't illegal. It's against the T&C to have more than one account per skin. The T&C says that party/empire/eurobet/multipoker/intertops may limit the player to one account across its shared games platform. It does not say that it does. It does not explicitly prohibit like it does multiple accounts on the same skin.

Sorry, but I've been careful to not violate the T&Cs for a player and a careful read shows that signing up on multiple skins was not prohibited.

from Party's T&C
see Section 5
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You are prohibited from holding more than one Account at PartyPoker.com. If you have more than one (1) Account or Accounts in different names, then you must contact us immediately to have your Accounts managed so that you only have one (1).

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verse Section 11
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Without limitation to the restriction on having multiple accounts on PartyPoker.com in section 5, the Company may require that you only have one account on the Shared Game/Table Platform if the same is used.

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[beanie]

I genuinely don't have a problem with anyone agreeing or disagreeing, you will see in my next post that I indeed think the players should be getting the value.

In regards to new players, everyone is correct, there are new players. What I should have said is there aren't enough new players to sustain the growth of the past. Affiliates use rakeback as a way of enticing current players not new players. That is not the intent from the sites perspective that is what has caused this mess.

[Python49]

There will always be rakeback on party. 5 friends could get together, one guy make the affiliate account, the other 4 sign up under him... and even without individual trackers they could compare pokertracker stats for rake and pay out that way.. and since they're all friends they will know who did what and trust each other. And bam, you got 25% there.

[Nicholasp27]

friends and money don't always coexist very well
and 25% isn't too hot

[Sniper]

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Party has 9 million "users" (

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Party has no where near 9 million users... this is an incorrect number that was propogated by an inaccurate news story.

In the first 6 months of 2005, Party had roughly 842,000 unique users.

[Python49]

it is when you can't get higher %'s because the big affiliates have been shut down.