A party Rep contacted me recently to find out why...

[poindexter]

I play exclusively on empire and rarely play at party poker anymore. I gave no definitive answer at the time but I will post the answer here since they seem desperate to find out why their business is falling short of expectations.

Why is empire, eurobet, etc. doing so well? Because they take all of the high volume and successful players from party. Why Do all the high volume and winning players leave party? Because of RAKEBACK you dimwits. Why would we play at your poker room when we can get paid to play at the same tables on a different site? So what does party do about the rakeback problem? They eliminate any rakeback from their site; this causes even more players to leave. Who is left to play at party? A few pros from the step 5, 100-200 limit, and mtt tournaments, but The vast majority are uninformed players. Poker players in the know refer to them as fish. Good players who usually play for a party skin take the bankrolls from the clueless players who remain at party. The vast majority of these players either get good at poker which usually correlates with them leaving, or they stay and lose their bankrolls. This forces Party to replenish them or starve. Thankfully there are plenty of replacemnets now but what is the forcast for tomorrow?

Besides rakeback Empire poker offers incentives to play at their site which go beyond the crappy merchandise that you offer. Incentives for high volume players include Televisions, LCD’s, trips to Las Vegas, a $50,000 BI annual freeroll that is played by the 60 top tournament pros, a monthly 100 player freeroll that rewards the top player with a WSOP seat or a free entry into other tournaments, raffles giving out laptops ipods etc.

How do you get your client base back? I personally would like to return to take advantage of mtt's and steps that are missing from Empire. However the only way I will return with high volume play will be with a better rewards program and a rakeback deal worth 20-30% depending on volume. The rep I talked to hinted that there was going to be some improvements in the incentives party was offering. This is a good first step but without rakeback no one will return regardless of how much you beef up your rewards.