All affiliates - please read!

[GrannyMae]

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Vikrant


"Ruth Parasol is one of the founders of PartyGaming. A controversial figure, Ms. Parasol refuses to be interviewed." [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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this one i spoke to on the phone one day during ISOP times. he was eating dinner in a LOUD restaurant in england. he was on a cell phone and all i heard was chewing.

it had taken me 2 months to get the return call from him. when we talked, he agreed to host 1st and last event of ISOP, which was exactly 18 hours after royal vegas took that role via a signed contract.

i had to say no to him, though having party host first and last event would have put ISOP on map, but nooooooo. granny had to show integrity and honor a contract with a company that could never have sued for breach..

the rest is history. i am an assshole.

[AAAA]

but an [censored] who can look at herself in the mirror each morning?

[pokerswami]

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Dikshit


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I don't know anything about the accuracy of the Wikipedia entry you linked to, but I believe Wikipedia entries can be edited by their readers. So maybe some of the content is from the disgruntled poker community.

[BluffTHIS!]

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Party has made some agressive bold moves this past week and we all MUST support them! Let them set up their player reward plan. Let them work on the things they are doing.

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Let me state right off that I have never had rakeback and don't give a damn about it since I only play the higher limit nl and plo games on party and other sites and haven't played limit for over 3 years except for TD on UB. I have mulitple accounts on party in relative's names with different cities, and use different accounts and machines to play them and only have 1 skin account. The only reason I did all that was to be able to shield my play somewhat from regular opponents. The reason I don't care about rakeback is that it never seemed to matter much in dollar terms like it would in limit and because the rake doesn't add up as much.

Nonetheless, I have been reading these threads here and in the general internet forum because I am concerned about anything that affects the online poker economy in which all limits and games and players are entangled. But the OP's quote above is ridiculous. Party only cares about themselves and their plans to stream poker money into unbeatable casino games. It is not up to the players to make them happy because the players are the customers, and because there are other alternative sites on which to play. Although I have the past couple years played like 65% on party, 25% on stars and the rest on UB, and will continue to do so as long as the games are good on party, their efforts to drain the fish through casino games makes it much more likely that I will be playing a bigger % of my time elsewhere in the future. I won't cut off my nose to spite my face, but the 8-10 hours I play on party almost every day might easily be played elsewhere.

If they merely wanted to allow players to switch poker money to a casino that was available through the lobby, that would be bad enough though similar to other sites. But to put blackjack and moronic sidebets right on every table is too much. Poker sites can make tons of money through rake alone without the casino games, and sites like stars, prima, crypto and UB are obviously going to cater better to purely poker players than those whose real interest is diverting that poker money into more profitable negative expectation games. Although star's player numbers might be inflated by more micro-limit games and tourneys, they are increasing and also ramping up their TV marketing. If the skins bail party's platform as they should for prima or crypto, and then also aggressively plowed earnings into marketing, then yet another supersite could emerge. And the plain fact is that any site soley devoted to poker is more likely to employ persons familiar with poker and who understand poker players, than sites whose primary business plan goals relate to casino games.

So players should just keep talking here about anything they want to and shouldn't care about party's plans or talking about things they would rather players didn't. But party better care about theirs if they want to retain market share.

My final note regarding rakeback/rewards which doesn't interest me in the slightest (yea sure the caps and jackets and t-shirts I got through them are OK but who cares about that), is that party should have had any future reward plan in place before they dumped the skins on the curb and the rakeback that went with them.

[StellarWind]

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Party has made some agressive bold moves this past week and we all MUST support them!

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Gee Al, you're right. Let's review some of those bold moves:

1. They resolved there longstanding dispute with their primary business partners by stabbing them in the back. The overall price to play at Party is far higher then almost every major competitor. By price I mean the combined effect of the rake schedule, bonuses, reward programs, and rakeback. The gist of the dispute was that the skins were competing for Party's best customers by offering them discounts and Party didn't like that.

2. The caused a major network outage in the middle of Saturday, inconveniencing an enormous number of players. This sold entries to tournaments they knew would never complete.

3. The unexpected split enormously inconvenienced all the customers of skin sites who suddenly lost access to most of the network. Don't tell me these players aren't Party's problem. Party was the network operator and they took a share of the rake money. All players were trusting them by playing on their network.

4. They have subjected us to a week-long soap opera concerning rakeback and reward programs. Instead of actually having a plan to take care of high volume players they have fostered the chaos that you are now asking everyone to be quiet about. The plans announced earlier in the week did not appear out of a vacuum. Party led those affiliates on and then jerked the rug out from under them.

5. Party suggested that affiliates refer high volume players to "bonus@partypoker.com" where many of them were insulted by being offered IGMPAY or offered nothing at all.

6. Party instituted a targeted bonus program to help it's customers understand their worth. As a high-volume 5/10 player my worth is apparently zero. I have been offered no bonus whatsoever this month.

The one constant theme in Party's "bold moves" is that the customers are being treated like dirt. They obviously planned this whole strategy without even considering how their customers might be hurt or how they could shield them from the impact.

I've stopped playing at Party and withdrawn all my money. Maybe the games will be better elsewhere and maybe they won't. But other sites at least act like they want my patronage. Why should I give thousands of dollars of business to a company that spits on me?

[goodguy_1]

2 great posts back-to back by StellarWind and BluffTHIS summarizing how Party is fvcking this thing up.

Great post.

[Sniper]

Steller,

99%+ of the player universe couldn't care!!!

Of the remaining 1%, the smart ones will go about their business... the remaining whinners will never be happy [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Party had to take action to defend against the predatory marketing actions of the skins.

(I know you are a "smart" one... use your head!)

[fnord_too]

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I just don't have time to write a book and spell it out.

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Could'a fooled me.

[Jonathan]

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but is Spain so bad that one would choose to stay aligned with Great Britain rather than the proximate European neighbor?

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Yes among the million reasons is the massively weakened property rights they would have under Spanish law.

Mack

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Absolute nonsense! And you know it!
The reason the sites are in Gibraltar is that the place is
a tax haven and a money laundering haven with very lax
banking laws, pure and simple.

Jonathan