At Party: January 2005 sign-ups, less than 30% still play there(+more

[HesseJam]

I forgot one other thing. Their casino site is a big disappointment in terms of growth. To me this is not surprising. The marketing efforts were bad to nonexistent. I played their bonuses and I did not like the kindergarten atmosphere. Other casino sites are way more attractive.

[chezlaw]

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Has their been any previous data that suggests the attrition rate used to be lower than 70%/6 months.

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Historical rate has been 34.0% for players staying active after 6 months of sign-up. The January 2005 sign-up rate was at 29.1% staying active after 6 months.

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Thanks

chez

[MicroBob]

I agree with much that has been said in this very interesting thread...and I am now here to pick a nit.


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pokerstars is dumping money on their fpp tournaments

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I don't think so.

Their pay-outs for the $215-entry satellites seem pretty much in line with the books and what-not they sell in the store.

It's more akin to a small-scale rake-back plan or bonus.
If each point is worth a half-penny to a penny then the rewards given out stay roughly in line.


Plus....it gives them the ILLUSION of giving out stuff for free....when it's really just a semi-glorified comp or rake-back system.


Also - in the EPT and WCOOP FPP satellites they are actually making an FPP profit most of the time.


Take, for example, the typical 500FPP tourney with 'Top 9 seats advancing to round 2' which is a 5000 FPP buy-in (and you can unregister and keep the FPP's if you like).

PokerStars needs 90 players in that tourney to break-even.
Many of these get more around 120-180 players.
That's a lot of FPP's getting thrown down the tubes by the players and eaten up by Stars.


They also do well on the smaller ones that cost 50FPP to enter for a seat worth 5k FPP for the top 2 finishers.
When they need 200 players to break-even they often get 300-400 players.

It's like a 33%-50% FPP 'rake' for them in many of these.


All those FPP 'half-pennies' that they're taking back in via their FPP satellites really add up.

Additionally, they serve the purpose of whetting their customers' appetites for these tourneys and to keep them dreaming of 'hitting the big one' (thus potentially more likely to spend REAL money instead of FPP's the next time around).

[Timer]

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In the meantime pokerstars is dumping money on their fpp tournaments, regularly has over 60,000 online - which given that you can't 8 & 12 table on their site, probably means they have more actual players now than party does.

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I believe the opposite of this to be true. I think (although I can't prove) that Poker Stars is counting the FPP tournaments and play money players in their numbers. They have far fewer games, and much worse game selection than Party. Party does not count play money players in their stats.

If I'm wrong, somebody please correct me.

[Uglyowl]

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In the meantime pokerstars is dumping money on their fpp tournaments, regularly has over 60,000 online - which given that you can't 8 & 12 table on their site, probably means they have more actual players now than party does.

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I believe the opposite of this to be true. I think (although I can't prove) that Poker Stars is counting the FPP tournaments and play money players in their numbers. They have far fewer games, and much worse game selection than Party. Party does not count play money players in their stats.

If I'm wrong, somebody please correct me.

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The amount of players you see on the main page is just the players logged on (real money table, tourneys, play money, idle).

If you look at Party and Pokerstars the # of players is close to the same, but on Stars a higher percentage are in tourneys (including freerolls and FPP's)

[webmonarch]

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Party Investors on the other hand, have way overpaid for some rather bad software, an incredibly incompetent marketing group

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Yes, thank you. Fix the software, Party. I guarantee you that I personally don't play there for that reason. The software pisses me off. When I can't call the SB in advance, I get pissed, and I leave. This is a huge annoyance when multitabling.

Add to that the incompetent customer service and I've got better options.

[BruinEric]

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I think that Party will come up with a strategy to crowd out/ isolate the multitablers. We've seen the first step: the beginners tables.

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If I were Party, this would probably be a good step for the long-term. You will be losing some of the astounding rake that the mega-multi-tablers help generate, but you can create an atmosphere more beneficial to the casual gambler -- which is a key growth segment.

One idea would be creating "no-multitable" tables, like there are no-disconnect-protect tables. On these tables, the player would be assured everyone at the table is only playing that one. Ostensibly this can be advertised as "helps the game move faster," but the sub-marketing can emphasize the scuttlebut that "system players" won't be playing there.

Multitabling -- on smaller sites especially -- dramatically effects the games. Casual players are likely to play 1 or 2 tables.

Example: I played for a while at a mid-sized site which only allowed single-tabling. A few months in, they updated their software to allow multitabling. A "typical table" dropped over 10% in "saw flop %" immediately.

Disclaimer: I multitable.

[MicroBob]

I thought that both Party and Stars counted their play-money players in their 'total number of players logged-on'.

[lu_hawk]

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This stuck out for me...

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That may continue: while a fifth of the travel industry has already migrated to the internet, only 5 per cent of gaming is currently carried out online.


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it's not a good analogy. there is no reason why 100% of the travel industry shouldn't conduct it's business online. but people like to go to casinos and have fun there, 99% of craps is always going to be played in brick & mortar casinos.

[Kablooie]

urgh - i have to disagree with MicroBob on something? That's just wrong.

Sorry, but to repick the nit a little - they changed the WCOOP FPP tournaments so they are actually proportional - if 100 people enter the 500 FPP tournie, they're giving out 10 places. You're right that they have gone back to the fixed number for the EPT tournaments, but about half of those, especially the early morning ones, are going off with considerably less than 90 entrants. They seem to be managing to hold the FPP value fairly steady - which makes sense, since if they introduced any considerable inflation in value it would hit their store, and if they deflated them it would hit their tournament numbers.

I guess because i've grown used to using these tournaments as FPP generators, i tend not to think about the original source of the FPP's anymore - and yes, viewed as a substitute for rakeback they're not that great a deal.

On the other hand, viewed as freerolls or as the equivalent of party player points/empire points etc., then they're extremely attractive compared to anything else that i know of out there - and i would respectfully suggest that that is how the non-shark/2+2 part of the poker population regards them.

I've seen people in star's chat talk about how they're saving up for the leather jacket - & i somehow don't think Party's flip flops are gathering quite the same kind of player loyalty. And as you say, they also act as a way to suck in players for the real money tournaments, once they've gotten their feet wet.

Rakeback is certainly nice to have, but given the choice, i'd far rather the site spent its marketing time/money on ensuring a nice, steady supply of unskilled opponents.