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

[Zetack]

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The average amount of dead money per hand will decline over time. For every semi pro multitabler at 1/2 with a 50000 hands per month at a win rate of 2BB/100 you'll need 10-15 fish who donk off $500 per month. Fish tend to die, multitablers tend to live on. So, the population multitablers will automatically grow grow as long as the games stay good. Fish will have to be replaced at a higher rate than 10-15 to 1.
I do not think that the growth of the fish population was in line with the proliferation of multitablers in the recent 6-9 months.

The question is how this affects turnover of games played. The successful multitablers will see a decline of profit but they will continue playing. The influx of fish will not be affected by this. The problem will be the mediocre players whos profit will be too small or who will be turning into losing players. They might lose interest in continue playing.

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Actually I don't think you'll see part time multi-tablers sticking around forever. And midlimit multi-tablers for that matter.

So you're really into it and you put in 4000 hands a week over 15 hours after work. If they don't go pro, how many people are going to be keeping up that pace for a year, two years, three years?

After a while you begin to start blowing off some sessions to go out with your girl, or because you're more tired from work, or the latest 200 BB downswing blunts your enthusiasm more than it did six months ago when you pumped up the amount of hands you played to get back into the black more quickly.

In six months maybe you find yourself playing a couple times a week, and in a year and a half, you just play occaisionally. Sure you play 8 tables when you play, but you're only doing that now and then...

Also I think you underestimate how many people don't think too much of donking off 500 bucks or so a month playing poker.

Further, there's a company running free tourneys in bars in my area with NO PRIZES OR PAYOUTS and their player base is amazing. My local game runs 15 to 25 people in a fifty dollar tourney and probably has a 40 person player base. Heck 16 people showed up for a 440 dollar tourney that was advertised for about 2 weeks just by word of mouth just to play in a 15 minute, rising through the rough, turbo like structured tourney. And I hear about a lot of 100 dollar buy in games.

In other words the demand for poker is tremendous. And what I'm struck by is how few of these people play online. I'm actually shocked by how low the numbers are. For the most part they don't trust it. I had an incredible converation with a guy who was convinced that party's tourneys were fine, because they had no stake in how the play went, but the ring games were clearly rigged to generate rake. Absolutely convinced of that, he was.

So the challenge for the sites is to tap into the huge interest in poker. There are a ton of guys willing to drop a few hundred bucks a week on poker who simply haven't made it to the online world.

--Zetack

Edit: As further evidence of how multitablers sucking money out of the games is not the problem, I'd point to the immense popularity of the six max games which clearly sucks money out of the pockets of the bad players at a much faster rate than a full ring game with a couple of multitablers at it does.

[Dave H.]

...and no rakeback...

What choices, as a business, do they have to increase profits? They either

1. Grow their customer base (by advertising),

2. Increase rake and/or lower bonuses (which will eventually SHRINK their customer base),

3. Get their current customer base to play more (by enticing them with bonuses, lower rake, even rakeback).

It seems like they're using #2 and I think ultimately that this is very shortsighted on their part. I love the competetiveness that the stock market offers!

[MicroBob]

Nice post zetack.


I think we can also look around here at 2+2 at the posters from 6-12 months ago and we can see a bit of turnover...and this would be amongst a group of players that have a higher percentage of conssitent winners obviously.


For some people I think that poker just isn't as interesting after awhile and that's about all there is to it.
For many gamblers...whether you are winning or not doesn't even play as much of a factor as one might initially think.



The fact is...there were almost 6k players at the WSOP main-event this year.
There will likely be about the same number of players next year I'm guessing.

Poker on TV is still pretty popular.

And I'm confident that I can get smarter than the typical mediocre weak-tightish player who has read a book or two (assuming I'm not a better player than them already).

I'm not worried too much about the state of the games.


However - here's another take on this situation (playing my own devil's advocate).
I'm fascinated that the numbers aren't going up faster the past few months in the current TV advertising situation.
You may recall that just a year or so ago we didn't have hardly ANY poker ads on TV because of fear from the DOJ.
And if we did then we certainly didn't have them on the major networks.

Now...even NBC and ESPN air these dot-net ads.
The party and stars TV ads are all over the freaking place.


With such a boom in TV advertising I would have expected significantly more players to go along with it.

But, the question is, are these dot-net commercials that are enticing players to their play-money site also more likely to attract borderline-curious players who are slightly more likely to get bored with the game a bit more quickly.


Lets face it....if you are currently 'of age' and would have any interest at all in real-money internet-poker you are probably playing already.
You aren't going to attract TOO many more Americans to go full-throttle on real-money internet games.

The new players will now be coming primarily from America's youth....and Europe (and perhaps Asia in the future).

[Timer]

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

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All I know is that Poker Stars number don't ring true. If they are true, then where are all of the players; where are all of the games?

As a test one day I counted all of the players in real games at Party. I couldn't be 100% accurate of course, but the number came very to close to the number on their home page. I then counted the number of play money players and it was indeed correct.

[Kablooie]

They're playing tournaments - right now there are somewhat more than 20,000 entrants in the MTT's currently running - granted some percentage of that is multiple entries, but add that to the SNG's, ring games, and play money, and i don't think there's any reason to doubt their posted statistics.

[Timer]

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They're playing tournaments - right now there are somewhat more than 20,000 entrants in the MTT's currently running - granted some percentage of that is multiple entries, but add that to the SNG's, ring games, and play money, and i don't think there's any reason to doubt their posted statistics.

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How many tournament players are there on Party? I'm sure it's close to the numbers at Stars. Plus, Party has all of the side game action.

Play money and freeroll players should not be counted in Stars statistics--it's misleading.

[Kablooie]

Not sure where you're coming from with this. By your own account Party's numbers included play money and freerolls - so why shouldn't stars?

Stars has a lot more tournaments going through the day than Party with more participants. Their tournament software has been consistently ahead of Party which is probably why.

[steaknshake925]

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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.


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holy [censored]. this would suck balls.

[Timer]

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Not sure where you're coming from with this. By your own account Party's numbers included play money and freerolls - so why shouldn't stars?



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Party's stats DO NOT include play money players. If that is what you understood, then I explained it poorly.

[HesseJam]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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.


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holy [censored]. this would suck balls.

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Yes it would. Like any other method to discriminate access to games between the several player types. So, the set of options are:

- Beginners tables (already implemented, are they Party-only?)
- No multi-tabling tables (not a bad idea for Party)
- Limiting the no of hands per player per month per limit at the lower limits (would force migration to higher levels, I'm not sure they can enforce this upon the skins)
- crowding out skin players of whom they do not earn rake and who might on average play tighter and have a higher multitabling ratio by introduction of Party-only bogus Jackpot tables with a drop of 1 cent.