If I ran the zoo (Party)

[Zetack]

So as I was trudging to my car after work today I thought about the folks who've gotten quasi-rakeback offers from Party, the such and such amount for so many hands which will repeat every month offers. And I thought, but even if it works out to a rakeback comparable amount, it's still much worse than RB because you get rakeback whether you play 20k hands or 200 hands. And then I thought, "Exactly." and it became clear to me how Party could handle its current fiasco in a way that would actually benefit everybody and engender good will towards Party at the same time (with the possible exception of the current non-RB affiliates who would take a pretty big hit).

They set up a rewards program, their Gold Club, or VIP Club, Or Superduper Royal Flush Club Rewards Program!!!! or whatever.

If you're a member and you hit 5,000 hands in a calendar month you get 15 perceht rakeback. 12,000 hands you 20% RB, 20k hands and more a month you get 25 %. The amounts apply to all the hands, and the thresholds are trigered by played hands not raked hands, although RB is calculated as we are used to. So if you hit 21k hands played the 25% applies to your whole MGR not just the 1k hands above 20k.

Clear? Here's the beauty. 5000 hands is around 90 table hours, most recreational single tabling players won't ever hit it and so you never pay out on them, but maybe it does encourage some players to play a lot more hands which is a good thing. If you are a semi-serious player in the 9-10k hand range suddenly you are striving to play a few more (or a lot more) hands to hit a higher RB rate. And unless you're playing a metric ton of hands you'll have a lot of incentive to keep all your play at party rather than spreading it around.

And the marketing opportunities would be beautiful. Join our Gold Club and get BIG REWARDS!!! We will pay you MONEY to play poker!!!! Etc. Etc. Etc. Everytime you log in you get the popup: "You have played 3872 hands this month, Play 1128 more hands and we will GIVE YOU MONEY!!!"

Of course they can't cut the Affiliates out but they could do something like, if your player plays less than 5000 hands you get 10% of his MGR. If he hits the targets you get 5% of his mgr. (So the most it would ever cost Party would be 30% for an affiliate player who hits 20k hands as opposed to 25% for an unaffiliated player.)

It wouldn't have to be these particular percentages at these particular numbers of hands, of course, these are just ones that seem to be reasonable to me.

You could throw in other twists like, you have to hit 5k raked hands to join the Gold Club and you'd get the emails and popups: "only 1200 more raked hands and you can join the Gold Club and we will PAY YOU MONEY to play poker!!!

So you get an incentive to play more hands, an incentive to play at Party as opposed to speading your action around, and Party only has to pay out a relatively modest amount and the reward is still probably there for affiliates to try and sign up as many players as possible.

Anyway, that's what I woud do if I ran the zoo.

--Zetack

Oh, and as to the quasi-rakeback structure they have going now, since there is absolutely no reward for playing more than the number of raked hands it takes to get your reward they actually create an incentive for a high volume player to play a large percentage of his hands somewhere else once he hits the number, or if he knows that he's going to have a down month and won't hit his number to play all of his hands that month someplace else. Its just dumb, really.

The OP proposes Party give RB according to how many hands a player plays each month. The payout % would be:

5K hands: 15%
12K hands: 20%
20K hands: 25%

Party would send emails to players encouraging them to get to the next level of RB % by playing more hands.

[Zetack]

[ QUOTE ]
The OP proposes Party give RB according to how many hands a player plays each month. The payout % would be:

5K hands: 15%
12K hands: 20%
20K hands: 25%

Party would send emails to players encouraging them to get to the next level of RB % by playing more hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice gimmick account. Sorry about your ADD.

As to your location...you don't do that very well.


--Zetack