I don't want to be a Party pooper ... but

[peterbirks]

How about this mind-bending offer from Party Poker? Since I hadn't been playing there for a week, I thought that the e-mail from them offering $160 in my account on November 4 if I accumulated just 3,850 "Party Points" might be a reasonable deal. After all, they said that to gain this bonus I would not have to play any more often than I had played in the past. Oh foolish me for such naivety.

It took some research, but I finally found out that to obtain 3,850 points I would have to (a) deposit $500 and leave it there for more than a week (generates 1,000 points), (b) play 20+ "raked days" in a calendar month (generates 500 points) and (c), play about 4,000 hands during the "happy hours" (9am to 7pm BST).

I could reduce this to maybe 3,000 hands if I exclusively played $5-$10 or higher. But the rake would still be about the same -- in the region of $400.

Personally, I don't see much point in paying $400 rake for a $160 bonus. I can do that on Full Tilt. Looked at another way, the "normal" deposit bonus for Party is 7x your bonus, or 1050 raked hands for $150. This slendiforous offer from Party Poker is three times as bad. Thanks, but no thanks.

There you are Pokerstars, you can use THAT in your marketing bumph (I know that there's only five of you....)

Comments

You were lucky

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

They offered me $30 for 845 points, 4-and-a-bit points per dollar more.

Of course I could just shift $500 in for a week or so and pick up 6%. But I'd lose a chunk on the FX (still no USD NETeller account, see).

So at best I'd make about a tenner. And what's a tenner to a man of my means?

but . . . you are such an ungrateful wretch!

[(Anonymous)]

What do you expect them to do? Convert your player points into shares of Party Gaming on a 1 share per 100 points basis?

BluffTHIS!

Re: but . . . you are such an ungrateful wretch!

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Actually, 1 share per 1000 points would be a good customer-reward scheme...

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

'Personally, I don't see much point in paying $400 rake for a $160 bonus.'

It's fine if you expect to win & it's a better decision than playing elsewhere. I was offereed $990 for 18k points. I have to say, if you received the same literature as me, then this is pretty outrageous stuff from Party. As I said before, they give no indication of being bounded by ethics; it makes you wonder , given the thinly veiled stuff, what else there is they are up to that is more concealed. I recall you mentioning before that they put up the rake at the low limits by raking earlier. As far as I am aware, they gave, unsurprisingly, no notice of this increase to their clients: not exactly best practice. Not to mention the at best insensitve at worst unethical decision to allow non-players to see hole cards that were hither to the privelege of the other players. The list goes on with Party. There are one or two common incidents that I've noticed that could filter down to the bottom line: the downtime of the cashout screen for one.

Incidentally, they've just put the rake up with the introduction of the bigger games there now, to $5, which,as if we didn't know it, is tax by tolerance. To be honest I don't have a problem with this when you consider the nigh on linear juice on STTs & MTTs. There are more pressing areas in thatdomain than the rake-hike in a game that is roughly now 0.5%, as opposed to 0.3%, of the average pot.

Gee I hope PS succeed.

btw Where did you dig up the Party points info?

chaos

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

It's fine if you expect to win & it's a better decision than playing elsewhere.

In a sense, what Party does is "charge" experienced winners for supplying them with a stream of new fish (obtained through marketing efforts). Because Party is efficient at supplying fish (more eficient than, say Pokerstars or Paradise), people are willing to pay more to play.

In this sense, the logical response is, indeed, to to look at your expected earn and, if this is still the best available, pay it through gritted teeth.

Alternatively, the gut response is to say "bugger this, they've just put up the price of a bonus by 200%. On top of that, it's harder to check how you are progressing. And on top of that, they don't pay you straight away. You have to wait until November 4. Perhaps a little customer resistance is in order".

Think of it as an opening show at the horses. You might see 5-to-1 about a horse that you know is really a 2-to-1 shot. However, you also know that this is fairly privileged information. So, despite it being a good price, you wait for an even better price.

In this sense, I think I might wait for a better offer.

I hadn't noticed that the rake had gone up in the bigger games. Jesus fuck! What level? Not $15-$30 and above, I hope. Five bucks a game is horrific -- a 60% price hike for the higher stakes games. Alternatively, you are looking at $300 an hour disappearing from the table rather than $180. Suppose the fish in this game loses 4 big bets an hour at $50-$100. That means that 75% of that goes to Party, rather than 40%. Alternatively, it means that the 8 good players will be sharing $100 between them rather than $220. Their Expected Earn from this player in the game game will more than halve -- to $12.50 from just under $30.

It doesn't matter how good the marketing efforts are, once the supply of fish slows, I can see the sharks leaving in droves. And where will Party's revenue be then?

Party points info

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I obtained this from Bonuswhores web site -- click on the "Party Poker" button on the left-hand side. This gives details of how the points are racked up.

PJ

Re: Party points info

[(Anonymous)]

Bonuses: If they start to offer more of them, which I suspect they are, they will inevitably be worse on a pro rata basis. Naturally, it comes down to the best choice.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate your diligence. The rake hike is at the 50-100 & upwards level. It makes more sense to tax at the top of the food chain that at the bottom.

It's unfortunate that there is nobody in place that have poker-players interest at heart. Too much apathy. Trouble is as soon as any site or person gets any mo, they put their hands out. There are few if any folk with any clout in the game who don't have a vested interst in the rake poker-sites charge.

My attitude has softened slightly, since, in Party's case, the excessive rake paid does help to pay for the aggressive marketing campaign they embark upon, but of course, such a campaign could be afforded with considerably less revenues.

I rememebr DY saying 'patience' a year or two ago 'market forces will dictate'. Well patience has & and will come at a considerable price. I said at the time that poker rooms are not like on-line book-stores: the price they charge is not the key driver of choice.

If the poker community embarked upon collective decision-making, rake would have within a week. But the prisoner's dilemma isn't a dilemma for nothing.

chaos

Re: Party points info

[(Anonymous)]

... rake would have 'halved' within a week

Re: Party points info

[(Anonymous)]

Late night or early morning - take your pick. I didn't find the material relating to encash on the pokerwhores site, but I do tend to miss things. Anyhow I wrote to party to enquire about the said hidden conditions and this were their response:

....

Thank you for contacting us.

We had sent you a mail in regard to a very special bonus promotion that we have for a few select Player Club members. You are one of those select players.

You are supposed to earn 18290 Regular Points between October 5th and October 31st and you can earn $990 in cash.

In order to accumulate points for the bonus, you will have to earn 'Regular Points'. You can earn Regular points by playing at our:
1. Real Money Live games.
2. Real Money Single and Multi-table tournaments.

Please note the points a player can earn by following ways are bonus Party Points and do not qualify for this promotion.
1. Making a deposit
2. Referring a friend
3. Playing during our happy hours
4. And playing regularly at PartyPoker.com.

You will receive a post log in pop up which would show you how many points you need to accumulate between 5 October and the 31 of October. If you accumulate the required number of points you will be given a cash bonus.

If you have any questions about this amazing deal, please call Customer Service or email us at info@partypoker.com.



....

chaos

Re: Party points info

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Good grief. So the bad deal becomes even worse. You can't get the happy hour points, you can't get the deposit points and you can't get the raked days points (well, you can get them, but they don't count. I've never discovered anything useful to do with Party points -- I don't even know or care how many I have).

In other words, you have to play a huge number of raked hands, because the points don't even get generated on a 1 for 1 basis. At $3-$6, for example, its a 12-for-20 exchange rate.

The upside at the moment is that the company is in deep shit with the institutional world (although the founders have their "fuck you" money and probably don't care that much). Growth appears not so much to have slowed as to have ground to a halt. We are now merely at "replacement rate".

Party has two choices here. They can spot that half their regular punters are still playing at Party, but are doing it through Empire or Coral (hence less revenue for Party). They could easily get these customers back by offering a rakeback.

Alternatively, they could be stupid (the normal response from marketing oriented companies), assume that demand is inelastic, and put up the prices. Is it any coincidence that the rake has only gone up on the tables that are not available outside Party? I think not.

I guess Party is also assuming that punters are too thick to work out that the bonuses are now far less generous than they were (not that they were over-generous in the first place, given the time limits often imposed). Unfortunately for Party, the punters who make them the most money are not as a rule the fish, but the multi-table regulars. And this customer base is far from thick.

Do I have any questions about this amazing deal? Er, no, not really. Kind of on a par with offers that I get from Nat West and British Gas -- worth bugger all.

I wonder what the maths of playing to get 18,290 regular points are?

Let's see. At 3-6, if you were two tabling, you would accumulate about 50 regular points an hour. So that means in 27 days you would need to be playing for 360 hours -- a mere 14 and a bit hours a day.

Wow, I see what they mean by an "amazing" offer. It's amazing in the sense that it defies credulity.

Rock on Party. Get your naked shorts on these shares NOW!

Whoops. Not that the above does not constitute investment advice. This site is for entertainment purposes only.

Pete

Mine almost seems possible

[(Anonymous)]

I only need 1160 for $95 and I'd only have to play 30% more than normal to get it - I may see how things go and make a push late in the month.

Re: Mine almost seems possible

[(Anonymous)]

I did think it may be possible, but if Part is going to have unexplained and legthy server outages during the eligibility period, then I think I have no chance at all of getting the bonus.