Good read guys.

"As Farseer alluded to below this type of policy is terribly short sighted and turns honest people away from the site with the thought that this might just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of shadiness"

"Whoever is responsible for managing the MTT scene on party is naive beyond description for so many reasons. Some clever people in these stables have managed to manipulate you and your business plan, and its going to hurt everyone other than them in the long run, because none of this is sustainable"

i actually must say thats my thinking too!

Was just thinking there I'm not sure UKGC would even have the authority to investigate an affiliate since they don't require any gambling licence to operate in the UK. If true the arrangement is cleverer than I thought. All they would find is a bunch of payments to a UK affiliate.

edit: Possibly not even UK

Alex Scott a higher up with MicroGaming said that fines can be levied on Sites whom have affiliates offering shady things. Hence why he wants out of the affiliate arena.

That one adds up based on the few decisions I've seen from UKGC.

On party's side I could see them arguing players didn't lose any equity since Party reserves the right to cancel a tournament for any reason. Do players have the expectation of "overlay equity" in any tournament they register? Not sure UKGC could give a qualified answer on that. Overlays occur purely for PR reasons - sites don't have the obligation to honor the guarantees.

its no fun when u 3bet in 530 or 215 pko with 40bb vs MP with AK and SB shoves 33 and MP calls off QJo or when you shove 30 bb vs open and and u got same scenario SB calls with 44 and MP calls with QJ not even covering you for the pko
lol really???
i wont suggest party(or any online site/live venue) to try smth like for ex GTD 100k 530$ buy in MTT and then when there are 180 entries (or w/e lower then GTD) are made to say sorry prize pool is 90k now that will be the end imo

I suppose the point is open to dispute alright - definitely plenty of times where sites have canceled a tournament due to "server issues". Not sure if any site has canceled a tournament explicitly due to the overlay. Lowering guarantee after tournament starts is obv PR suicide and probably not okay.

As far as deceptive practices go, hosting a tournament that you know cannot overlay is pretty low down the totem pole (in the context of what online casinos and sportsbooks do everyday). What I was just wondering was whether there is an implied agreement between the player and the site that overlays can occur and the player receives all the equity from that overlay.

I would argue that's the definition of fun

is more fun when is freezout imo, in pko's they "steal" away too much eq/EV

Could you please add PLO/PLO8 sats to the new Power Series PLO/PLO8 mtts?
Pretty sure this would improve numbers. I mean who wants to play HE to sat into a PLO tourney?

Is anyone surprised that party's shadiness is now coming out? There is no way they can compete with 'Stars traffic unless they pad out (pun intended) the prizepools by staking players in via a third party. Every single pro who attends a pp live event knows it, but they don't care about integrity because their EV is so high due to the quality of the staked players being so low.

That's some serious spewing in KO series overlays.

Haven't played pretty much anything despite the overlays. That 100k freezeout though Kinda odd timing for a tournament series as well... I mean during WSOP?

My biggest fear that higher ups in GVC say enough is enough. IMO smaller, suistanable guarantees in the long run without massive amount of re-entries > trying to boast uber high prize pools, but not being able to compete in long term with Stars

Since Party is the only serious competitor to Stars IMO. 888 is toilet and Winamax is not global.

Gotta hope USA opens up along with the sports betting legislation, but with bad actor clause on Stars (despite what Barry says) so smaller sites have incentive to invest in software development.

I honestly have to agree and disagree with this. The part about them "padding" the numbers is true... but I disagree that they need to go this route in order to compete with Stars numbers wise.

If they allocated the money they spent on promo's and spent it on other ventures they could do far better in getting players on board playing consistently.
If they implemented more efficient satellites that pinpoint target tourneys they'd end up with guarantees being met legitimately.
The money saved from not paying these shady stables could also be reinvested in offerings to encourage organic growth.

Live Events are easier to reach numbers to. There's only 1 tournament to feed and with a labyrinth of satellites it isn't that hard to reach. The guarantees might have to drop but players really won't care if a 15 million guarantee gets dropped to 10 million. They should be spending more time ensuring players that do attend are guaranteed an experience of a lifetime rather than worrying about reaching their guarantees with poor structures to encourage re-entries... all of which diminish the experience of the casual player.

kinda surprised party doesnt have a single 2x/3x turbo rebuy in the daily schedule , these tourneys were huge on stars back in the day .

Yea rebuys are out of fashion these days - accountants started wondering why players were only paying 3-5% rake on total buyins when they could earn more from re-entries. It's a credit to Pads that he saw rebuys could help get good guarantees in the morning tournaments.

They do drag on a bit though. Cool solution would be to increase blind times prior to add-on to get more players as well.

Any chance you can make the board runouts slower when two people are all in? It's super fast and hard to keep track of!

Huge guarantees are the biggest drivers of participation and party knows this. The only way they can put on these huge, ambitious guarantees that rival 'Stars, even though they have 1/8th of the traffic, is by mitigating their risk by dedicating a huge budget to overlays, which includes:

a) Paying the difference between the prizepool and the guarantee (obv, and no problem here)
b) Freerolling as many players as possible to reduce the tournament overlay and at the same time hoping to get some sort of return from the freerollers cashes to reduce their loss (this is the dodgy part)

They use this same method for online and live. I don't doubt that they're losing a ton of money running their live tour, but they had the ambition to make it the biggest live poker tour in the world and it looks like they succeeded (fairly quickly too). However, they did this by making all their events unlimited re-entry, which is perverse for "prestigious" main events, and they can't keep burning money forever so at some point, if their attendance doesn't dramatically increase so the guarantees are met organically, they'll have no choice but to reduce the guarantees.

My best guess is that they decided to go crazy for 2-3 years and throw money at everything, well knowing that it's unsustainable, but with the hopes that players would migrate over to party so they could eventually become #1 and run a sustainable business. I doubt that'll happen though.

+1 the run outs are a little fast.

Also I feel like having the buy-in first in the tournament title at the top of the window is best for identifying which window is which tournament, often times they have the same start of the title "Bounty Builder...." and the rest is cut off.

Oh and I will again bring up the "what you see is what you get" bounty style being better than the current win half/half

Meant to mention this in my feedback as well. Definitely would like to see this implemented soon also.

hi,

quick Feedback 06.12.2018 (micro sector- as allways)


pkos: "what you see is what you get" - i dont agree! it is good how it is. BUT they could Change the Format from time to time (daily would be the best) 1 day pko 1 day ko - i would agree with this.

---

micro cash games and micro mtt schedule: at cash games "casual cash games" start at 5cent/10cent(not so Long in the past it was starting at 1cent/2cent!) and "fast five" starts at 25cent/50cent
this is not micro Players friendly! competitor is better at this field!
(and dont Forget..the most Players are small pocket Players which have the target to Play bigger one day in the future...which means they would Play bigger games which bigger rake etc. help to grow in the future...)
no reward Programm for micro Players is a big Problem too! not micro Players friendly,again.
and no shop...that is xxxx!
why should a small pocket or casual Player Play at Party? ok,the pkos and a very few mtts in the late afternoon and evening....but thats it...and the competitors will jump on that horse pkos too...means the only Special Thing will not be special- in the near future.

at the same time not Long time ago you bring 0,5 buy in with small gtds mtts back and you have 1,1 buy ins with small gtds(remember the bootcamp)...if it is me i would say they cannabilaze(you understand what i mean..sry) with the 2,2 buy ins...AND the 3,3 buy ins...if it is me i would do more for the 2,2 and 3,3 buy ins...that they grow...OR you are consequent: - (is that an english word? i hope you understand me) -0,5 buy in mtts- bring back a micro reward Point system and a shop-fast five for everyone- casual cash games for everyone etc.

---Looks like the cash Team and the mtt Team have a different strategy...

please risk/ try a Little bit with the .30 Turbos gtds/buy ins...i like to see Turbos...but i played not one of them bec. buy in and gtd is not attractive.
attractive (in my eyes) would be 1,1 2,2 or 3,3 buy in with 1k gtd and 1-2 re-entry ( 1k Minimum)

---

thx

Noted and suggestion shared with the relevant team


I'm looking into this, someone also brought this up at our live event at the weekend and I have asked tech to look into it
Feedback noted regarding the bounty suggestion


We removed the lowest stakes as traffic was minimal for the casual cash games, introducing the new stakes increased traffic for these specific games
These games are now minimal and will eventually be phased out in full
Our standard cash games indeed still start at 0.01/0.02
Casual cash games, unfortunately, only appeal to a minimal market
The Fast Five games appeal to a different market, hence the higher starting blinds level following analysis of past performance of these games


Ill agree to disagree regarding the cash back promo, I do feel its one of the best in the business for our players though likely not as appealing for our smaller stake players as you note

The shop for merchandise we had for many, many years and its proven to be an unsuccessful venture
Following player feedback, we opted to change to our cashback promotion which has been a welcome change by the majority of our players
The online shop, will not return in the near future

I do feel there are multiple lower buy-in tournaments, PKOS, promotions and series for our smaller stake players
Also, our sats start at 0.01c - the centrolls offer great value and the live sat ticket tree is very competitive
The new pp live $$ are also accessible to all bankroll levels starting at just 0.10c

Overall feedback noted and I have shared your final suggestion regarding the turbos etc with the team

Thanks

Colette

thank you for the detailed answer,

if casual cash games only have a minimal market - i understand your way ofc.

same with fast five- i can life with your answer. (but i would be happy if this games start at 5/10cent)

ofc, the cashback etc at partypoker is one of the best or the best....but Players which Play every day 2-3-4 hours micro games get 0 !

no shop- no big Problem! it s a decision.


yes there some good micro mtts , true. -

- and if you "tweak" the Turbos a bit...(the best would be one in the late morning - one in afternoon - and one in the early evening)...everything is ok so far.

best wishes

(from the other thread) +1 for bring back cash promo double Points - i want to get 1 time 25 Points and 5 Dollar back

the 5pm big bounties are too slow, can the $33 change to 7 min and $11 change to 6 min blinds

Might be an idea to cap the low leaderboard prizes at $500 if players up the ante to 20hour days to scoop the top prize. More goodwill would be earned from capping the prizes.

They could also cap the number of results that count so it's your best x results in a week/month