What is so shady about Party sponsoring players, assuming they do it?

They all play on the same software and you are playing against real people, so at the worst some misplaced sense of entitlement to overlays is being violated.

And what really puzzles me is that as far as players are concerned this is an unambiguous positive. I don't see why people are complaining. If the allegation is that party are literally paying out of their pocket to sponsor bad players for the 'organic' player-base to play against, why exactly are people here so outraged?

Yea - just thought i'd mention it since capping the prize gives 14 more places a $500 ticket and increases entrants for the $5k tournament as well.

Not criticising the promotion but some of the grinders are going pretty hard on the hours - and some of them are pretty terrible players too based on results - just a stay awake challenge really.

Nothing shady at all! Except when they come to sell the company and show off all these huge guarantees and footfall on the site that is artificial. Not to mention im sure half of these freerollers are colluding.

Agreed its good for the above average 2+2 regs but its not good for the recreational players which should be the main focus of the sites.

I am genuinely confused by this notion of 'artificial' vs 'organic' footfall or volume.

The whole point of a poker site is to bring together players and solve coordination problems.

So with that in mind, a few observations.

1) How is rake-back or leaderboards, or any promotion at all not artifical? I just don't see where this mythical site exists where people are playing solely because they think they are +EV without any incentive.

2) Why should the health of the recreational players be the focus of a site? Genuine question. Is this an ideological view? Is it that you think it's necessary for an eco-system to work? Is this what you think will make money for sites?

3) Why and in what way do you think the free-rollers are colluding?

It has less to do with entitlement to overlay and more to do with providing a fair playing experience.

1) We know that there is a relationship between the stable(s) and Party Poker. This can easily be concluded by looking at Sharkscope data, forum posts from prior horses, the huge thread about Party in NVG and just Occam's Razor of putting people in 3x re-entries and seemingly never have them play in much softer fields on other sites (they are playing 2,6k hyper sats on Party but never seem to post about the Big 22 on stars).

2) Party Poker denies that there is any partnership between the parties and refuses to even acknowledge posts about it anymore.

So we know that there is a relationship and we also know Party says that there isn't one. If nothing was really going on then it seems completely obvious that Party Poker would just address this directly and explain what their exact relationship is, but instead they have chosen to deny and ignore any questions about it.

I think it's problematic both because of Party Pokers recent past with cheating, because of the game types that are most played are also the easiest for cheating and ones that needs to be monitored the most and because it's a potentially huge conflict of interest to police the games that you profit the most from.

I can see this is your first post here in five years so it's entirely possible you haven't heard but there has been a lot of problems with systematic cheating on Party Poker during the last few years. They had the biggest mtt bot ring ever, massive mtt leaderboard collusion, made cashgame hudless which allegedly means that half the pool is playing with illegal huds and that bots are making up a big portion of the player pool. In other words I think there is reason to be critical, and historically policing of Party Poker games have been left mostly up to the players.

For example If 5/30 people in a satellite is backed by the same person, who has an insider deal with the pokersite that they refuse to tell you about then I just don't feel comfortable playing in that game, and I don't think anyone else should either.

If you don't think that's a big deal that's fair enough too. But to make it into some narrative where people are just upset about lack of overlays I just don't think is fair.

Alright, that's a great answer.

I entirely agree with what you said. I was just looking for perspective because I scrolled plenty of pages back and it had seemed to me as though people's sole problem was that people are being sponsored.

I'd definitely not want to play in this situation (at least outside of large field events). It would be very different if Party was just giving people 30% or even 10% free-rolls in order to make up their guarantees.

I wouldn't be worried simply by the fact that there is a relationship and they don't want to publicly admit it, because I can see reasons for them to not want to announce it even if there was no cheating or collusion whatsoever, but in the context you've provided, I totally get your point.

PartyPoker having Server Problems atm? Getting dc while beeing on a ft.... Internet works fine, only pp software crashed. Phone app works but slow

Anyone expericneing the same?

Excellent post mement. It could just be variance, but considering the amount of stars crushers who are losing heaps on party (I've searched a lot of people) and the guys that we know are in these stables seem to be the ones winning there. Everyone who knows the game knows that the vast majority of these guys are very bad at poker indeed. There are many exceptions to this of course, but it certainly raises some suspicions.

wtf is happening with deals in pkos??????
so tilted right now
how come when you chop pko MTT / MTT ends and players take their own pko

WTF is that??? no warning no nothing how is that possible ??

i end up HU in 55$ pko we were 70+bb deep efectivly i and almost 2:1 chip advantage (and also imo skill advantage) but was tired from long sesion and decide to chop (obv only prize pool) to reduce variance (was like 3800$ for first 2,900$ for second) and we had like 1k $ on each head pko which i obv want to play for

so we were playing 30k/60k and i had 55mil villain had 30 mil
We make deal me to take 3500 and he to take 3100 and after we click confirm deal MTT ENDS with each player wining his pko

NOWHERE IN THE DEAL TAB THERE WAS SAID THAT MTT WILL END AND THAT EACH OF US WILL WIN THEIR OWN BONTY!!!
NOWHERE IT SAID THAT I WILL WIN 4500 (3500 PRIZE + 1K MY BONTY) AND OTHER GUY WILL WIN 4100 (3100+1K PKO)
WHEN WE AGREE TO DEAL IT WAS CLEAR THAT WE AGREE TO CHOP ONLY PRIZE MONEY 3500 FOR ME 3100 FOR HIM
I FEEL LIKE I HAVED BEEN SCAMMED FOR A LOT OF EV!!!
ONCE AGAIN I AM REPEATING:
THERE WAS NO WAY FOR ME OR OTHER PLAYER TO KNOW THAT WE ARE AGREEING TO CHOP PRIZE POOL + PKOS AND MTT TO END.
I DINT AGREE TO CHOP PKOS, IF I KNEW THAT MTT WILL END AND THAT EACH OF US WILL WIN THEIR OWN BOUNTY I WILL NEVER CHOP IT!!!

I WANT SOME COMPENSATION FOR THIS... IT DOESNT FELL CORRECT BECAUSE I WAS FORCED TO MAKE DEAL I DO NOT AGREE ON MAKING

Grats on the win

Heh, GVC are not going to sell partypoker. Its a big part of their digital growth strategy. They openly, knowingly state that they are pouring money into partypoker in an effort to rebuild the brand and coax over players from PokerStars and 888. Revenue is up 40% but contribution (revenue minus vip program, rakeback, other marketing and costs) is down significantly. They are not hiding it.

Long term they do plan to level off this level of investment; they expect the benefits of the increased liquidity to ultimately self-sustain itself. But in the meantime, they're happy to pay out of pocket to rebuild the poker brand.

GVC make money in sports betting (and now in retail too with the Ladbrokes acquisition). Partypoker is still a valuable brand that can bring people into their product portfolio, where they can be cross-sold into sports and casino.

So their strategy isn't much different to TSG, they are just coming at it from another angle.


I can't comment on the whole staking side, but doing big guaranteed tournaments is an obvious way of marketing online poker. Rather than have overlays, a company would rather freeroll players in - then more players experiencing the poker tournament, more chance that money stays in the system, and the marketing message is clearer (gtds exceeded). Nothing controversial about that.

today the micro mtt gtds are reduced...at first the 6max deepstack 2,2 buy in was normal with 1k gtd...now i watch and it's 750gtd...the before 1k gtd 2,2 buy in two hours later 750 now too. two hours later the before 1,5k gtd 2,2 buy in deepstack has now 1k gtd...1 hour later the before 3k gtd bigbountyhunter has now 2k....only the Major 1 hour later has still his gtd 3k (but i expect a reduce till start of the game too....and there's a whole between 3,3 and 7,5....no Standard mtt's with 5,5 buy in.....THERE'S NOTHING LEFT TO PLAY FOR ME NOW! now i Play 1- a few sit&gos per day or an hour 1cent/2cent casgh games...i think i go/stop playing.

absolutely thumbs down

-now i see that the minimini deepstacks o,5 buy in mtt's that we had now for while are gone....THATS GOOD in my eyes!

but esp. now where i see that good change i ask myself why the 2,2 and 3,3 are reduced.

-ok...NOW i see tomorrow everything is normal again....today is bec the world Cup opening Event yes.?

give me a gun

I'm assuming it may have something to do with the Worldcup kicking off today

Did party just crash?

...yes thank you, think so!

the funny is...i was happy to watch world Cup while i Play poker...something to do while you Play one potential Marathon after the other.... but with this gtds i normaly cant Play that...
and watching russia vs Saudi arabia...ONLY...is nothing what i want to do too .

maybe i watch the opening Show and jump then on my bike

----


"did Party Crash"......- no Problems at my side

Crashed for me. ffs

It did for me.

MAIKA MU DA EBA WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

So this is occurring or are you guys stating it doesn't occur but if it did you'd be ok with it. If it is the truth can we hear some specifics to the arrangements.
Within the past week Collette just said that this doesn't happen and she would be in the know so it still seems rather confusing.

As for your 1st part I appreciate the transparency about Party's overall strategy and I believe that they are following this strategy. I have posted in the past that this is what they were doing but am concerned about that levelling off period... If the money thrown at the product was cut off tomorrow how much growth over the past year (40% is your number) would stick around? Any indication how much longer GVC intends to throw money at this project?

Listen my bad I thought that was Pads writing what you wrote Hood. My bad no coffee in the morning.

Any decreases or changes will be seasonal due to the summer season which we have done the same as each year as play decreases greatly during July - August


There were some issues which the team identified and resolved in full
Apologies for any inconvenience

Thanks

Colette

the last few years Party poker had in summer season buisness as usuall (if i correct remember , and i speak ab buy ins till 5,5)
-maybe it was part of the strategy to hold the gtds over the summer the last years...
...ofc i know that normaly all sites reduce the gtd's in summer month's.

-but all is ok!- i was not online today so far, but i saw yesterday that the friday games are back to normal...

edit

...now i am online...and see lower gtd than yesterday...the from 1k to 750 reduced are now 700...and the Major has only the half ( 1,5k gtd) than normal....

1 deepstack has his 1k (normal was 1,5k) gtd from yesterday ....


...but you know that the biggest competitor (at the Moment) has new tournaments?! 5,5 buy in 5k gtd ( 3pm if i am correct,and how i read it's a big sucess ) and a later 5,5 buy in and 15k gtd (which has allways overlay how i read-but it's there...) just for example this two tournaments.

i know and ofc respect- it's a decision....BUT i dont like it...i dont wanna Play this games now!

...i played micro cash games a bit...and it's fun...i tripple up
...so i Play this games and sit&gos in the summer- maybe at sunday we have still good gtd's in the micro area?.

The world cup just started everyone will lower guarantees.