Time to take this to whatever gaming commission I think.

I'm not on the international Party site so this bug hasn't affected me. But it is concerning. Party isn't fixing it and now they have support not even understanding or acknowledging it.
This situation is very wrong and these games should not be allowed to continue until this is fixed.

It's time for a Papi podcast

It seems the line Party is taking is that, because the algorithm works the same for everyone, there is no problem. This is quite remarkable, given that, in practice, using the software in legitimate but different ways (multi vs single table) leads to different intrinsic EVs.

My guess is Party is anticipating, or have been advised, that any regulatory body would be persuaded by that argument, hence they are basically ghosting irate players (and journalists) and trying to ride this one out.

Seems a fair theory.
"Ghosting" sounds like a good way of putting it. The fact they haven't taken this seriously by now and actually done anything about it speaks volumes.
It isn't a matter of laziness or lack of understanding of what is happening. At this point the only reasonable conclusion is that it is an intentional decision to allow this kind of game to continue.

With all the concern about fairness and integrity and various players complaining about the sites being "rigged", one would think they would be more sensitive to this issue regarding having an equally fair game.
But they are not. And apparently they don't care.

I don't think this equates to the RNG being "action rigged" or other such nonsense. But it seems a natural connection for the "is this rigged?" crowd to make. Because the fairness of the games in terms of position-frequency is very much rigged and not fair.
It is weird that they would choose to double-down on allowing this and not take fairly simple steps to correct it.

How about this follow-up theory?
If they correct it then that admits that the way they were.doing it was wrong...and they have to provide refunds for all affected players which will be immensely time-consuming to figure out AND costly.

By not correcting it they can argue that this is an intentional decision...and always has been. They have been strategically making the multitablers contribute more blinds because that helps keep them more even with the rec players thus making it more fair. Something like that. I don't think they did this intentionally at first. I think they goofed it and didn't mean to do this and now they are trying to figure out what they should do about it and whether they should fix it.

Just a theory. Who knows what the heck they are thinking here?

In related news: Hi people at Party who are reading this thread (We know you are lurking around here somewhere!!)
Please reconsider your strategy. Your reputation of dealing a fair game really is important to you, isn't it? It's kind of important, right?
Do you really want to continue to be known as the site that is intentionally allowing an unfair game to continue? That basically puts you in the same department as Absolute and some of those other scandal-ridden sites.
Tell your people who you work with that your strategy of ignoring this and allowing it to continue is a really terrible one. Thanks for your time.

I can imagine something along the lines of the following:

"While our software has been amazingly fair and the same for everyone, we recently updated the seating algorithm in response to player suggestions."

Of course, this does require them to take the tables off line for a couple of hours, and maybe they just can't stand the thought of some missed rake.

Whatever the outcome, Party has come off as at best amateurish and at worst as grossly negligent.

https://imgur.com/nT8H6ah

Uncomfortable - That is a really disappointing response. "Same for all players" is now almost implying "if you don't want to be stuck with more BB hands then you also can choose to play only one table."

Feline - I agree they might end up phrasing it like that. I disagree with the word "negligent" at its worst. I think this is already far worse than merely negligent. This is willful. It might have been an accidental oversight that they didn't foresee...at first. But now it is them purposefully allowing the seating assignments to not be evenly distributed to all players. Some people, based on how they play, will have different seating assignments and will be in the big blind more.
Them justifying it by saying the seating algorithm is the same is appalling.

They are now fully aware that some players receive too many big blinds based on their style of play...AND THEY ARE ACTUALLY OKAY WITH THAT.
Wow. Truly stunning.
They refuse to correct it or even really directly acknowledge it. All of that is beyond mere negligence imo.

Really interesting response. Thanks for sharing that.

It is very debatable that the seating algorithm is the same for all customers.

Playing on one table is different than playing on multiple tables (as best we can figure it...but they aren't confirming).
That alone makes it different. One player getting more big blinds than buttons automatically means that another player has to be getting more buttons and fewer big blinds. No, that is not the same for all players you dunderheads.

Their argument is that anyone csn lost single table or multiple tables and whoever plays multiple tables will have the same effect as others who play multiple tables.

It is unconscionable that they are definitively claiming that this makes the game equally fair for all players.

This has to be a violation of whatever gaming rules or commission they are a part of.
Is there some other place to report them to? Tjere has to be, right?
Because this bit about them insisting their self-policing is fine is very obviously a total joke.

That's fair. I think "willful negligence" probably covers it.

If anyone has a large (> ~ 80k) database of hands played exclusively single-table, please let me know. I realize that's a tough ask since it takes a while to generate them. Equally, I imagine there are those who sussed out this bug a while ago and may have decided to single table.

One other question:

Has anyone who has reported this to PP received any acknowledgment that their own data are accurate, and that when used in a certain way the seating algorithm creates a deficiency of hands in CO/BTN? I know several of you have shared your data with PP. It's sort of amazing that, as far as I know, PP have at no point acknowledged that such data are noteworthy and... uhm... less than ideal.

I guess what I'm looking for is PP going beyond "it is the same for everyone" and saying "yes, if you multi-table, that is going to happen, but it's the same for everybody".

Thanks ~ Kat

sad to see the lack of interest

Indeed. I'm really surprised there isn't more outrage at this scandal. That practically seems to prove that Party is correct that they can get away with this and don't have to do anything about it.

I can't even play at this version of the site...and I'm appalled. But customers who are actually there AND know about it are just going to take it? Bizarre to me in some ways. But I guess it goes along with overall resignation that these sites will do some pretty shady things.

this is outright criminal, they have fully ignored the article and bad publicity.
not even a teampro has gotten back to us. thats insane

Honestly, this didn't surprise me one bit, knowing what I've witnessed on the network, or should I say how I've been losing $, and it's most likely why after two decades there's 10-15 unique accounts set to maintain some traffic at the lower limits, with 100 NL being the highest.

The hundred of thousand poker players that came on this network through the past two decades left for a good reason, and it has very little to do with the client or the competition, since poker is perfectly playable. Most are intelligent to add 2+2 at the end, and figure if there's something wrong. If there's not a large group of players making money for playing poker this is the end result.

Over the last years they've been introducing better promotions (rakeback) to bring back those they've lost, but still when I went to GG despite running below EV there as well my experience was much different, and earned a lot more through ggcare despite much less overall rakeback.

Now, I am playing nowhere cash games and that will remain until the industry starts giving me more opportunities, and operates online poker with my best interest first, or they can hope there's still some ignorant players from a growing veteran community that's far more informed today than ever.

I am a FF PLO 200 reg and have gotten cheated massively out of CO's. I play in a heavy regulated market: Denmark.

In Denmark we have a 80% state owned company called "Danske Spil". They "rent" Party's software and as such, they offer the same games as Party Poker.

This means that they offer a game format that cheats people off of their money. A state owned company, mind you. I have contacted them, providing evidence from multiple 2+2 threads, reddit threads, news article, and my own database.

My hope is that they will be able to force Party Poker to fix this in some way. If not, I will contact the regulators or go the legal way and basically sue the state.

Party Poker also operates on the heavily regulated danish market. It's my impression however, that most people that wanna play on Party Poker, plays on Danske Spil.

So far I haven't heard from Danske Spil in 8 days. They have, however, acknowledged my request, in a thread on a danish forum, and told me that they will answer me in privat.

Sorry for piss-poor englando. I didn't have much time to write this post.

FWIW Poker.org has reached out to partypoker on multiple occasions inviting them to comment on this matter. We have received no response beyond the auto-mailer that our email has been received.

Why would a TEAM pro say anything about this? So they could lose the spot on the roster?

Why would they comment on this?

You are gonna sue Denmark? Good luck.

People who moan about this should just stop playing party if they can. It's obvious they are not doing anything to this. You can cry all you want here discords call Ingram and Polk but in the end the only thing you can do is sit out.

Typically when a news organization contacts a company about a story that company would like to avoid, the company at least provides a "no comment". Being completely ignored is somewhat unusual.

I'm sorry. But what article are we referring to? Was it linked in this thread? Sorry I'm potentially a bit blind here.

This one I believe: https://www.poker.org/partypoker-fas...regs-millions/

tHE ANSWER IS HERE.

We've published a follow-up article on this story in light of Doug Polk's comments today:

https://www.poker.org/partypoker-fas...g-polks-radar/

This is an inaccurate article. Losing players did not pop in and show extra cut off positions. Some posts did, some posts did not. Your article is slanted vs what is reported in modern media regarding research on the entire thread (I am over stimulated with research and commenting/posting both WaPo and NY times).

If you had better researched the thread, with quotes vs what folks want to hear, if you looked at the prevalence of the same scenario on other sites, if it was more than 5 paragraphs, they MIGHT have paid attention.