Originally Posted by OurSurveySays
Hi everyone,
Patrick Leonard - Ambassador for Party Poker here. Will address all points from the thread. Just to be clear, we don't work like other companies, I don't have to send this through PR part of the company, to us, quick feedback and response is important.
Firstly, let me say that whilst the changes have been huge in the last 12 months since I joined the company, not one person in the company thinks we are close to the finished product. Everybody is on the same page, we have done really well increasing numbers, but as a site we are far from perfect yet, but every day we work very hard to make sure we can improve from yesterday, we are a proactive site that wants to improve and become the biggest poker site in the world again, but we are aware of how we perform at the moment.
First of all, let me describe the 10 key missions of the companies:
- Invest in software development to deliver an industry leading player experience
- Improve customer services and strive to resolve player issues in the same day
- Reward the loyalty of players who start games and keep the action going
- Look after smaller bankroll players with value added promotions
- Fight against the use of third party software that gives an unfair advantage
- Invest marketing budgets within the poker community
- Develop partypoker Live to become the largest live poker tour in the world
- Support partners and have their backs
- Only appoint management who get poker, who are trusted, and who actually care
- Hold hands up to the poker community when mistakes are made
I will now go into points raised in the thread, if I miss something, let me know and I'll address it, have nothing to hide or anything I want to dodge.
1. They allow cheating
That is simply not true. We have teams working on detecting bots and people using third party software and its strictly prohibited, if anything PP goes over the edge the other way to protect plays in games, restricting HUD's on cash game tables etc. There has been many serious cases that I have been personally involved and spent tens of hours on to help prevent any kind of cheating and we are committed to putting resources in to preventing this. I even posted it as one of my main company objectives:
Fight against the use of third party software that gives an unfair advantage
2. Changing the rake back system and expiring old points
We used every way of correspondence to ensure that people knew about this change. I was in at least 15 Skype groups that people were speaking about it and it seemed general consensus throughout the poker community. The idea behind the change was not to take from people but to GIVE TO PEOPLE. The shop had prices slashes dramatically, you could buy $1k tournament dollars for a little over 5k points etc, we slashed everything so that people would use points and play in out biggest ever series. I think last year it was roughly $5m gte? This year we had $20m guarantee in the series and after the push with the tickets we managed to amass over $27m in buy ins! I think the store change was a huge success and amazing offer to regular players to get crazy good deals whilst allowing recreational players to have a shot at huge buy ins. Moving forward, we have a lot more simplified system that benefits everybody.
3. Software bugs
You said that certain buttons make you call instead of fold or raise instead of call etc, I have never heard of this ever, nobody has ever brought this to my attention personally and myself and hundreds of players that I'm in contact with on a daily basis have never had this problem. I hate to sound negative, but I really suggest checking your system to see if there is some kind of software installed from some live trip like we saw previously at EPT stops, it sounds extremely strange to me.
4. No reimbursement for disconnects on their end
I know Colette personally does a great job digging into these cases and making sure players are well looked after but...
5. Support staff disconnects when they feel like it
I'm not saying this is true, but the support that we currently offer isn't at a higher enough standard or in line with our standard for other parts of our product. We want to be the best poker site in the world? Well its critical we have the best support team too. Days ago there were huge plans made and things sealed to ensure that in the short term this drastically improves. I think it will be a great improvement to the overall site.
Chuck Bass -
5) Their support is terrible. (see above)
6) Their attitude towards cheating.
Again, don't want to just say "see above" each time, but this really isn't true. I have sat on calls with "suspected" cheats personally, been involved in case reports, analysed statistics etc. Obviously we can't comment legally publicly, but it simply isn't true. You can ask limitless if you want, he sat in recently on a call with us as a translator for somebody when I was leading the call.
7) To a lesser extent, software.
Absolutely correct. Our software is not good enough. Overall, there are huge improvements to be made, they are being made. I was involved with the iPhone app, we saw this as a critical software implementation that needed to be implemented ASAP, but we wanted to make sure it was high quality. There was extensive feedback from my side and every suggestion was implemented to a higher standard than I could expect. Our iPhone app is now IMO the best in the business, and thats the standard that we need to set ourselves for everything else now.
Next software you can expect to improve is the lobby function. There are a dozen or so improvements that need to be made and are currently being beta tested and will be released in the short term. I'm confident that you will like them. We are also working on all other aspects, two days ago I got a screenshot of how the new table will look like during gameplay. HUGE improvement and its not the final product yet. But absolutely, the main two things we need to improve on in short and long term is support+software, but we know that and are working on daily basis to make sure that is done.
"But yeah these threads definitely serve a purpose because maybe Mike Sexton or someone will actually read them and finally do something. Their current ambassadors, managers et al don't give a **** about any of these actually serious issues and only focus on boasting about how there's a new $5200 highroller that zomg reached its guarantee."
Obviously very far from the truth and the work that goes on behind the scenes is actually really hard work and getting a $5200 high roller (I think you mean 25k?) to beat the equivalent of that running on stars does obviously still mean a lot and shows how the site has transformed in one year, but its also alongside recording breaking $11, $22, $55, $109 and $215 fields. Year on year we are the fastest growing poker site in the world, thats not because we have a $25k or a $5k tournament running.
Our live tournaments which DTD and their super hard working team deserve huge credit for, starts to give people confidence in the brand again, starts to allow red-regs (players who like to deposit and play on the weekend or at night and enjoy the competition but don't necessarily play to win or for a living) to trust the brand again, to trust that they will receive good tournaments and to trust that they will have a great playing experience. However, its our job as a company to make sure that its not only good prize pools, structures and schedules that attracts them, there needs to be good software, good support and many other small things that were previously neglected to HELP keep them coming back every week and wanting to play on the site.
If you ask any employee at Party Poker are they happy at how good the site is at the moment the answer is no. If its not no then management wouldn't accept that. The site is improved, the site is good relative to where it was, but relative to our expectations of ourselves and our pride about our product its not there yet. However, we will work each day (and usually night!) to ensure that one day, in the not so distant future we deliver the very best site possible for poker players... by poker players.
Keep the faith!
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