Quote:
Originally Posted by Gzesh
Come on, Derek. Of course they would "dare" and I have a pretty strong hunch they are aiming to do just that as part of their planning. There is no regulatory barrier to them doing it btw. I have no access and zero actual information on what Party has said or discussed in this regard, I just have a hunch where they are headed .... I don't think I am far off base on where this is headed.... Cutting out HH was quite a step away from public accountability, can you think of any point to it ? wtf else can they mean by "protecting players" if not restrictions down the road, once they have a publicly accepted "ranking" system ?
They won't hide it though, The aspirational challenge as a player at Party will become to level up the rankings bestowed by Party's opaque system.. THAT, rather than counting your money, is how they will want their chosen player pool to keep score and "win".. Climbing the rankings becomes the added entertainment value of playing at Party. At Party, you can be your own "hero".
Party will keep a greater % of deposits as their revenue, avoid some "overly" generous player rewards and instead bestow higher "winner" rankings on players who accomplish something, i.e win and compete in protected pools. With the greater rake % held, they also will be able to give awards to players who advance in ranks.
.I am sorry to say this, but it can work, so long as there are "winners" and players are both entertained by playing and get some aspirational goal met..... much like karate schools give some belt to EVERY student.
Unfortunately I don't think your prediction/speculation is as out there as it might appear to some.
My speculation of why I don't think (hope) it would work follows bellow (for those that care to bother reading it) but first let's stick to the main theme of this thread.
Similar model has been publicly brought up by, ironically, MPN Alex, a representative of a site that also stoped providing downloadable HH's.
It's very "interesting" that the solution to the lack of natural liquidity that this model would face would be the house bots.
https://www.parttimepoker.com/alex-s...ine-poker-bots
(There are a few reasons why I personally don't think this model would appeal to the majority of the
current player pool and it would struggle to attract a new one.
I think it would be hard to replace "counting the money" way of keeping the score. Money is the object of this game and is one of the fundamental features of poker that attracted the players up until this point.
Also, there already is a very good way of segregating players based on skill - stakes. Climbing the stakes already provides what you claim to be an "added entertainment" and a challenge that is again tied directly to the main object of the game, the ultimate reward - the money.
The model you discuss would also greatly suppress another aspect of the game that is a major attraction to a lot of players - gambling. Stakes based voluntary segregation allows a player to choose how they want to approach the game. If they wish to challenge themselves or gamble it up they can easily jump into to the games above their skill level. Of course the sites hate that.. But being locked into your designated "safe" player pool would loose interest of another major segment of the current poker population.
When you replace money with achievements, challenges etc the game for those that are in it for the money and gambling (majority of the current pool) becomes too gimmicky. It becomes videogamish, and now you need to attract players from a different market segment with different mentality. I doubt that poker as a game without "counting money" being it's main objet has enough appeal to do so and compete with the likes of Fortnite etc.
So another MAJOR reason why I don't think it would work would be a lack of natural liquidity.
How do you envision this segregation based on skill be implemented? Would each level of skill have a spectrum of all stakes available to them? If so doubt that there's enough liquidity to sustain that. And if higher stakes become available as your skill increases, that poses major problems as well. First, a lot of players wouldn't bother playing stakes that match their skill level. Second, and most importantly, the higher stakes where presumably only the most skilful compete would be a ghost town. No skilful player would waste their time in what would certainly be low at best but most likely negative EV environment. And without any activity at the higher stakes where is the appeal of climbing those skill levels?
Cue the house bots?)