shame, would have thought a HUD wouldn't work on an anonymous table?

nice to see Party trying to make good changes though, even sent me $30 tournament tickets in the post the other day which was nice as no other site has sent a gesture like that to me before.

Tables are not anonymous onyl the saved hands are. And you can buy a converter to make them strd again. FF games are business as usual just like sngs and mtts. Have no idea why party decided to make regular cash games unplayable without 3rd party tools that aren't even suppoused to be allowed.

This is a good system and much better than what Stars has.

However it's incredibly stupid you have to opt-in every week. They really need to change that. There are going to be exactly 0 players who wouldn't want to receive rakeback and having to opt in just adds stress, makes people pissed off when they forget, and it looks so greedy as Party will receive some $ because of unclaimed rakebacks.

I'm surprised that more people don't see the downsides to this, although 2+2 inevitably attracts a lot of regs who would welcome higher rakeback. Despite Stars making some awful changes over the last few years, it is actually built on a truth that the previous model was broken... you only have to look at a graph of online traffic over the last 5 years to see that. Stars haven't addressed that issue in a positive way because Amaya is saddled with ridiculous debt and just wants to take what they can. However, shame on Party for not even trying to push the envelope. Instead they're resorting to a broken long-term model in order to grab market share from Stars in the short term.

The most likely outcome of this is that someone at Party will realise 12 months from now that they have restarted a broken cycle. What then? Party decide to try to lower rewards in future, people are outraged, etc. Instead of getting behind this players should be trying to get behind initiatives which are actually good for the health of the game in the long term. Bear in mind that the primary consultant on this is a guy who runs a stable and grinds full-time himself. If I were a staker (and I was), I would be tempted to move players over to Party at breakneck speed and accept that the ecology and thus the site would tank a year or so from now.

correlation does not imply causation (not saying you're wrong, just that this particular argument is flawed)

Agreed, and of course there are other factors. A widening skill gap between new and existing players spells danger for any game and I think we have suffered from that a lot in poker. That's where sites should be focusing in my opinion and it's a shame that sites like Stars and Party only make small steps in that regard. Short term revenue is the be and all and end all for a lot of public companies and sadly that's there they are focused.

And...

Awesome!

That does seem like a bad idea. You can set your calendar on your computer to alert you. Pick a time when you know you're going to be on and playing so you always opt in. Annoying but at least you'll have a routine.

Maybe poker isn't on the decline because of the ecosystem and Stars uses this to push a greedy agenda. Maybe poker is just falling in popularity because thats what happens over time with games. Especially games where the lose stands to lose large amounts of money so giving money back to the players could only be a positive.

on the decline or not it's a greedy agenda, rakeback puts money back into players pockets rather than shareholders and of course a minority of players are going to withdraw and be winning players but I'd imagine most rakeback gets put back into the games by losing players.

**** YEAH!!!

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't pads post in here that opting in was a temporary technical issue that they haven't got round to sorting yet as they want the new rb changes rolled out before 22nd of may and in the future players won't have to opt in to claim there rb?

The thing is, no other form of online gambling is in decline. Sports and casino booming the world over. Games where people stand to lose large amounts of money. Poker is unique in that the market is static if not declining.

Could be ecosystem, could be tax, could be segregation, could be an issue of P2P, but I don't think it can just be a case of "people have moved on, poker isn't cool any more." live poker is growing.

And fwiw, Amaya just posted YoY gains in online poker revenue.

Live poker is doing great, mostly because its fun, its also possible to be profitable.

The biggest thing that contributed to the death of online poker was the rise of bots and solvers. Sites refuse to ban or properly police software as its expensive/near impossible to do so.

For all those guys who can't read.

i wont say they have more players now than in 2008 but their annual report always seems to show a progress in new real customers and other indicators like that.

what do you mean rakeback is good here? if i want to play 5NL fast forward on BWIN i have to rake €500 buy a €40 BONUS and rake another €500 to receive the €40 tada 4% rakeback.
I normally don't get into this rakeback stuff but when I do, I feel disrespected AF. Feels like they are laughing straight in my face everytime. Rakeback itself is just a mistake for still being alive.
New plan 2.5% rake 5-25NL no cap, 3.5% rake 50NL+ with caps. NO rakeback none of that bullsjit. STOP disrespecting us as if we are ATM machines. We as a community should go on a strike a few days a month where we just don't play.
I mean supernova elite and all those toxic players pissing off fish with their same nitty play everytime I understand that is not healthy for the system. But they just keep on taking and taking totally making a fool of online pokerplayers.
Cut our rakeback by 3% we don't play a day/month simple as that.

And to come back on BWIN having not the same benefits of partypoker.
For the love of god just implement the same systems in both, talking about an unfair advantage... 4% bwin for low volume, 40% party? just WTF

This annoys me and is wrong. The rise of bots and solvers are not even close to the biggest cause of the "death of online poker." Governments fighting poker, making for huge markets to be taken out of the global poker liquidity killed it. And all the consequences of that, where now a fish can't just whip out a credit card or paypal and hop online easily. Now you jump through all these hoops to get your account verified through neteller and then the site and it's a big pain in the ass. Fish don't like the hassle, they like to jump in a game quickly. That's what killed online poker, not bots.

what if you already have a rakeback deal for party? will you still be eligible for the new system?

Yeah all right mate, I live in a part of a world where any fish can whip out a card and be online easily in a few minutes. Online poker is still dead here. Live is doing just fine.

The removal of countries like Italy and France of course were a big negative, but plenty of fish can still play online if they want to, and they don't

agreed all of what you said is true for the us but in other countries you can just whip out your cc, use neteller etc. the us govt hurt games a lot but so have mass multitabling,bots,very sophisticated software,seat scripters etc. (all of which are just getting better and better.) it's not the govt's fault online games are boring as hell for anyone actually looking to gamble either.

I've said it before and i'll probably say it again- if tomorrow somehow all the good and break even players could clone themselves to play 20 tables at once live, live games would go to absolute **** and a lot of rec players would quit.

the us gov't probably sped things up by a few years- but the future of online poker, especially cash games is pretty bad.if the us govt never interfered with online poker it was still inevitable online poker was gonna go to ****. almost anyone who thinks they'll be grinding cash online for a good living in 5-10 years is an absolute moron.

A couple of questions before i think about moving over:

Is there a limit on the number of tables you can play (sngs) ?

I'm confused about whether i can use a HUD or not. Is it possible to
use the HM2 HUD playing sngs ? If other software needs to be used to get around this....what exactly ?

bwin is brutal

Huds works fine without any 3rd party tools in sngs, mtts and ff games. Don't know how many tables you can play. I play usually 12 so atleast that ammount.