Partygammon
 

Dear readers and backgammon enthusiasts,

My name is Mark King and I am the PartyGammon Room Manager. I wanted to introduce myself and welcome everyone to our new backgammon site as well as others who may be interested. Our goal at PartyGammon is to ensure that your voice is heard and we strive to always improve the site and the overall user experience. Although I won’t be able to answer every question or issue posted on this forum, I will try my very best to address larger issues we feel need to be communicated back to the player using this forum. Please remember that we have 24/7 customer service (phone and email).

Our team is working hard at bringing on new features and also planning the world’s largest ever backgammon tournament – The PartyGammon Million which is from Jan 21 – 25th.
You can qualify online exclusively at our site and I hope to see you at this inaugural event.

Good luck at the tables,

Mark King
PartyGammon Room Manager

Re: Partygammon
 

I played for awhile but feel your rake is wayyy too high so deleted your software from my computer.

-g

Re: Partygammon
 

Almost all the numerous silly rules concerning the rake structure should be changed. I am a 1710ish rating player and if I want to play some waahoo with a 1350 I shouldnt have to play 200% increase or whatever. The rate should max out at a different of 150 player rating points.

I do however like how there are rake decreases when both players are above 1650, or 1750

Re: Partygammon
 

i'll be the first. can i have my $100 back pls?

Re: Partygammon
 

1) You need to reduce the rake.

2) Remove the rating, and get a flat rake.

3) Improve the software.

4) Make it easier to import games for post game analysis into Snowie or GNU after the match.

5) What actions are you taking to prevent people using bots realtime? Are you analysing matches to spot suspicous play?

Re: Partygammon
 

Dude, your site is infested by cheaters that use Snowie while they play.

ParyGammon stinks!

Re: Partygammon
 

How about making beavers work correctly? If White doubles, black beavers, and white accepts, then it should still be white's roll. Currently when this happens on PartyGammon, black gets to roll after white acceppts the beaver.

WiteKnite

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
Dude, your site is infested by cheaters that use Snowie while they play.

ParyGammon stinks!

[/ QUOTE ]

I suspect this from time to time. What makes you say that?

WiteKnite

Re: Partygammon
 

I also deleted it once I realized how high the rake was. Quite the ripoff.

Re: Partygammon
 

Hey Mark,

Looking forward to continuing this discussion in March when you come back.

Take it easy.

Re: Partygammon
 

The point system is being exploited, extreme case:

A 1500 rated player with moderate to high experience on PartyGammon gains/loses 1 to 2 points for each cash game won/lost. He plays for $10 a point / $80 a game, eventually gaining 80 points winning a healthy sum from inexperienced players in the 1400 to 1600 point range. He concurrently plays eight 21 point matches for 50c each and purposefully loses them to offload 80 rating points at a net cost of $4 with each match taking 20 mins or less.

There are green and yellow ranked players (1400 to 1599) who are no less than break even against most of the 1700+ rated players on your site. They have been under 1599 for several weeks and I expect they will continue to exploit the rating system and take advantage of the unsuspecting.

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dude, your site is infested by cheaters that use Snowie while they play.

ParyGammon stinks!

[/ QUOTE ]

I suspect this from time to time. What makes you say that?

WiteKnite

[/ QUOTE ]


Reviewing your games afterwards and finding out how many people play "extraterrestrial" for ex.

And talking to any danish BG pro...

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
i'll be the first. can i have my $100 back pls?

[/ QUOTE ]

2nded.

Re: Partygammon
 

1. Reduce the rake.
2. Reduce the rake.
3. Reduce the rake and make it independent of rating
4. Better yet remove the ratings. As a 1900 player its hard to find a game.
5. Ability to make notes on opponents.
6. Software crashes frequently for me, I don't know about others.
7. Adjust the way disconnects are handled. I've been up 6-0 in a 7 pt match and lost connection and so I lose. Also, if you lose connection with a man on the bar in a single game I think you are automatically given a backgammon. TrueMoneyGames has Snowie analyse and settle the match after a disconnect which is a much better method.
8. The way you handled the bonus fiasco was terrible.
9. Most important, give me the ability to change the board colors [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

I expect these changes will be implemented by Monday.
Thanks and happy rolling.

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
Our goal at PartyGammon is to ensure that your voice is heard and we strive to always improve the site and the overall user experience.


[/ QUOTE ]

This sentence coming from a executive of PartyGaming made my day! Im still giggling while i write this.

Here is the truth about Party:

- High Rake
- Poor Customer support (standartized Replies, CS Reps not even caring about reading Emails...)
- Every software update brings new Bugs and fixes none.
- Partypoints system is screwed up
- No rakeback

Party hears your voice if you are a highroler, if you arent dont even care about asking.

Have a nice Day Mr. Partygammon

Peter

Re: Partygammon
 

Hey Mark thanks for posting a stupid thread and never replying in it again! You run a [censored] company right there!

ENJOY!

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hey Mark thanks for posting a stupid thread and never replying in it again! You run a [censored] company right there!

ENJOY!

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you expect anything different? I can just hear the conversation at Party headquarters before he decided to come post:

O'Malley - Are you insane, those 2+2 fools will rip you a new ass.

GammonDude - No way Mike. We have a great product and they will appreciate hearing from me.

GammonDude - Holy Crap Mike, you are right they did actually notice the huge rake and the $100 disaster. No chance I am going back there again.

O'Malley - LOLOLOLOL Enjoy!

Re: Partygammon
 

Nick,

That post is spot on and hilarious. Party reps only come here to spam/advertise and get us to be their beta testers. They don't come here to answer any tough questions or actually acknowledge we are the customers and they owe us something. Their management decisions regarding structure and things like allowing so big of multitabling which decimates the fish in the long run in order to enjoy short term rake benefits are so short-sighted. Their software team can't program memory handling worth a [censored], and they don't know what functionality means. And now they make worse their mediocre cheating/collusion measures by not listing the city of players but only their countries.

And you were 100% right that a rep will come here and then not be back as promised if they don't hear what they want to hear. They just don't get the first principle of customer service which is that they have to suck up to us, not the other way around.

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dude, your site is infested by cheaters that use Snowie while they play.

ParyGammon stinks!

[/ QUOTE ]

I suspect this from time to time. What makes you say that?

WiteKnite

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll repost a trip report I wrote for another forum:

"So I played a bunch of bg [at PartyGammon] at $25-$125/pt. Everyone starts with a beginner rating, so I thought I have a window of opportunity to sandbag, while my rating is going up, and play opponents with a beginner rating, without them fearing me. At first I figured them for amateur gamblers, and a couple of them were. The rest I didn't feel much of an edge against, and it was the same people sitting there every day, playing a fairly strong game, and with a rating that wasn't going anywhere. Oh, the regulars also started declining to play with me.

On any other site, I would've imported all games into Snowie a long time ago and analyzed the games, but on Party it was difficult, because their history format didn't match anything. I finally found a script that converted histories into a recognizable format, and analyzed a bunch of games. The results weren't pretty -- I played fairly strongly, my error rate was 5 mpt/move, better than 5.5-6 that's typical for me. Snowie calls that error rate an "expert level" -- the next one is "world class". My opponents played better [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] I am sure there was lots of bot usage on the opponent side and rating dumping, where a strong player loses a bunch of meaningless games to purposefully lower his rating. One opponent didn't make a single meaningful error in 200 moves -- Snowie called him "extraterrestrial", which is what happens only when someone simply uses a bot to make every move. Even the best players in the world will sometimes disagree with Snowie (and will be often right), so in the eyes of the bot the best human players typically have an error rate of ~2mpt/mv. This guy was around 0.2.

To summarize, PartyGammon is full of cheats, at least at high stakes. In the end I didn't make any money, but oh well, I hope to take another shot at it, if they ever pick up a large non-cheating player base."

Re: Partygammon
 

Standard. Thanks for posting this.

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hey Mark thanks for posting a stupid thread and never replying in it again! You run a [censored] company right there!

ENJOY!

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you expect anything different? I can just hear the conversation at Party headquarters before he decided to come post:

O'Malley - Are you insane, those 2+2 fools will rip you a new ass.

GammonDude - No way Mike. We have a great product and they will appreciate hearing from me.

GammonDude - Holy Crap Mike, you are right they did actually notice the huge rake and the $100 disaster. No chance I am going back there again.

O'Malley - LOLOLOLOL Enjoy!

[/ QUOTE ]


Excellent! Best post ever!

Re: Partygammon
 

optimize software

reduce rake

if you offer a bonus make it clearable at sample WR 5 for the bonus annount

Re: Partygammon
 

Look guys what the hell, if you aren't going to make constructive comments then just shut up, nobody cares and you aren't funny and you aren't original.

Mark - I don't play gammon but my mom plays a ton, she hates that there are ratings and she says "wow parygammon takes A LOT of money when you play."

So drop rating system and lower the rake?

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
Look guys what the hell, if you aren't going to make constructive comments then just shut up, nobody cares and you aren't funny and you aren't original.



[/ QUOTE ]

We would be happy to make constructive comments if there was a chance that he (or anyone else at Party) would actually listen. Go back and look at the huge thread addressed to Lee Jones and see the difference between that one and the one that O'Malley started.

Party has never treated us good or given any indication that they care or even listen so they get what the deserve from us IMHO.

Re: Partygammon
 

Dear PartyGammon players,



Thanks for all the comments and concerns brought up on this board. Although I won’t be able to answer 100% of all questions I will try my best to address the key questions:



Rake amount and structure – Our rake amount and structure was based on a format that allows new players to feel comfortable playing the game of backgammon for money online. Getting new players to our game and then having them immediately lose all their money to higher rated players would not be ideal for the overall growth of the game. By playing other players of similar rating the commissions are lower. Now of course players can challenge themselves and still decide to accept games with higher rated players.



Improving the software – Our teams are working each and everyday to improve the overall software. Being a new game we realize there are many areas where we can improve on and this forum will also allow us to hear your comments and suggestions. Over the next few months we plan to launch many new features/initiatives many I’m sure will come from the player’s suggestions.



Cheaters and Bots – By being a part of the world’s largest poker site we have learned quite a bit on how to combat cheaters and bots. Since we have the same Party Account as poker any accounts that have been shut down with our other games will NOT work on PartyGammon. Without going into specifics I can assure you that we have a focused team monitoring 24/7 all corrupt activities attempted on the site. Certain games do get analyzed in detail with many various triggers causing us to review those game logs.



Bonus Amount Audit – Our internal auditing saw that a certain gammon bonus amount was being released improperly. We never changed the actual promotion details and those who did not qualify for the release were adjusted to reflect the correct amount. Many on this thread I’m sure were disappointed but at the same time many were also trying to take advantage of the situation. That same bonus code is still available on the site so feel free to try it out.



Regards,





Mark King

PartyGammon Room Manager

Re: Partygammon
 

MarkKing,

Being part of the world's largest poker site, do you have a clue what "rake" is?

It seems like you pretended to answer the complaint about rake being too high by actually answering an imaginary complaint regarding "why is there a rating system". Impressively, you also managed to ignore the only rating system related complaint, which was sandbagging.

Enjoy!
Please do not give your password to enyone
The Monster Promotion is one of the biggest and the most exciting promotion ever introduced by PartyPoker.com. The prize pool for the tournament is expected to be a huge one.

Please refer to the link given below to know details about the promotion.

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]

Bonus Amount Audit – Our internal auditing saw that a certain gammon bonus amount was being released improperly. We never changed the actual promotion details and those who did not qualify for the release were adjusted to reflect the correct amount. Many on this thread I’m sure were disappointed but at the same time many were also trying to take advantage of the situation. That same bonus code is still available on the site so feel free to try it out.



[/ QUOTE ]

You set up the bonus, we just found a way to clear it.

Re: Partygammon
 

What a huge amount of bs. Sick!

Re: Partygammon
 

You need a new disconnect policy. Have GNU Backgammon analyze the state of the game at disconnect time and award money based on that state. It's not perfect but it's miles ahead of what you have now. Perhaps punish someone who disconnects twice on a day with a 10% penalty or something.

Right now you lose a match if your internet connection goes out. I will not play for significant stakes at a site where that is the case. And for money games, it's not even clear what you do when someone disconnects. A friend asked support on a couple occasions what happens and got conflicting answers.

Do the person who disconnects lose a single game? Then it's often favorable to disconnect in bad positions. Is it based on the state of the board - losing a gammon if no checkers have been borne off at the time of the disconnect? That policy is way too harsh.

The other backgammon sites have a reasonable disconnect policy - why can't you?

Z

Re: Partygammon
 

Mark, do you realize that you didn't answer the core concerns regarding rake and your answer regarding cheating amounted to double-talk. Also you didn't address the easy manipulation of your ratings system.

I don't play backgammon--I don't even know how. I had been interested in learning to play ever since I heard so many pro's had played it. So, I was very interested in this thread to see if this might be a good opportunity to try it out and learn.

Mark, how you have addressed the legitimate concerns of these players assures I will never be a player at Party Gammon.

I used to be a $50,000 a year rake contributor to Party. Pokerstars now gets my money. This is because of people at Party that behave and create like you.

Regards.

Re: Partygammon
 

Dear PartyGammon players,

Disconnect policy - Our rake amount and structure was based on a format that allows new players to feel comfortable playing the game of backgammon for money online.

Enjoy!

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
Mark, do you realize that you didn't answer the core concerns regarding rake and your answer regarding cheating amounted to double-talk. Also you didn't address the easy manipulation of your ratings system.



[/ QUOTE ]

The problem is that Party execs think they can come here with their [censored] and we will just accept it and be happy. They treat us like little children not educated (some of us at least) people that see throught [censored].

Re: Partygammon
 

Party reps don't come here much because you monkeys act like complete jackasses to them

Re: Partygammon
 

Ok Marks response is not that great, but myself see it as hope for the future that Party try to have contact to there customers.

And i dont see many cheating on the low middle stake tables so far, only a 3400 $ WR is too high for backgammon.

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Mark, do you realize that you didn't answer the core concerns regarding rake and your answer regarding cheating amounted to double-talk. Also you didn't address the easy manipulation of your ratings system.



[/ QUOTE ]

The problem is that Party execs think they can come here with their [censored] and we will just accept it and be happy. They treat us like little children not educated (some of us at least) people that see throught [censored].

[/ QUOTE ]

They probably think you'll continue to play there no matter what they do. And they're right!

Re: Partygammon
 

[ QUOTE ]
Party reps don't come here much because you monkeys act like complete jackasses to them

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, we drove away Mike O'Malley by asking questions because he promised to answer them. You saw how that worked out. Maybe this new approach of direct antagonism will work better?