Official *Party Screwed Monster Seat Holders* Thread

[smashoneout]

As I said in the other thread - Party is based out of the States, so "Guaranteed" is a meaningless word. If by some miracle online poker becomes U.S. regulated and taxed in the future, you'll be damn sure the poker commission would hold them accountable for such statements.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
As I said in the other thread - Party is based out of the States, so "Guaranteed" is a meaningless word. If by some miracle online poker becomes U.S. regulated and taxed in the future, you'll be damn sure the poker commission would hold them accountable for such statements.

[/ QUOTE ]


Actually, I don't think that's a given at all.

haven't there been U.S. promotions where the casino pretty much reserves the right 'to change the promotion as they see fit' or something like that and customers end up getting screwed?

[NewGuy]

I do agree with what a few people are pointing out- that reading the T&C, Party is probably not LEGALLY liable to pay out the full $14.5, $16, or $24 Million (depending on how you calculate it.)

That doesn't make it "fair" or "right". If someone is not under any legal obligation to honor their promise or verbal guarantee that they will take care of their customers, it does not justify nor make it right reneging on a promotion.

Microbob's right, being outside the US is not really the point. When was the last time a land-based casino ran a multi-million dollar promotion and then decided to only pay out 25-50% of how much the promotion was advertised / touted to be worth?

It's unethical, and it's bad business because they are not going out of business (yet), but they are going to give their remaining customer base something to think about.

How much do you think European players will trust Party for the next big multi-million $ promotion if we manage to get the fact that Party kept millions of $s in rake promised to players?

[HavanaBanana]

[ QUOTE ]
Party Defrauding players.

Party claims to have paid out 14,405,786 to the holders of entries in the Monster promotion.
This is a lie and can not possibly be true, and below is the proof that Party has defrauded it’s customers of millions of dollars.

How much did Party Pay out from the 14,405,786 that they claim they paid out?

We know that they paid out 1000 times $1800.72 for the Grand Final entries. (1,800,720)

We do not know the exact number of Monthly entries that they have paid out, but we can estimate it pretty accurately as we know how many weekly qualifiers they have held (9) and how many of those 18,000 entries were used in the first Monthly (a little more than 7700).

That leaves 10300, Let us add another 700 that they may have given out for the Monster questionnaire, and we have 11,000 Monthlies.

That’s 11,000 times $350.09 (3,850,990)

We have less information about how many Weeklies were out there, but we know that there were between 4-5000 who played each Weekly.
If we Estimate 15,000 unused weeklies we surely are overestimating, As a quick look at the Monster Jackpot winners show that the Jackpot is paid out quite infrequently , less than once a week. Making it quite unlikely that there are huge amounts of unused Weekly entries out there.

Recent Winners
Winners of the Monster Bad Beat Jackpot
Date Winners (Screen Name) Prize Money
09/24/2006 fosterdboss $70,342
09/16/2006 hippo_jr $86,870
09/03/2006 Da1Grosser $143,048



That is 15,000 times $100.06 (1,500,900)

Which Equals 7,152,610 which is less than half of what they claim they have paid out.

But in these numbers Party also have added in the value of the weekly ($100,000) Monster Tourneys, and the Monthly (1,000,000) Monster Tourneys, which are not taken from the Monster Main pot, but were guaranteed.

The value to deduct from the Monthly is $125 (1,000,000 prize pool / 8000 entries)
And the value to deduct from the weekly entries is $12.50 + $31.25=$43.75(100,00 prize pool/max8000entries) + 2000/8000 of the $125 value of the Monthly cash.

We then get 7,152,610 less
11,000 times $125 (1,375,000)
And less 15,000 times 43.75 (656,250)

Equaling $5,121,360

So Party had defrauded the players of 14,405,786 less $5,121,360 = $9,284,426
Now let us take the seed money of $5,000,000 out of the equation for a second and Party has defrauded the Players of $4,284,426

The promotion had run for 9 weeks out of a total of 32 weeks, so the fair share of that $5 million to distribute to the players would be 9/32*5,000,000 =$1,406250 making the correct prize pool $10,690,676.


Let us now use these numbers to establish what a fair share for the 3 different entries would be.

There are 1000 Monster Grand Final Seats out there, let us use that as the standard, and give them 1 share each. (1000 shares)
The Monthly entries will be worth 0.125 share each (however the ones who already got a monster seat will have no claim for their monthly or weekly shares from the main pot, as one can only win 1 Grand Final Seat) I will deduct 600 so we got 10,400 times 0.125 which is 1300 shares from this level. (1300 shares)

The same is true for the weekly entries, let us deduct 600 for the ones that already have a Grand Final entry, and we get 14,400 times 0.03125 which is 450 shares. (450 shares)

So altogether 2750 Shares of the pool.

$10,690,676 divided by 2750 shares is $3887.51 per share.

This is $2086.79 that each of the Grand Final Entries has been defrauded out of by Party.

The Monthly entry should be worth $485.93 for the players that have qualified for the Grand Final, and add $125 for the fair value for everyone else so $610.93

The weekly entry should be worth $121.48 for the ones that have qualified for the Grand Final, and add $43.75 for everyone else and we get $165.23










[/ QUOTE ]


Please read through this, and see if any of the number are incorrect, it is late here.

This is a draft of what I intend to send to all appropriate forums, including poker magazines, different forums,Online Watch dogs for gaming sites, Gibraltarian gaming board, London Stock exchange. Please help me collect emailaddresses to these locations.

ToT

[HavanaBanana]

Somebody please format this for 2+2, where did my spaces go?

ToT

[Nicok7]

It looks good to me Havabanana, thanks for writing this.

[William]

Drop the quotes, you will get your spaces back.

[HavanaBanana]

Called them again today, and again got told that they paid out the whole 14.4 Million.

Got the above email still unanswered, but am awaiting an answer from someone outside of CS.

ToT

[NewGuy]

Havana,

A lot of people appreciate the effort. Your analysis seems solid and I agree with most of your assumptions. I do think that the amount of pubilicity this message gets is just as if not more important than the message content itself (e.g., the possibility of a published letter in Card Player actually has some chance of influencing decision makers at Party, emails to Party customer service not so much).

Here are some suggestions, feel free to ignore or use them.

1) $5 Million seed money
[ QUOTE ]

The promotion had run for 9 weeks out of a total of 32 weeks, so the fair share of that $5 million to distribute to the players would be 9/32*5,000,000 =$1,406250 making the correct prize pool $10,690,676.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think adding this calculation of the "pro-rated" portion of the $5 Million that would be "fair" to pay players clouds your argument and analysis a bit. It's a bit confusing, and I'm actually not sure I or others would agree with the logic. It also only boosts the "Party shorted" tally by ~10%.

One suggestion:
Make your argument & calculations conservative by leaving all $5 Million out. Show the "minimum" seat value with it out, then maybe show the "fair" seat value with the full $5Million in.

2) # of Weekly seats
While I agree your estimate is conservative, this whole argument would be more powerful if we actually KNEW how many weekly seats there were. This may not be possible, but it would help the argument considerably. I've asked via the phone and email and gotten stonewalled, but if we can find out it would help.

3) # of Monthly/Weekly seats with reduced value
Good catch on the value of Monthly/Weekly seats being lower for Grand Final seat holders.

Just my opinion, but I think there are considerably more than 600 Weekly seats and 600 Monthly seats held by people who already won a Grand Final seat. If I'm thinking this through properly, your using a low # of 600 UNDERSTATES the Grand Final seat final which is OK. I suppose we could make a very unscientific poll to get a better estimate of avg # of Monthly / Weekly seats Grand Final seat winners held (I had 5 and 2, respectively).

4) Add an executive summary?
Maybe a quick blurb at beginning or end showing estimated seat #s & paouts actually paid vs. fair.
If not a summary, maybe just add to the bottom of your analysis a "check" that calculates the total payout of your "fair" seat values to show it tallies up correctly with the $14.4Million + weekly/monthly payouts.

Thanks for the effort.

[Humble]

Thanks Havana,

Your letter is about the best I have seen yet and I encourage you to broadcast far and wide.

You raised some points in your analysis that have not been getting the attention they deserve in this thread. Specifically that some weeklies and monthlies were held by those already qualified for the final, and thus not eligible for refund beyond "Face Value" ($12.5 & $125) and further that the "Face Value" should NEVER have come out of the Monster Final pool. This last fact has largely been overlooked in this thread and alone consitutes an enormous theft from those holding Grand Final vouchers (ie...me)

Personally I have been pounding away with emails to Party Support asking about the total amount paid and total number of weekly vouchers with stone wall responses identical to those posted here by others. Party refuses to answer the key question: How many weekly vouchers were there? If our estimates of the weeklies are even close to correct then the Monster payout likely constitutes that greatest single fraud in online poker history. The T&C's cannot be used to defend a crime.

To the cynics that think we are lucky to have received anything, all I can say is that in my experience most sites act responsibly and fairly, including Party - I do not expect to be treated poorly by them and usually arent. But the Monster Payout has been botched and something is very fishy here. Party wants this to go away, its the responsibility of anyone that holds a voucher to make sure it doesnt.

Specific feedback on your letter: I suggest deducting the full 5M that was seeded and increasing the estimate of weeklies slightly - your analysis of the average number of bad beats is too thin to draw conclusions on. Plus it depends when the badbeats occured...at 4am eastern they wont give out many Weeklies but and 11pm they will. The key is that it takes at least 40K in weeklies to even get close to make up the missing money, and 40K is highly unlikely. Its easier to make the case that 40K is unlikely than that 15K is likely

To the baricades!


H