Official *Party Screwed Monster Seat Holders* Thread

[frommagio]

I would love to read a quality opinion on what the true payout should be. However, I left Party quite awhile ago, after the infamous February downgrade, so it's just pure curiosity. Obviously, I don't have any motivation to gather the facts and calculate the truth. You guys should be doing that.

Unfortunately, I haven't read one analysis in this thread (or the one in the Legistative forum) that seems at all convincing. You guys who are complaining don't even spell out all your assumptions - or clearly identify your unknowns. It's not even clear that you realize you're making assumptions, or that there are unknowns. These include the actual number of tickets outstanding, the amount actually paid by players into the fund, and the very legitimate question of whether Party has any obligation to honor the "guarantee" or the "seed contribution" - when their entire business model has been flattened by a heavy-handed action of government. And nobody has even considered the marketing and investment costs in the promotion, which now are completely sunk costs with no benefit - due to no fault of Party's.

Honestly, my impression is that you folks who were paid back actually benefited from a very nice overlay. Your whining should be backed up with stronger analysis. I also note that there seems to be a rather large majority of silent observers - perhaps they've done the real math, and are content with the deal. We'll all recognize a quality analysis when we see it.

Now flame away - and in the usual zoo style, let the facts be damned.

[NewGuy]

[ QUOTE ]

You guys who are complaining don't even spell out all your assumptions - or clearly identify your unknowns. It's not even clear that you realize you're making assumptions, or that there are unknowns. These include the actual number of tickets outstanding, the amount actually paid by players into the fund, and the very legitimate question of whether Party has any obligation to honor the "guarantee" or the "seed contribution" - when their entire business model has been flattened by a heavy-handed action of government. And nobody has even considered the marketing and investment costs in the promotion, which now are completely sunk costs with no benefit - due to no fault of Party's.

Honestly, my impression is that you folks who were paid back actually benefited from a very nice overlay.

Now flame away - and in the usual zoo style, let the facts be damned.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I'm not going to flame away or even argue that my analysis was quality, but I think that in the 1st post of this thread that I at least laid out all of my assumptions and my guesses at the unknowns. They may very well have been grossly inaccurate or unreasonable, but they were documented. Based on these perhaps optimistic assumptions, Party paid about 40% of the "full" expected value they indicated they would pay.

You could make a good argument that it would be reasonable or fair for Party to have held back the $5 Million in seed money, which would have made Final Seats worth ~$3,400 (vs the $1,800 they paid).

I do completely agree with you and Microbob that even the lower-than-expected payout resulted in a nice overlay (of about 50-100%). This was the exact reason I played in these to begin with- the expected large overlay. But people who believed Party's marketing materials were expecting a higher one.


My assumptions:
1) Full $14.5 of Monster Million prize pool paid out (which includes the $5 Million in seed money)
2) 1,000 Grand Final Seats, 10,000 Monthly seats, and 3 scenarios of 4,000, 10,000 or 20,000 Weeky seats


I would like to know which of these above assumptions or which part of the analysis below you disagree with, that's why I posted them to begin with, to see what 2+2ers thought.

[ QUOTE ]

Executive Summary:

Grand Finale (May 2007) seats value = ~$5,000
Monthly seats value = ~$750
Weekly seats value = ~$200

Please note that these estimates are based on final prize pool of $14.5 Million and 10,000 weekly Monster seats left outstanding. To the extent there are fewer weekly seats, these values would increase correspondingly.


Detailed Calculation methodology:

Let W$ = Weekly seat $ value
M$= Monthly seat $ value
GF$ = Grand Final seat $ value

- 8,000 Monthly seats -> 1,000 Grand Final seats + $1 Million , therefore M$ = (GF$ x 1,000 + $1,000,000) / 8000 = 1/8 GF$ + $125
- 8,000 Weekly seats -> 2,000 Monthly seats + $100k, therefore W$ = (M$ x 2,000 + $100,000) / 8000 = 1/4 M$ + $12.50.
- Substitute 1/8 GF $ + $125 for M$ into above and you get W$ = 1/4 (1/8 GF + $125) + $12.50 = 1/32 GF$ + $43.75

So to sum up values that we know:
W$ = 1/32 GF$ + $43.75
M$ = 1/8 GF$ + $125
Total Prize Pool = ~$14.5 Million
# of Grand Final seats outstanding / to be paid = 1,000
# of Monthly seats to be paid = 10,000 (9 weekly qualifiers x 2,000 – 8,000 for 1 monthly run)
Weekly Seats outstanding / to be paid = ?

Formula for total prize pool distributed should be:
Total = Grand Final seats * GF$ + Monthly seats * M$ + Weekly Seats * W$

$14,500,000 = 1,000 * GF $ + 10,000 * (1/8 GF $ + $125) + WeeklySeats * (1/32 GF $ + $43.75)

Solving for GF $, we get:
$14,500,000 = GF$ * (1,000 + 1,250 + 1/32 WeeklySeats) + $1,250,000 + WeeklySeats * $43.75

$13,250,000 - WeeklySeats * $43.75 = GF $ * (2,250 + 1/32 * WeeklySeats)

GF $ = ($13,250,000 - WeeklySeats * $43.75) / (2,250 + 1/32 * WeeklySeats)


Final calculation
Plugging in a value of WeeklySeats = 10,000

Grand Final seat value = ($13,250,000 - $875,000) / (2,250 + 10,000 / 32) = $5,000
Monthly seat value = $750
Weekly seat value = 200

If weekly seats outstanding are only 4,000, then we get
Grand Final seat value = ($13,250,000 - $875,000) / (2,250 + 4,000 / 32) = $5,505
Monthly seat value = $813
Weekly seat value = $216

If weekly seats outstanding are 20,000, then we get
Grand Final seat value = ($13,250,000 - $875,000) / (2,250 + 20,000 / 32) = $4,304
Monthly seat value = $663
Weekly seat value = $173


[/ QUOTE ]

[NewGuy]

[ QUOTE ]

This response does not indicate any progress at all imo.
It indicates that they are ignoring you and want you to stop e-mailing them.


[/ QUOTE ]

I think there's a 98%+ chance you're right, but I figure it didn't hurt to persistenly express my opinion until I was at least convinced someone in customer service read it (i.e., until I got a couple of non-form-letter replies.)
I'm just trying to conjure a little Andy Dufresne I guess (from Shawshank Redemption, the letter campaign for library funds).

[ QUOTE ]

If I get more money for my seats I'll be thrilled. But I think the chances of you guys successfully getting Party to give you more is awfully slim.

As I stated before, I'm kind of surprised they gave us ANYTHING.

They could have cut off the funding for it if they wanted, but still held the freeroll, and then told me, "Yes, you won your way in. But you're an American and aren't allowed to play. If you don't show up for the tourney then you will be blinded off at the table. And because you are in the U.S. you will not be able to get to the tourney."


It would not have surprised me in the least if they had done something like this.

It also would not have surprised me if they gave out $25 for the weeklies, $100 for the monthlies, and $500 for the grand-final.

It also would not surprise me if they said, "They were FREEROLLS so you didn't really lose anything."


None of those scenarios would surprise me.

$1800 + $350 was actually more than I expected from Party.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with every word of what you wrote. I was somewhat surprised (pleasantly) with the fact they paid us a half-decent amount, and very pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy it was to convert the seats into cash and then cash out those funds. (I noted this in emails I sent and calls to customer service).

Having said that, and believing there's maybe a ~1% chance of ever getting additional funds, for me its worth the effort. I personally have up to $5k of upside and I'd be helping a couple of 1,000 Party customers, many of whom are 2+2ers, get more money out of a company who I have generally felt has treated them with disdain.

In a nutshell, I was happy and a bit surprised to get anything, but there is now no harm in trying to get myself and a bunch of fellow poker players what I personally feel is a fair settlement / additional money.

Why anyone would want to discourage HavanaBanana or anyone else who is willing to put in the effort from trying to get Party to give money to fellow players and 2+2ers is a bit beyond me.

[NewGuy]

[ QUOTE ]

Will make sure I talk to someone in charge tomorrow.


[/ QUOTE ]
Good luck - I hope you're able to.

If you manage to speak to someone with a clue, some good information to gather would be the number of Weekly Qualifier seats that were outstanding. If anyone manages to generate any publicity around a potential underpayment, it would be useful to have hard #s as far as what Party paid out vs. took in for the promo.

[HavanaBanana]

[ QUOTE ]
" Dear xxxxxxx,

The total prize pool accumulated for Monster promotion is $14,405,786
and we have distributed the entire refund amount to all the players who
had any monster available freeroll."

LoL. Doubtful.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some agent named Wayne told me the same thing.

I then told him that he should get his school money back, as there is no way that possibly could be true.

I plan to write a detailed email where I explain it even further.

Idiots at Party told me I had to write new email as the old ones had been answered and marked as resolved.

ToT

[IMissParty]

Why all the hating on Party? They gave us free moneys.

[pokerplayer28]

[ QUOTE ]
Why all the hating on Party? They gave us free moneys.

[/ QUOTE ]

9.4M was the players money and they gave back at best 8.5M

[IMissParty]

Well that's a lot of the money, and they could have just kept it all right? Besides, I got $100 just for winning a $6 sit-n-go, that's a lot.
I'm going to miss all the free money bonuses.

[DCowling]

Why is it so hard for some people to understand that what PartyPoker has committed is nothing less than fraud? If you don't understand this please consider joining my new Poker site ScamPoker.

Here is my business model:

I am going to advertise a really "huge" poker tournament for all of my members. I'm going to ask them to contribute an additional $1000 a month each for a tourney that will take place in eight months' time, on top of the generous rake that I take for myself from them already. I'm even going to advertise that I'll donate $5 Million of "seed" money to help fund this tourney. I'll advertise that this is my own money and it will assist me in getting players to "feel good" about their monthly contributions and playing on my site and will factor in their decision (hopefully) to play in my sub-qualifiers where I'll take a nice rake.

I'll advertise that the final tourney will be available to 8,000 members and that 1,000 a month will qualify each month of my promotion. The monthly tournaments will be "free-rolls" and they themselves will be based on a limited number of entrants from weekly tourneys that will also be "free-rolls". Of course in order to qualify for the weekly freeroll the members will have to play in real money tourneys that I will charge a generous, to me that is, rake.

Now after one month, assuming a membership of 10,000, I'll have 15 Million. If a piece of legislation passes that I can say negatively impacts on my business, even though, in no way, does it prevent me from continuing the tourney itself, I will decide to cancel the tourney.

What I will then do is distribute, very generously on my part I might add, some of the funds I've collected. Funds which very clearly according to law I've collected in Trust and am holding effectively as a Trustee. I'll put on my site a disclaimer that says I can do whatever I like with the funds I've collected and cancel the tourney if I need to, "need" to be decided at my discretion.

So I've got 15 Million. There were a 1,000 final entrants after one month so I'll, again sensibly, say that they were entitled to 1/8 of the final 15 Million, paying out 1.875 Million. I'll even give out some to the "leftover" monthly and weekly "free-rollers" based on their remote probabilities of earning some portion of that final pool. Say another 1.125 Million. That was very nice of me, although I did collect a fair bit of rake from the sub-qualifiers.

Everyone will feel good that I gave back some of the money and it was paid back to the 1,000 that clearly had some claim to the money. The other 7,000 are unidentifiable so, how can they complain? This was truly fair. Read my disclaimer - people are lucky to get any. And that legislation is going to hurt my business so how can you blame me for cancelling?

So, of that 15 Million, I've paid out 3 Million but wait you whiners, don't get too mad at me my scam didn't net me 12 Million. You are forgetting that I put up 5 Million of my own "seed" money (even though I used that as a central tenet of all my promotions), so the scam only netted me 8 Million plus all of the additional rake I collected by using this "huge" tourney as a central tenet in my marketing efforts and the rake on the sub-qualifiers.

Looking forward to having you as a member of my site!

The numbers are not exact, but close enough to illustrate the principle of the fraud engaged in by PartyPoker. I do appreciate that the changes to the US law has had a negative effect on their bottom line. I'm sure that what happened is that they realized they were holding over 15 Million in Trust, as well as commitments for more moneys to be paid, and the temptation to use this legislation as a way to justify the illegal seizure of this money was too great.

I look forward to hearing from other PartyPoker players about organizing a class action as well as contacting the appropriate Police authorities about the fraud that has been perpetrated by PartyPoker. I am a lawyer practising in Toronto Canada.

[IMissParty]

PM me if you can offer rakeback at ScamPoker pls. I miss free moneys

Seriously tho man I don't think Party planned this whole thing in advance which is what you're describing

Plus you forgot they paid us money for Weekly ones too