Official *Party Screwed Monster Seat Holders* Thread

[DCowling]

Are you kidding me? They STOLE money. Why are there so many apologists out there for them? I appreciate that they didn't plan the legislation, but no one forced them to cancel the tourney. Times are tough and they saw an opportunity to STEAL cash and have people like you say that what they did wasn't so bad considering the misfortune they've encountered.

Looters that follow natural disasters didn't plan those events either, but that doesn't make them any less criminals. By your logic after a bad run at the tables I should be able to hold up a bank and be excused for my CRIMINAL behaviour.

The point of my post wasn't to say they pre-planned all of these events - just to show that they turned their promotion into a scam at a time they thought they could get away with it and to show how it truly can't be viewed as anything other than the illegal scam that it is.

[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

[DCowling]

Have you sent this to someone who can really comment on this at Party Poker?

[legalplayer]

I posted a message similar to this recently on another thread, but it seems better for here.

We can't tell if the payout is correct until we know the total number of weekly and monthly qualifiers that were existing and unused at the time the tournament was cancelled (of course we know there were 1000 Grand Final entrants).

So, I sent a cordial email to empire poker at [email protected] requesting this data. Here it is:

[ QUOTE ]
Hello,

I am a player who won an entry into the Empire Poker / Party Poker Monster Grand Final online tournament. I have just digested the breakdown of how you calculated the $1,800.72 cash value of my entry (you posted your calculations at https://secure.partyaccount.com/mons..._monster.htm).



It appears that you are in error when you divide the Grand Final $14,405,786 Prize Pool by 8,000 players to arrive at the $1,800.72 per player value, since there are in fact only 1000 players who had qualified for it at the time you cancelled the tournaments.



I believe the fair and accurate way to value this is to assume that all of the pending weekly and monthly qualifiers would have ultimately resulted in one more group of 1000 making it to the Grand Final. So, at most half of the $14,405,786 Prize Pool should be allocated to them and the other half should go to the existing 1000 Grand Final qualifiers. Thus, $7,200,000 should be distributed fairly to the weekly and monthly qualifiers who existed at the time the tournament was cancelled. The remaining $7,200,000 should be divided equally amongst the 1000 players who had qualified for the Grand Final at the time you cancelled the tournaments. Thus, my entry should be worth $7,200.



There is much confusion over this on the two plus two forums: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...t=all&vc=1



I think it would help me understand this much better and perhaps even explain it to others on the forum if I had some additional information about the correct numbers of the various qualifiers from you so I can calculate what this all means. I know there were 1000 players who had qualified for the Grand Final at the time you cancelled the tournaments. Please tell me the total number of weekly qualifiers who existed at the time the tournament was cancelled and the total number of monthly qualifiers who existed at the time the tournament was cancelled. I assume this is not confidential since you had it all displayed in the game lobby up until you cancelled the tournaments. If the numbers you provide show that you are paying out the entire $14,405,786 Prize Pool, then it would be hard for anyone to dispute your formula. Conversely, if less than the $14,405,786 Prize Pool is being paid out, then there must be an error. Perhaps you could post this on the two plus two forum and clear up the present controversy.



I am sure you want to treat everyone fairly and maintain the pristine reputation you possess in the online gaming community. I assume if there has been an error, it was an honest one and I do not mean to question your integrity. I also recognize that my assumptions may be wrong or there may be factors I am not aware of at this time. If that is the case, please explain where I am mistaken.



Thank you and I look forward to your response.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is the reply I just got:

[ QUOTE ]
Unfortunately, the structure of the EmpirePoker.com Monster made it untenable to continue with the tournament once the act became law, and it was discontinued. We have converted pending Monster Freerolls into equivalent cash amounts. If you had any unused Monster Freerolls, you can log in to your My Account to convert them into cash and see how the amounts were calculated.

We came up with what we thought was a fair and equitable distribution for each unused freeroll. Thus the determined values of the monster freerolls will not be changed.

Thank you for choosing us as your online gaming site!

Sonia
Poker Customer Care



[/ QUOTE ]

Rather than argue over the formula (the confusion divides and weakens us), and speculate about the fairness, etc., we should all be making a unified and consistent push to get Party to publicly divulge the complete numbers to compile a full accounting of the $14,405,786 Prize Pool. The fact they won't do so is all the proof anyone should need that they have not been fair.

So let's send emails to Party specifically demanding this. And, let's start emailing all the major poker web sites (cardplayer.com, pokerlistings.com, pokerpages.com, etc.) and all the news outlets we can think of (CNN, CNBC, London Stock Exchange, etc.) to make this public. Perhaps if enough publicity is generated, Party will be forced to do the right thing.

Power to the People!

[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.

[RoundGuy]

[ QUOTE ]
and all the news outlets we can think of (CNN, CNBC, London Stock Exchange, etc.) to make this public. Perhaps if enough publicity is generated...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that's it. Let's tell the world news media that the (formerly) largest online poker site on the planet is screwing us -- and that they are cheating scumbags!

That ought to help the cause....