So who thinks Party was on the ball?

[YoAdrian]

[ QUOTE ]
There's a 0% chance you are correct.

Party has a terrible reputation in Europe. And Mike Sexton is a nobody over here.

Pokerstars sponsor the most popular series of live tournaments in Europe, the EPT, and are renowned for their excellent customer service.

Stars will stay on top, although Ladbrokes will probably do very well too.

[/ QUOTE ]

and we have a winner [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
Online poker for Americans will never go away.

There are too many people who love it to leave it and move on completely. The casual player will continue to play and get money onto site via the numerous methods currently available and soon to come.

Poker has become America's favorite pastime. Some people will fall off but a majority of players including fish will continue to play. They see it on TV and the game is just too much fun to quit.

Land based casinos cannot compete with online sites in terms of game availability and ultra low stakes. The casual fish cannot afford to move offline. Compare an offline $1/$2 to online $0.05/$0.10.

Party will never again be #1. There's a reason why they focused on the US, it's where the real money is. Party will soon lose 2nd place to FTP for good and go farther down the list in the coming months.

They are good at spending money, but their marketing in general is very weak when compared to companies like FTP & Stars.

People will realize the level of CS offered is just horrible, the promotions are weak and in general they suck.

Those are my predictions.

[/ QUOTE ]
Would you be prepared to back those predictions with money? I'm sure you could get decent odds if you were willing to escrow the funds.

[Instyle007]

[ QUOTE ]
I never said it will go away. Poker will always be around but not in its current form. There have been so many changes to online poker in the past few years that it is getting tougher and tougher and only the players who adapt will survive. The fish are drying up and the ratio of sharks to fish are getting a lot worse.

I have played online for a living for over 3 years. 2 1/2 of those were soley at Party When I started playing online for a living I could sit at 8-12 random tables and not care about game selection. As long as you were tighter preflop then your opponents and played ok post flop you were a guaranteed winner.

Table averages of 10-14 BB pots were NORMAL. 3 years ago if you played on a table and the average pot size was less then 10 BB it was a bad table. Average pot sizes for 2-4 games were $40 3-6 was $60 and 5-10 was $100. Compare this with the table averages of the games today and it is cut in half.

Then there was the switch to SH tables which killed full ring, then it was the switch from limit being replaced by NL as the #1 game.

Now it is the death of the fish which the pros and semi pros must contend with.

[/ QUOTE ]

As poker became more and more popular so did poker educational materials. Considering we are on 2+2, the website of a company who publishers educational books, it's not hard to understand how the average or below average player has improved over time.

As another poster said it so very well, there are fish out there who don't realize they're fish and you just need to adapt.

[ QUOTE ]
Don't kid yourself, the average player who got burnt by neteller holding their funds for 6 months will not be so trusting and easily part with their money again. The casual player who is NOT a winning player will not want to go thru all the hurdles that the US goverment is going to force them to go thru to get funds online.

And what we truly really all want is a bunch of winning players only at our tables

Combine that with the fact that the US is being relentless in it's efforts to stop online gambling and you have a pretty uncertain future.

[/ QUOTE ]

The US will try to stop online gambling within their borders but it will not work. It is no secret that the US banks have already voiced their opinions to the government about how nearly impossible it will be for them to police the financial transactions.

As of tonight we have another new payment processor not scared of taking US customers, mywebatm. There will be more. As I've mentioned before, the money is too good.

[ QUOTE ]
Do you have your head stuck in the sand? Party is currently #2 Far ahead of full Tilt and not far behind Stars without having a single US player. The only reason that Stars is #1 is because thy are catering to the US market. Full Tilt is still in the US and PArty is far ahead of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

Prior to NETeller's pullout FTP was ahead of Party on a regular basis. With FTP's decline and Party's recent increase, they've been passed.

Once the processor situation gets settled, which it will as new ones start to roll out like mywebatm did tonight, FTP will overtake Party once again.

[ QUOTE ]
Again do you have your head stuck in the sand?

Party's marketing team is 2nd to none. How do you think they became #1 to begin with? Their marketing team is top notch. Stars was online before Party was and Party quickly destroyed all competiiton, I wonder how they did that if they market as bad as you say.

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

I think anyone who's seen a party ad or party TV show on poker knows that Party is not anywhere near the top for marketing/promotions/advertising.

Take their hockey show they put together recently which aired in Canada. It was awful. Compare that to the EPT (Stars) or Poker After Dark (FTP).

Take their commercials with the horribly cheesy dialogue. Compare that to the ones with past WSOP ME winners (stars) or those with pretty much the who’s who of the poker industry (FTP).

[fatshaft]

[ QUOTE ]

I think anyone who's seen a party ad or party TV show on poker knows that Party is not anywhere near the top for marketing/promotions/advertising.

Take their hockey show they put together recently which aired in Canada. It was awful. Compare that to the EPT (Stars) or Poker After Dark (FTP).

Take their commercials with the horribly cheesy dialogue. Compare that to the ones with past WSOP ME winners (stars) or those with pretty much the who’s who of the poker industry (FTP).

[/ QUOTE ] There is more to marketing than just TV shows/commericials, I don't think anyone would put Stars anywhere near the top rung in marketing, FT are getting better, but PArty are by far the best overall. Maybe it's different in the US/Canada, but as the majority of new sign ups are not going to come from there now, look at who does well in the legal markets, and it's still Party.

[LearnedfromTV]

Why are all these threads filled with people who are so damn certain they know what the future of online poker in America will be?

I feel like the only agnostic at a religious debate, and the Christians are yelling at the Muslims and the Muslims are yelling at the Jews, and Sklansky's yelling at everybody.

I don't know. You don't know. Stars doesn't know. The DOJ doesn't know. No one knows. For Christ's sake stop acting like you know. All of you.

[TheMetetron]

All,

Regular Party CS is pretty bad. The dedicated VIP host that they gave a lot of us a while back is fairly awesome. I have his personal office phone number and his personal email. He replies to emails pretty much right away if he is in the office and I can call him personally to get stuff done very quickly. I'm fairly certain he isn't in India as he has a British accent.

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
Prior to NETeller's pullout FTP was ahead of Party on a regular basis.

[/ QUOTE ]
I stopped reading here. You statement is completely false. Full Tilt has never been ahead of Party on either average players or peaks. Also, Party's recent increase isn't a recent trend - they've been growing solidly since late November and pulling further and further away from Full Tilt. The neteller situation has just sped things up.

Where the [censored] are you getting your (wrong) information? Hating Party support doesn't make your fabricated facts true [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Also, are you willing to put money behind any of the predictions you claim to be 100% certain of?

[Psy_Mike]

Actually FTP had a very very small period where they actually were ahead of Party. This was when the US legislation hit, everything was chaos and FT threw out a massive $500 redeposit bonus.

But Party has been #2 for a looong time now, and gaining in on Stars rapidly. Saying that FT stands a chance against Party is ridiculous.

[Chomp]

[ QUOTE ]
Why are all these threads filled with people who are so damn certain they know what the future of online poker in America will be?

I feel like the only agnostic at a religious debate, and the Christians are yelling at the Muslims and the Muslims are yelling at the Jews, and Sklansky's yelling at everybody.

I don't know. You don't know. Stars doesn't know. The DOJ doesn't know. No one knows. For Christ's sake stop acting like you know. All of you.

[/ QUOTE ]


Well ok, but I think there is a very good chance that the prohibitionist, moralistic, judgemental era that has been the last 7 years in America is drawing to a close.

These things are cyclical, and at the moment I think Americans have had enough of being morally patronised from all levels of state bureacracy from the CIC down.

(This is just IMO viewed from Euroland fwiw).

[sqvirrel]

[ QUOTE ]
I think there is a very good chance that the prohibitionist, moralistic, judgemental era that has been the last 7 years in America is drawing to a close.


[/ QUOTE ]

I tend to agree although Americans are driven by radicalism, either from the left or right. Regardless, even if the 'prohibitionist era' is drawing to a close that would only mean that new legislation with greater restrictions is not on the way. It is unlikely that the Internet Gaming Act would be repealed.

The Wire Act has survived for nearly 50 years now through all manner of political climate.