what scandal was Paradise Poker involved in "that they didn't recover"

[checktowin]

yeah, that was a bad move

[excession]

'i belive banning US is what crushed paradise poker.'

It was going well downhill before Frist..

Banning US players didn't crush Party or iPoker etc

Dise were always just behind the other rooms (esp Party) in terms of marketing/bonuses.

Party overtook them on the basis of decent monthly bonuses and huge advertising.

When Frist hit they were already down to medium sized - what might have saved them then was aggressive marketing and some great bonuses or RB - instead they just carried on as before and faded further then got sold out and no-one even notices if they are still going or not..

[Henry17]

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i belive banning US is what crushed paradise poker.

They where doing fairly decent banned us and never recovered.

[/ QUOTE ]

God no. By the time the US ban came in Paradise was already a fraction of what it use to be 5-6 years ago.

If I had to say one thing killed Paradise it was that they were to cheap to scale up their hardware to support the peek play hours. There was a period where the whole site would crash almost every night.

As far as scandals go the only thing I ever heard was rumours about hackers trying to blackmail the site. That was never anything more then rumours and hardly makes for much of a scandal.

[chezlaw]

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God no. By the time the US ban came in Paradise was already a fraction of what it use to be 5-6 years ago.

If I had to say one thing killed Paradise it was that they were to cheap to scale up their hardware to support the peek play hours. There was a period where the whole site would crash almost every night.

[/ QUOTE ]
That and their excellent suport was abolished and they offered their players nothing - no rakeback, no vip program, nada.

They didn't bother to compete and didn't have a good product or good support anymore. No scandal or fristing was required.

I played ~200,000 hands there and when I stopped playing very suddenly they didn't even ask why, pathetic.

[jimbog]

They went downhill because they thought they would be #1 forever. They capped the games first at 10/20 then 15/30 then 20/40 when people wanted to play bigger. They wouldn't have tournaments despite demand. Every "innovation" they implemented was a response to some other site doing it first. They thought they were gonna be the 800-lb grind joint forever, which is pretty foolish given how easy it is for another site to spring up.

[Dennisa]

Not becoming a founding member or advertising on the WPT was their biggest mistake. Also not advertising on ESPN's WSOP was also a mistake. About 6-12 months later they made a big ad by with Travel Channel and their advertising funds were seized by the DOJ.

Also I think they were complacent. Their multi player tournament implementation was horrible. Instead of just vigging the initial buy in, they took 9% out of the total prize pool.

Oh well, will make a good business case in a college textbook.

[Phytopath]

Their numbers didn't really go down before they banned US players, they just didn't grow like the other big sites did.

They didn't cater to the regular players like most other sites did, kind of like the way Pacific works. This makes for alot less regulars and alot better games.

When they banned US players it was over since 80% of their base was US, I sure do miss their games they were really, really good.

[JoeSchmo]

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I kind of enjoyed ordering a drink feature at paradise. I remember going to my office back in 2000 very tired from late night sessions on paradise. People thought I was crazy for depositing money into a poker site lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah that was awesome. I usually enjoyed a slice of cake at the table.

[Greg Miller]

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Their numbers didn't really go down before they banned US players, they just didn't grow like the other big sites did.

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It's been a while, but I was under the impression that they were growing pretty rapidly under the new ownership before the UIGEA came along. Prior to that, of course, they were stagnating, but the influx of sports bettors really seemed to have turned things around.

[Phytopath]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Their numbers didn't really go down before they banned US players, they just didn't grow like the other big sites did.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's been a while, but I was under the impression that they were growing pretty rapidly under the new ownership before the UIGEA came along. Prior to that, of course, they were stagnating, but the influx of sports bettors really seemed to have turned things around.

[/ QUOTE ]

Quite possible that they were growing, I was just going by my memory which definately could be off [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]