Party Poker Sports New Upgrades, Fewer Players

For all those who were just looking for new ways to drop money in a hurry, Party Poker just made your day. This past weekend, the internet’s largest poker room unveiled three new features, two which are designed to reach into its customers’ wallets, and another which is actually a very nice, customer friendly addition.

1. Side bets – that’s right, now players can make side bets on hands, even when they aren’t playing in the game! Party is currently offering only one type of side bet – whether the flop will be all red or all back. The poker room will pay out 8 to 1 on a winning bet. Of course, bets must be placed before the cards are dealt. Now everyone can lose their bankrolls before even sitting down at the table!

2. Blackjack – PartyGaming, the parent company of Party Poker, already owns the online casinos Starluck and Planetluck. So, Party decided to make bring the blackjack interface right into the poker software. At every poker table, players will now see a blackjack icon. When clicked, a blackjack table will open in a separate window, so now players can get their gambling fix in between poker hands.

3. Tournament Deal Making – this is actually a pretty nice feature. Players who make the final table in a multi-table tournament can now make deals to chop the prize pool without worrying about the integrity of their competitors. When requested by a player, separate deal-making window will open where the players can negotiate. The chip leader runs the deal and is the one with the authority to actually type in the new prize amounts. The deal is not finalized, however, until all players vote in the affirmative.

In other news, Party Poker has also cut ties with its table-sharing partners, also known as “skins.” While Party Poker and skins had once combined forces to fill thousands of tables with tens of thousands of players, Party Poker has decided to strike out on its own. So, while Party is still the largest online poker room, its traffic has been cut significantly. At the same time, the former skins, rooms such as EmpirePoker.com, MultiPoker.com, IntertopsPoker.com, and CoralEurobet.com will not have the monstrous customer base of Party Poker to fall back on anymore. There has been a lot of grumbling on various internet message boards about the stupidity of this move for Party Poker, and while some criticism may very well be justified, many of the complaints are coming from players who frequent the skins and will now have fewer tables from which to choose.

One prevailing theory is that the quality of the players will decline at Party Poker as a result of the separation from the skins. The reason for this is the history of "rake rebate" programs for which some players signed up. As the name implies, these programs, offered by poker room affiliates, returned part of a player's rake back to them. The primary participants in rake rebate are high-volume players who receive the biggest benefit from receiving these discounts. Because Party Poker outlawed rake rebate, but the skins did not, many high-volume (and, presumably, higher skilled) players moved from Party to the skins. Now that the skins are no longer part of the Party network, these skilled players are no longer on the Party tables. Thus, the assumption is that the average skill-level of the players at Party Poker will be lowere than it was just a few days ago.

It may be too early to tell how all of this will truly affect Party Poker, but at least it gives people plenty of fodder for debate.

Originally published October 11, 2005