You're Visitor #
 | ||||||
Nothing in this site is copyrighted -- I'd be honored if you'd reuse anything you find here for your website
My Opinion on the Party Poker Website
Click on the logo above to go to the website. Scroll to the bottom to see a Party Poker display.
Yesterday, I finally got around to funding my username at the Party Poker website.. As it turns out, this month (April 2004) they're giving a 50% bonus up to deposits of $100, so of course I had to put in $100 (just long enough for them to deposit the $50 bonus). Recall, the most you get at PP is $50, at UltimateBet it was $100, and here it's $50. Below I'll tell you what I like, but first let me just enumerate what I don't like about the Party Poker:
1 - Their formula for qualifying for a bonus is more complex than PP, but simpler than UltimateBet. At PP, you get $10 for every 100 hands. Ultimate has a scheme of points that you earn for various actions, but in my case it was very slow since I don't play large stakes or expensive tournaments. At Party Poker, you simply have to play a specific number of hands in raked games -- for my $50, I have to play 250 hands. HOWEVER, not all hands are raked -- only if the pot reaches a certain level. At PP, you play 3 .50-$1 games simultaneously and you get back about $10 per hour -- at Ultimate, you get about $1-$2 per hour. I played 2 games simultaneously at Party Poker and played 160 hands in 3 hours. I think I actually played about 180, but 20 or so must have ended at the flop. The bad news at Party Poker is that you don't get any of your bonus until you've qualified for the entire amount - in my case, 250 raked hands. At PP, they give you $10 at a time as you earn it.
2 - Regarding the number of games you can play simultaneously -- I find it fairly easy to play 3 at PP. For a combination of reasons, playing more than 2 at UltimateBet was nearly impossible -- 2 was difficult, but possible. At Party, 2 was easier than at UltimateBet, but 3 was rather difficult -- I stayed at 2 most of the time. Add-on: Months later, I still find playing more than 2 at Party Poker is very difficult.
3 - Their game setup is similar to PP, so your seat may be anywhere around the table. Recall that the way the UltimateBet games are set up, your seat is always at the bottom of the window, so it's difficult to line up three windows in a manner that let's you view all three hands simultaneously. At Party Poker (as at PP), I was generally able to get in one game with my hand at the top and a second at the bottom to enable seeing both at the same time.
4 - At PP, when it's your turn, the appropriate window pops to the front. If you're busy in another window, you simply click it again and the other waits in the background. At Ultimate, the one where it's your turn keep popping to the front. What you often end up with is the windows jumping to the front one after another, such that it's difficult to click on a decision in any of them. What's worse is that you sometimes go to click fold on one window and hit bet on another, or vice versa. At Party Poker, it's much like Ultimate Bet -- the window wanting a response keeps popping up, sometimes resulting in hitting a undesirable choice accidentally.
5 - At PP, your bonus points are added to your Cashier total as you earn them. In Ultimate, they're not added until you exit the game. As a result it's difficult to know exactly where you are until you leave all the games. I like to know where I am before I quit the games. At Party Poker, you can jump to the Cashier and check on your balances and point count while you're playing, just like at PP.
6 - At PP, notes about players can be viewed by simply "hovering" your mouse over the player's name. At Ultimate, you have to double click the name and wait for a window to open. Too much time and trouble in the middle of a game. At Party, it's like Ultimate, so not very efficient for seeing notes.
7 - The minimum game at Party Poker is the .50-$1 game. At PP, they go way down to 2cent-4cent, which I rarely play, but enjoy occasionally as a real relaxer.
8 - A very nice option in PP is to instantaneously transfer money between players. I didn't see this feature at either Party or UltimateBet.
9 - Another dislike for Party -- to check on the status of your bonus, you have to open a browser window. At PP, you see the status when you go to the Cashier (a simple click).
Now here's what I do like better about Party :
1 - Party has a standard scheme for getting bonus money for each person that you invite to join.
2 - I mentioned in my UltimateBet review that Ultimate has the advantage of providing hand histories in an online window, instead of via email as it is at PP. At Party Poker, it's available either way! You can request hand history and see it in a window on your screen, then can request that it be emailed to you. This is actually the best hand history option that I've yet seen.
3 -Party Poker has a 'buddy list' feature that allows you to see who else is on. May be worthwhile to find a fish that you met in a previous game. I didn't notice this feature at either PP or UltimateBet.
4 - Over time, I've noticed that Party Poker offers bonuses almost monthly. They send an email to your registered address, letting you know what the bonus is and the dates when it's valid. In my Yahoo email, their message generally gets thrown into the Bulk Mail (i.e., Spam) folder, so I have to pay attention to get the notices. Some of these offer up to $100 or $200 in the form of a 20% bonus for about a week or so. To make use of this, I try to keep a fair amount of money in my Neteller account to enable me to reload my Party Poker account when these bonus options arise. At the end of September 2004, they offered 10% up to $100 -- I had $750 in my Neteller, so picked up an easy $75. At the end of October 2004, they offered 20% up to $100. Alas, I didn't have any in my Neteller and was unable to get it out of the bank in time, so missed the $100 bonus option. I had just uploaded $1000 from Neteller into my checking account and was caught off-guard by the bonus offer. I've now put some back in Neteller and plan to leave it there, as Party Poker seems to do this bonus offer thing fairly frequently. Another off I got recently from Party Poker was an email that said that they'd put $25 into my account and all I had to do to keep it was to go play 100 hands. I did so, earned the $25, and made a few extra bucks while doing it.
BOTTOM LINE
I would rank them as PP first, Party Poker second, and UltimateBet third.
Note in the graphic below that I'm showing a $.50-$1 game and a $30-$60 game to give an idea of the range of the stakes that players have. In the lower game, stakes run from $11 to $43. In the large game, they range from $900 (hidden behind other window) and $4700. Needless to say, I stay out of the $4000 games.
WebBook #10
Much of the content in the WebBook assumes you've already read the Ebook Chapters 1-7. To get your free copy of the Ebook, CLICK HERE.
This is the WebBook portion of the "Secrets for Winning Online Hold'Em Poker" Ebook+WebBook
