A recent article posted on Poker News Daily about PartyPoker capping play chip account balances for non-real money players has caused quite a stir. Poker News Daily sought the opinion of a longtime industry insider on the site’s decision.
Readers of Poker News Daily have been quite vocal about the sudden shift in PartyPoker’s play money stance. The standard on the world’s third largest online poker site is now a maximum of 250,000 play money chips for customers without real money accounts and an unlimited number for those with cash balances. Our original article on the topic has garnered 70 comments from readers of our site and is one of the most talked-about topics of all-time. In fact, some of the comments have a higher word count than the articles themselves.
While a high percentage of the comments lambaste PartyPoker for its decision, our industry insider disagreed with the mob. Our source explained, “This is a business enterprise and they’re not paying customers. These guys are talking about class action lawsuits and boycotting the site. It’s a while different scenario if you’re a paying customer and the business changes its policy, but these are free accounts.”
Affected by PartyPoker’s decision, in part, is the large aftermarket that has popped up for the site’s play chips, with up to one billion being sold for as much as $400 on sites like Chip Empire. Why have a play money site in the first place, you ask? Part of the answer lies in the ability to advertise to certain markets. Our insider noted, “It gives you a way of advertising in the U.S. You can say that it’s not a gambling site and you hope that a decent percentage of those who sign up will decide to deposit real money.” However, the conversion rate is typically between 5% and 10%.
In addition, play money sites allow customers to whet their whistles and fine-tune their poker know-how before venturing to real money games. Our source explained, “A lot of people try out play money tables to get their feet wet. Within a week or a month or however long it takes, they understand the concept of online poker and deposit.” However, operating play money tables, according to our expert, requires policing of avatars and chat, awareness of the aftermarket effects of chip sales, and customer inquiries. All of these efforts take away from the monetary focus of a multi-million dollar online poker room.
In our expert’s experience, when play money bidding popped up on places like eBay, the room would ask the popular auction site to remove it. eBay typically obliged, but new opportunities to bid would continually crop up. Our expert noted, “When [PartyPoker had to contend with] chip dumping and sales going on, that becomes a time-spender that they have to manage. They don’t want to have to invest real money in customers who are in theory customers, but don’t provide you with revenue.”
As you can tell by milling through the comments on our previous PartyPoker play money articles, play chip fans are extremely passionate. Our interviewee reiterated this fact for us: “Some people are rabidly passionate about their play money games. Sometimes it was about selling the chips and sometimes it was about having a contest with their friends. For some people, it was a big deal and so they’re extremely vocal.”
In a poll posted on Thursday on Poker News Daily, we asked, “What do you think about PartyPoker’s new play chip policy capping non-real money players at 250,000 chips?” At the time of writing, an overwhelming 73% of respondents said, “Who cares? It’s just play money,” while only 24% disagreed with PartyPoker’s move.
Stay tuned for the latest reaction to the PartyPoker play money paradigm shift.
This move by PP Administration is their biggest blunder ever. They failed to recognize that it was us High Stake Free Chip Players who acted as their best advertisement as what we do no doubt give potential players logging on who watch us play for high stakes (whether free of not) gives those potential players and new customers illusions of granduer. I’m sure PP will regret this most stupendous move in the future and should give us back out chips on a system resstore back that the date of divesting us of our chips as their only means to recover from this blunder. players are at this moment logging to other sites advising other potential plays never to trust or play on PP. The consenous is that no-one will ever trust a site that would take free chips when they will no doubt fix the cards and tables on real money play to also steal money from players. I hope you go banrupt PP and now see your ultimate demise.
Signed:
OodlesofNoodles
PartyPoker sold play chips, and also had play chip sellers register with them and took a percentage of the sales, then proceeded to take the chips. In most of our eyes, PartyPoker broke the law,
Very true Jeffery. and If PP can’t control outside third party programs being used by 99% of the play money players I doubt if they have any control over real money games…All real money players BEWARE!!!! PPs a big joke..
February 7, 2010
Dear Poker News,
I am writing in reply to your article entitled “Industry Insider Responds to Party Poker policy.
Let me say that while your “expert insider” makes some valid points, he as well as party poker missed the real issue at hand. It was the failure of Party Poker, in not recognizing that their “fake chips” had a very real value. This is what led to the chip selling on their site. The entrepreneurs found a very large market for a product that Party Poker, could have and should have marketed on their own. This was a perfect example of free enterprise and only exposed the poor marketing capabilities and management strategies of the morons that run party gaming. Party Poker could have easily prevented the chip selling or could have gotten the sites closed.
They instead decided to wipe out the accounts of thousands of fake money players who in the words of your “expert” represented potential real money accounts. Party Poker failed to realize that many real money players also liked to play for fake chips. We have always known that Party Poker could care less about the play money accounts; hence their neglect to monitor the play tables and hence the manifestation of chip sellers on their site.
I represent a forum that is predominantly, but not solely, a poker forum. Our members enjoyed playing nightly tournaments on party poker. The problem I have with this decision by party poker is that they took away, with the push of a button, the one pleasure that the majority of our members had to look forward to. Many of our members are either retired, disabled or homebound. Party Poker gave no consideration whatsoever to these loyal players, some of whom were also “real money” players when it was available in the U.S.
Our forum administrators detested the practice of chip selling, however we were powerless to prevent the very monster that party poker had created.
As for myself, I could care less about this decision. My only regret is for those who were hurt the most; those who played for over ten years and built their banks up to millions of chips only to see it wiped out.
Just fake chips you say? Tell that to the wheelchair-bound grandmother who played with us nightly.
Shame on you party poker! I hope your stock price reflects what is perhaps your biggest blunder to date.
Sincerely,
Ed Lubi,
Owner, Administrator, Anything-Goes Forum
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“High Stake Free Chip Players”
LOL!
Why would you want millions of chips unless you were going to sell them?, PP are not stopping anyone from playing so are not ruining it for less unfortunate players so just play and stop moaning – btw this will have no affect on revenues, player numbers or share price, in fact all have gone up since this loophole was closed so suck it up
Play money is a waste of resources for a real money poker site but a necessity in the business. Think about how much hardware is needed just to support the “extra” games on top of the real money play. That’s not even touching on the subject of support and the resources required there.
Having said that, if you are complaining about losing all the play money chips you have built up, why not try for real money? If you are a consistent winner then it is a sensible move.
If you can’t play for real money, then stop complaining. It’s a free service that these guys are putting out there and as it is free, they can do what ever they want with it whenever they want and you can’t complain as you have no investment in it.
Hi ;
First off Burt and Jim must be real money players or just A** Holes.LOL
This move by partypoker is unfair to all playmoney players,because the real money players get to keep their chips. Is this fair ?? NO
So now the real players with billions in bank can open their own sites to sell from.
I lost billions but never sold the first chip,but i have helped hundreds with a mill or two to get them going like a steak in a real game.
All they had to do was remove chat and poof no more chip site adds. Unless like you said the’re selling as well.
You can buy chips from several poker sites directly from the site MySpace and Facebook to name 2.
So get your facts straight there were other ways to handle the problem without doing what they did they only are trying to get more real players nothing else.
Thanks
Lol..I remember the days when I used to take play money seriously. Having played for real money online and in real life for sometime now I can honestly say I could never go back to play money again.
Jim says “no investment in it” as a non-real money player…what a MORON! I have 4 almost 5 years invested in the 9 million chips that were stolen from me. Free chips in revenue only. What about the time I spent winning those chips? That was real effort and investment in my time there Jimbo….You sound just like PP, play with cash or kiss off.
Hey BURT…WRONG!! PP has taken a 29% hit in revenue in their Poker game rooms…hmmm, now me sees a light coming on.
please let me know the cause of action for the class action law suit
To me, the problem is not what party poker did, rather how they did it….the reasons they gave have NOT solved their problem…..chip purchasing, pumping and all the reasons they gave are still happening…..one site is offering PLAY MONEY people a way of purchasing and not losing your chips when you log off….so not real sure what party poker has accomplished….still missing my friends on the site….
Ok seriously the people who think pp made no mistake are very very wrong , because i was a real money player and i also loved playing with play money all the time , but now i barely even go on pp to play anything at all . I just went on the other day and there is such a small amount of people playing that i get the same person in 2 or 3 of the tables i play in and in happens the hole time . My personal opinion is that party poker sure did mess up their fake chip players , they messed them up so good that what they actually did is only to mess themselves up and pp !
WARNING if you play party poker on freerolls like the WSOP free seat games
dont thinik just cos you have won a seat that you willn get to play init .
right WON HA HA a WSOP freeroll seat in the frist torny .WOOOOOW
and then no WOOO they take back there seats i dont know why but they did.
PARTY POKER DO NOT PLAY FARE AT ALL AND THERE WORD MEAN JACK .
i still play ther but only to pass the word on howe riged it is ^^
all night the same full house flops hand after hand.
AND ALL THE MORONS THAT SAY THATS POKER F.U it NOT ITS A SIM SIM SIM
Macros are still running and sites like chipfix are still in operation selling chips to the public. This was a ploy to get at the American customers. It’s not hard to do the Math. Party Poker has had it’s run ins with the American Government for unpaid taxes. The American government in retaliation came up with the Patriot Act. So let’s see Americans can’t have real money accounts. Real money accounts are not affected by the move. Play money accounts which are owned in large part by Americans are capped. Anyone else can just deposit 10 euros into their account and continue buying chips.
Oh and if you think i am an American who is just bitching…. I have my real money account with billions in it and i live in Canada.
Regards
Now it’s unfair play when you play against real money players. They buy the pots now because they kept their millions of play chips when all the USA play chip players lost theirs. So try to beat someone with 10M chips while you have a limited 250K chips. You can win some but they have a HUGE advantage. PPoker sucks!