Poker News

From the “How Did We Miss This?” files, partypoker has brought back the Palladium Elite loyalty level. Two weeks ago. Now, before all of you over in Europe or South America or Asia or anywhere except the United States get all excited, this isn’t for you. For once, we in the U.S. have something over the rest of the world when it comes to online poker. The only players eligible for Palladium Elite are those on the Party Borgata Network in New Jersey. NEW JOISEE.

partypoker* eliminated the Palladium Elite level on April 1st last year (hey customers…April Fool’s!). The poker room did so in an odd way, hiding the announcement way down on the VIP page where few people ever look. Palladium Elite players would rarely have a reason to go there and if they do, they likely wouldn’t scroll down enough to see it. Once players began to catch on, a partypoker representative chimed in on Two Plus Two, saying, in part, “We believe the change will allow us to manage our poker room more effectively and ultimately allow for fairer distribution of bonuses across the network.”

Read: we want more fish and fewer sharks on our network.

But partypoker is well established internationally, so it can make moves like that to try to mold its customer base to its liking. In New Jersey, it’s a different story. The market there is still young, having just started up in late November 2013. As such, partypoker wants to build its market share and is likely not as concerned about its customer mix. Hence, the revival of Palladium Elite to entice the hard-core grinders to jump onboard.

To reach the Palladium Elite level, a player must earn 10,000 loyalty points. Once that threshold is reached, the player is granted Palladium Elite status for the remainder of that quarter plus the entire next quarter. Points are earned at a rate of two for $1 spent on tournament fees and rake.

Palladium Elite members get a host of perks, including discounts on items in the VIP store, exclusive access to VIP events, a dedicated “gaming concierge,” and valuable bonuses.

For comparison, when Palladium Elite used to be available for everybody, it took 40,000 points to reach that level, compared to 9,000 for simple Palladium. That 9,000 is still the same for international players, but for New Jersey players, it is a bit different, requiring 1,000 points in month.

The Party Borgata Network, which consists of BorgataPoker.com and nj.partypoker.com, is market leader for cash game traffic in New Jersey, according to PokerScout.com. With a seven-day average of 170 players, it ranks ahead of WSOP.com (120 players), the All American Poker Network (80), and Ultimate Poker (5).

* I can appreciate the “cool” factor you were going for when you changed the name of your poker room to all lowercase, but it is a horrible pain in the ass when I type it at the beginning of a sentence.

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