PartyPoker
Introduces Monthly $1 Million Guaranteed, by Tom
Jenkins - 17th January 2009 (Credit:
Poker News Daily)
Beginning
on Sunday, February 1st, PartyPoker will host
a $640 buy-in $1 Million Guaranteed tournament
once per month. Aptly called the Monthly Million,
it will take place at 17:45 GMT on the first Sunday
of every month. Qualifiers start as low as $1
and are running constantly on one of the largest
online poker rooms that does not accept U.S. players.
A
PartyPoker spokesperson explained in a press release
distributed on Friday, “With $1,000,000
up for grabs in the Monthly Million, the first
Sunday of every month is definitely not a day
of rest at PartyPoker.com.” The tournament
utilizes a Championship blind structure. For $1,
players can enter rebuys that feed into either
a $70 Monthly Million Qualifier with 18 seats
guaranteed or a $35 Super Satellite Saturday with
25 seats guaranteed. Alternately, on Fridays,
PartyPoker players can take advantage of a $55
buy-in tournament that doles out at least 30 seats
into the Monthly Million. Country specific freerolls
and points qualifiers are additional ways to enter,
so check out the online poker room’s tournament
lobby for more information.
Currently,
PartyPoker’s premier tournament is the $300,000
Guaranteed, which takes place every Sunday at
17:45 GMT. The buy-in for the event is $215 and
it will likely be replaced by the Monthly Million
on the first Sunday of each month. Last week’s
$300,000 Guaranteed was taken down by Rev_Hwy61,
who bested a field of 1,451 entrants en route
to a $60,000 first place payday. The turnout meant
that the event had a $9,800 overlay, which occurs
when the guaranteed prize pool of a tournament
exceeds its actual prize pool. Finishing as the
runner up was HOTEL_, who pocketed $30,000. Others
who landed atop the field included paskwal (third
place for $20,700), DoiNW8BeTs (fourth place for
$16,350), Merseylad (fifth place for $13,800),
Sonygolf (sixth place for $10,350), og1512 (seventh
place for $7,950), RAGEUNIT22 (eighth place for
$5,250), Poortwacht3r (ninth place for $4,050),
and BrngMrRssns (tenth place for $2,850).
PartyPoker
recently launched the Palladium Lounge for members
who generate more than 5,000 points in a calendar
month. Perks include 24 hour customer service,
exclusive promotions, and additional deposit methods.
Palladium Lounge Elite is available for players
who accrue 75,000 points per quarter and 300,000
points per year. Benefits of Elite status include
“snowboarding trips and adventure getaways”
as well as the chance to “represent PartyPoker.com
in televised events.”
Its
parent company, Party Gaming, is traded on the
London Stock Exchange under the symbol “PRTY.”
In December, one of its co-founders, Anurag Dikshit,
admitted to violating the Wire Act of 1961 in
a New York court room. He agreed to shell out
$300 million to the U.S. Government in three installments.
Dikshit may also face up to two years in jail,
although a sentencing hearing is not scheduled
until December of next year. In the process, Dikshit
sent shares of Party Gaming climbing, as his actions
may serve to clear the air legally of any wrongdoing
by the company in the eyes of the U.S. Government.
Party Gaming was one of several publicly traded
companies to withdraw from the U.S. market following
the 2006 passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling
Enforcement Act (UIGEA).
According
to PokerScout.com, which tracks online poker room
traffic, PartyPoker ranks as the fourth busiest
worldwide by the number of cash game players,
boasting a seven day running average of 4,500.
It trails only PokerStars (23,200), Full Tilt
Poker (9,900), and the iPoker Network (5,700)
in that department. The iPoker Network, which
like PartyPoker does not accept U.S. customers,
is owned by Playtech.
Recently,
PartyPoker added Quick Seat and table preview
features to its lobby. Players also now have the
ability to open similar tables to the ones they’re
playing on without having to visit the lobby.
Tiling and manual resizing of tables are also
available.
Media
Man Australia Inks Deal With PartyPoker.com -
11th December 2008
Adding
to its already strong line up of poker brands
such as PKR.com, Virgin Poker and Pacific Poker,
Media Man Australia has come to terms with PartyGaming's
PartyPoker.com.
PartyGaming
and PartyPoker.com were not featured at Australia's
CAP Down Under, of which Media Man Australia chaired
day one; however PartyPartners.com & Affclub.com
will be the platinum sponsor of CAP Euro, London
2008.
Media
Man Australia and Casino News Media director,
Greg Tingle said, "We are absolutely delighted
to be now doing business with yet another of the
world's leading gaming brands. PartyGaming and
PartyPoker.com are right at the top of the online
gaming and casino world and we are excited to
be doing business with them, already reaping the
benefits of the association".
Press Release
December
2008
PartyPoker
To Give Away Asian Poker
Throughout the month of December, PartyPoker are
helping their players to kick off 2009 in a big
way by offering them the chance to qualify for
three major live events.
Qualifiers
are online now for the Philippines leg of the
successful Asian Poker Tour; the PartyPoker Irish
Poker Championships and the PartyPoker World Poker
Showdown, to be hosted in the Dominican Republic.
The
PartyPoker.com Irish Poker Championship is the
first major tournament in Europe in 2009 and is
held at the Radisson SAS Hotel overlooking the
glorious Galway Bay from the 2nd - 4th January
2009. Expect to see pros such as Mike Sexton or
Neil Channing if you win the $5,000 package including
$2,800 buy-in.
The
Asian Poker Tour is only in it's second run but
going very strong – attending players last
year had no qualms with giving it five-star reviews.
The recent Macau leg was attended by WSOPE champion
John Juanda as well as 10-time bracelet-winners
Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan. This package is
worth $6,000 including a $2,700 buy-in.
The
PartyPoker.com World Poker Showdown takes place
on the 23rd January 2009 at a luxury resort in
the Dominican Republic. The $6,500 package includes
the $2,650 buy-in to the main event, $1,500 spending
money and seven days' accommodation at the all-inclusive
Sun Village Resort.
Press
Release
Europe's
First Major Poker Tournament Of 2009 – The
PartyPoker Irish Poker Championship
The first major European tournament of 2009 will
take place from January 2-5. The €2,000 buy-in
PartyPoker Irish Poker Championship will be hosted
at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Galway, Ireland.
Coverage of the main event will be televised and
distributed internationally.
A wealth
of big Irish poker names have already signed up
for the event including Noel Furlong, Donnacha
O'Dea, Marty Smyth, Padraig Parkinson, Ciaran
O'Leary, Premier League II winner Andy Black,
Liam Flood and last year's champion Jude Ainsworth.
From overseas expect to see Mike Sexton, Kenna
James, Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott, Surinder
Sunar and 2008 Irish Open Champion Neil Channing.
Ian
Langstaff of Winmedia Ireland Ltd, an industry
leader in poker tournament coverage, said: "We
are delighted to be producing and transmitting
coverage of the PartyPoker.com Irish Poker Championship
on RTÉ again this year. The fact that RTÉ
are transmitting eight episodes of coverage rather
than the six they did last year shows the popularity
of the IPC."
Press Release
PARTYPOKER.COM
REVAMPS REWARD SCHEME AND INTRODUCES PALLADIUM
LOUNGE
RESIZABLE
PLO TABLES NOW AVAILABLE AND HEADS-UP CASH GAMES
NEXT WEEK
10th
December 2008 -- http://www.PartyPoker.com
believes the very best poker players deserve the
very best treatment. That’s why they’ve
just introduced a simple, straightforward and
generous reward program and launched Palladium
Lounge http://www.palladiumlounge.com for top
players. In addition, the latest product upgrade
has introduced resizable Pot Limit Omaha tables
and selected stakes heads-up no-limit cash game
tables will be available from next week.
The
new reward program is simple - earn points and
that’s it. No more weekly goals, no more
vesting of points - the number of points you earn
is the number of points you have. You can redeem
these points in the online shop for an array of
prizes including cash, satellite entries and land-based
tournament packages. The new program allows you
to redeem your points for cash at much lower levels
than before and PartyPoker.com has also introduced
the ability to buy bonuses with points. PartyPoker.com
has made sure that every player gets the same,
if not better, value from the new plan. See https://secure.partyaccount.com/pc/rewardsplan.do
for more details.
Key
elements to new reward program:
You'll
earn PartyPoints for all your real money play
PartyPoints are the only type of point under the
new scheme
Your points will be issued and credited to your
account right away
Your balance will be updated whenever you leave
a game
You'll be able spend your PartyPoints in our PartyPoints
Store, where we've reduced our prices to give
you better value than ever
There are no restrictions, penalties, multipliers,
or loyalty levels
PartyPoker.com
has also introduced Palladium Lounge http://www.palladiumlounge.com
for top players. Collect more than 5,000 reward
points in a month, and you’ll immediately
become a member of this exclusive club, where
you’ll enjoy exceptional service with the
personal touch.
Kristen
Makin, Head of VIP at PartyPoker.com, said: “The
Palladium Lounge is easy to understand and makes
PartyPoker.com the most rewarding and exciting
online poker room around. We’ve spent months
listening to customers and are now giving them
the great program that they want.”
The
Palladium Lounge features:
More
than 30% in rewards and bonuses for your play,
guaranteed – that’s PartyPoker.com’s
biggest-ever offer
Rewards that best suit you, such as special leader
boards, rake races, and non-deposit reloads
Exclusive events
VIP service around the clock
There’s
also an even more exclusive level of membership:
The Palladium Lounge Elite is for members who
earn over 300,000 points within a year and maintain
a minimum of 75,000 points per quarter. As well
as enjoying all our excellent regular benefits,
Elite members will receive:
·
Additional rewards offered only to our most valued
players
·
Exclusive events every quarter
·
Opportunities to play in live televised events
If
you demand this kind of service, join the most
rewarding VIP club around. You won’t be
disappointed by what it has to offer. Find out
more about Palladium Lounge at www.palladiumlounge.com
Background
PartyGaming
Plc is an online gambling company, best known
for its online poker room PartyPoker.com. It is
headquartered in Gibraltar and quoted on the London
Stock Exchange. PartyGaming Plc was founded in
1997 with the launch of Starluck Casino. Prior
to passage of anti-online gambling legislation
by the U.S. Congress, PartyGaming Plc was the
world's largest online poker brand (based on ring
game revenue and number of players); though its
total number of active players has diminished
with the loss of its U.S. customers, the company
continues to grow with a solid European presence.
History
PartyGaming
was founded in 1997 as a network of gambling sites
operated by Ruth Parasol in the Caribbean. The
network eventually operated under an umbrella
company called iGlobalMedia, which then changed
its name to PartyGaming. PartyGaming's flagship
site, PartyPoker.com, was launched in 2001. Its
primary shareholders are Parasol, Group Operations
Director Anurag Dikshit, Marketing Director Vikrant
Bhargava (who joined the company in 1998 and 1999,
respectively), and Russ DeLeon (Parasol's husband,
Harvard attorney and serial entrepreneur). The
foursome sold over 23% of their combined shares
to take the company public on the London Stock
Exchange in 2005. Dikshit and Bhargava stepped
down from the company's board in May 2006. Dikshit
announced that he will remain with the company
as COO; Bhargava will continue as an advisor and
shareholder of the company while pursuing other
business interests.
PartyGaming's
holdings include the PartyPoker.com poker site,
PartyCasino.com, PartyBingo.com, and Starluck
and Planet Luck Casinos. In February 2006 PartyGaming
introduced a new integrated platform, enabling
multiple games to be played without requiring
customers to log in each time and deposit funds
in separate accounts. An online backgammon site,
PartyGammon.com, was launched in mid-2006. In
August 2006 PartyGaming acquired Antigua and Barbuda
registered sports betting operator Gamebookers
which focuses on the European market.
Due
to concerns about the legality of online gambling
in various jurisdictions around the world, the
company is incorporated in Gibraltar. At one point,
U.S. consumers represented around 75% of PartyGaming's
revenues. In October 2006, PartyGaming pulled
out of the US market following the passing of
anti-gambling measures in the Safe Port Act, and
the company's share price dropped 60% as a result.
In
2007 the Company bought Empire Online's Gaming
business and all off Intercontinental Online Gaming.
PartyPoker.com
PartyPoker.com
was launched in 2001 and has since grown to be
one of the largest online poker card rooms. At
peak times, tens of thousands of players can be
found playing on the site's virtual poker tables.
The site is endorsed by Mike Sexton, the host
of the World Poker Tour television show. The domain
partypoker.com attracted at least 3.6 million
visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com
study.
Games
include Texas Hold 'em (No Limit and Fixed Limit),
Omaha and Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven-card Stud and Seven-card
Stud Hi-Lo. Stakes range from 0.05/0.10 to 100/200
for limit games, and 0.02/0.04 to 25/50 for No-Limit/Pot-Limit
games.
Players can play for either real money or play
money. All poker variants offered at real money
tables are offered at play money tables. Party
Poker offers a bad beat jackpot, which has at
times grown to over $700,000 USD.
Party
Poker makes money by taking a percentage of each
ring game pot (this is known as the rake) and
approximately 10% of entry fees for each real-money
tournament. The site has dealt over six billion
real money hands and over fifty-five billion play
money hands, including tournaments.
Party
Poker is the official kit sponsor of Leyton Orient
football club, of the English Football League
One.
Party
Poker offers hand history files for analysis,
discussion and conversion using a poker hand converter.
Tournaments
The site offers a variety of tournaments, ranging
from two to thousands of participants with some
very lucrative prize pools.
Single-table
and multi-table tournaments are offered. Furthermore,
there are both scheduled tournaments (which begin
at a specified date and time) and tournaments
which are offered 24 hours a day and begin as
soon as the table is full. The latter type of
tournament is commonly called a "Sit 'n Go"
or "SNG" tournament.
The
flagship tournament is the PartyPoker.com Million
Tournament, a Limit Texas Hold'em Tournament.
The second, third and fourth Party Poker Million
tournaments were World Poker Tour events. The
tournament begins with online qualifiers but the
final stages are held at actual poker tables aboard
a cruise ship. The winners of previous Party Poker
Million events were Kathy Liebert, Howard Lederer,
Erick Lindgren, Michael Gracz, and Mike Schneider.
Additionally,
there are play money tournaments, but the offerings
are not nearly as extensive as the real money
tournaments and mostly consist of single table
events.
Every player is limited to playing up to twelve
tables simultaneously.
Hellkat
Hellkat
is a form of Texas Hold 'Em poker developed by
PartyPoker.com. The games are played in the same
way as a normal Texas Hold 'Em tournament, except
that there is a time limit of 5 to 15 minutes
when the tournament will end. At the end the prize
money is paid to the three players with the most
chips. Because of the time limit, the players
with the lower stacks play fast and furiously
going all-in often as the time runs out.
Split
with "skin" partners
In
its early days, PartyGaming entered into several
marketing partnerships that allowed companies
such as Empire Online, who ran Empire Poker, to
share in a common pool of poker players. Players
could access the PartyGaming network either through
the PartyPoker.com software itself or through
the software of one of PartyGaming's "skin"
partners.
In
mid-2005, PartyGaming made various moves to ringfence
its own players from those of the "skin"
partners. The company began to explore mergers,
buyouts, and other options. In October of that
year, PartyGaming launched an upgraded PartyPoker.com
software system that cut off the "skin"
partners from the main pool of players, and left
the "skin" players on the old system.
In
November 2005, offer discussions with Empire Online
were terminated, and on 6 December 2005, Empire
Online confirmed that it had started legal proceedings
against PartyGaming in the High Court of Gibraltar.
On 14 February 2006, the two companies announced
a US$250 million settlement deal; PartyGaming
agreed to acquire Empire's "skin" operations,
and Empire dropped the suit. In December 2006,
PartyGaming announced the acquisition of the remaining
assets of Empire Online.
PartyGaming
also acquired the operations of former "skin"
partners IntertopsPoker and MultiPoker, in separate
private transactions for undisclosed amounts.
PartyPoker.net
PartyGaming
operates PartyPoker.net, a free site that, when
PartyGaming offered real money gaming in the United
States, was advertised on United States television
as "the world's largest poker school"
due to restrictions of directly advertising gambling
sites. Prizes are offered for winning tournaments
on the site. Although no money is exchanged, an
age limit of 18 (or 21 in some states) is still
enforced. Players on the .net site play the same
games as players playing the free games from within
the PartyPoker.com software client.
iGlobalMedia
software
In
the 1990s, Las Vegas consultant and actuary Michael
Shackleford ran a computer trial of the first
blackjack and roulette games offered by iGlobalMedia.
Shackleford stated that the "results clearly
showed they (the games) weren't fair. Ruth Parasol's
spokesman Jon Mendelsohn acknowledged that the
chances had "tipped too much toward the house",
but attributed the problems to "software
flaws", not rigging. It led to the development
of their own proprietary software rather than
using external platforms. There was no reimbursement
to the players iGlobalMedia allowed to play the
unfair games.
PartyPoker.com
preview
Main
Lobby
When
you first log in to your PartyPoker.com software,
you’ll arrive in the main Lobby. This is
where you can select a real money or play money
game and join a tournament. If you like, you can
watch the action while others play.
In
the center of the window, you'll see a list of
all our tables and tournaments. Simply use your
mouse to scroll through the list.
The
‘Browse’ and ‘List’ lobby
views give you two great ways to find the table
or tournament that’s right for you. Here’s
what they do:
The
‘List’ view uses a traditional ‘tree’
navigation structure which is simple, easy to
use, and instantly recognizable to anyone who’s
searched for a file on their PC
The ‘Browse’ view gives you access
to a range of filtering options which you can
use to refine the list of tables you’re
browsing; you can even use multiple filters to
make your search as precise as possible
You can toggle between the two Lobby views using
the icons at the top-right of the main tab navigation
area.
You
can also choose to apply a 'filter' to your view
of the tables or tournaments.
For
more details about all the great features our
Lobby has to offer, take our guided Game Lobby
QuickTour.
