I’m somewhat shocked that nobody in the poker blogosphere is talking about the fact that PartyPoker has jettisoned their skins. Sometime this weekend, Party went down for a bit and then came back online with blackjack and side bets. What was less noticeable is that when they came back online they had de-coupled their tables from their skins. In other words, if you’re playing on Empire, you aren’t seeing the tables on Party. It’s no longer one big network of players.
The counts seem to be running about 40,000 players and about 10,000 each on the skins. That’s pretty big news for a site that normally 70,000+ players accessible via all the skins.
And this doesn’t seem to be a technical glitch or some other malfunction. Party states in a recent press release [pdf]:
Historically, PartyPoker players have shared the same poker-only system with players from each of the Group’s four white label poker clients or “skins” (being Empire Poker, Coral Eurobet, Multipoker and Intertops). Following today’s move, PartyPoker players will now play on their own private tables and benefit from a number of new and exciting products that are exclusive to the new platform.
So what exactly does this mean? Well, I’m not privy to Party’s business dealings but I’m going to take an educated guess and say that one of the things Party was remiss in fully disclosing when they reported their earnings recently was that their subscriber growth was down due to the fact that their skins were stealing their best customers. Party’s hard line on rakeback basically drove their best customers to their skins and now Party is striking back.
Basically, from a business standpoint, it’s a mixed bag for Party. It was smart of them to get out from under the skin agreements they got themselves into when they were trying to fuel growth. The skins take a large cut of the rake and were killing Party’s bottom line and most of them were turning a blind eye to affiliates who were offering rakeback which was luring away Party’s best customers. On the other hand, they nearly halved their customer base and now must fight with other sites like PokerStars and FullTilt to win the skin players who will likely be up for grabs. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see shareholders filing class action suits against Party if the markets hammer the stock.
Party still has enough critical mass to survive cutting off of their skins but the skins likely won’t survive in their current form. Most of the skins are just on the cusp of critical mass and if they lose even the slightest bit of ground they’ll quickly disappear. The general consensus is that most of the regular grinders were on the skins due to the rakeback deals. With Party decoupling the sites the games on the skins will likely get brutally tough and many will either go back to Party or find a new site to play at. In other words, this is devastating news for the skins. An informal poll on 2+2 indicates that with 224 votes counted, 81% said they were bolting from their skin account over to Party. Party skin EuroBet has supposedly been so swamped with cashouts that you now just get an error.
Seeing how this all shakes out over the next few months should be interesting to watch.
Related Links
How To Downgrade Party Poker’s New Features
More Thoughts on the Party Poker Massacre
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It would be scary to not be able to get your money out.
It’s just another reason I stick with Stars….(for now) I at least now what I’m getting.
I have/had a rakeback account on Eurobet, and yes.. I just cashed out everything I had in it. Going from 70k+ players and pretty much unlimited table selection to 5k players and 10-20 tables of my limit makes it a pretty easy choice.
I spend about 1/2 my time playing on Absolute anyway, and recently their player base has been growing, which along with their unending bonus money, will get them most of my play for now. I only play Stars when bonus time comes aorund, so I’m hoping my rakeback guy will be able to pull the deal he’s hinting at for rakeback on Party itself.
We’ll see.. but this could be good news for the “smaller” sites out there, like FullTilt and Absolute, and prtobably older sites like Pokerroom as well.
Bill,
Thanks for explaining that. As a relative newbie to the online game, I appreciate someone breaking things down into bite sized chunks from time to time. I hear all the buzz words and I read all the blogs, but some of the more techical concepts (i.e. how skins work) go over my head.
Thanks.