Party Poker Announces Rake Free Tournaments
Party Poker recently announced that it will eliminate entry fees from all its multi table poker tournaments this summer. Tournament entry fees are nothing but tournament rake, one of the major sources of revenue for online poker sites, owing to which Party Poker’s move to make its multi table tournaments rake free is indeed risky. The promotion can be lucrative to the poker site only some of the players it attracts decide to stay back and become loyal Party Poker players even after it comes to an end.
Party Poker will use 2 different methods of eliminate tournament entry fees, according to the buy-in of the tournaments. While the entry fees of tournaments that have a buy-in higher than $6 will be simply eliminated, the entry fees of tournaments that have a buy-in lower than $5 will be incorporated into the buy-in. For example, if the tournament has a buy-in of $20 + $2, The $2 entry fee will be dropped and the tournament will be listed as $20 + $0; and if the tournament has a buy-in of $5 + $0.50, it will now be listed as $5.50 + $0.
Players might argue that the entry fee is not really eliminated in the second case, but they must note that the higher buy-in makes the prize pool larger too. To understand this better, players can consider the $5 + $0.50 example. If players pay the entry fees of 50 cents, this tournament will have a prize pool of $5000, provided 1000 players buy-in to it. According to Party Poker’s tournament payout structure, the player who finishes first will receive 23.5 percent of this pot and the player who finishes second will receive 13 percent. Thanks to this new promotion, the entry fee will be incorporated into the buy-in, making it $5.50, which raises the total prize amount to $5,500.
In case of tournaments that have buy-ins greater than $6, the entry fee is cancelled, but the prize pool remains the same.
The iPoker Network is almost neck to neck with Party Poker as far as player traffic is concerned. Ever since Full Tilt Poker lost its license to run paid online poker games, the two have been competing fiercely against each other in a bid to attract Full Tilt Poker’s players. Although Party Poker is ahead of iPoker, it is far behind PokerStars. Since it has a weekly player traffic average of 3,950 ring game players, it is way behind PokerStars, which has a weekly player traffic average of 21,600 players.
However, Full Tilt Poker’s displaced players seem to be a disheartened lot as only 41 percent of them have actually moved to other online poker sites. According to an eGaming Review article, many Full Tilt Poker players have been unable to withdraw their money and many of them are unsure about playing online poker anymore. Party Poker has drawn in just 5 percent of Full Tilt Poker’s players, while iPoker has drawn in 2 percent. The rest of them have simply moved to PokerStars.
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