Wow, Party Poker NL has Changed Over Time
My poker play on Party has been pretty much zero over the past couple of years though I had fond memories of honing my multi table skills 12 tabling $25 and 50 buy in PL Holdem. This was before they booted Americans.
Still over the past year I had become King level via a silly amount of +EV casino bonuses and some nice sports bet arbitrage opportunities (last year when they had lots of bonuses and no juice games).
Thus when I got the $500 poker bonus offer (first poker bonus offer in memory) that seemed to be 2x, I figured it was time to see what the games at Party were like now. I checked with customer service about the promotion (as many Party ones are worded badly) and found out the 2x bonus was really a 8x bonus. Well, that is Party for you, but since I needed just 200ish points for Aces level, and they had some 100 point qualify for a tourney thing this week, I figured sure lets have a little fun.
First thing I noticed was that there are now smaller limit games. Hmm, ok I want to grind out as many raked hands without thinking as possible, so which one is the smallest that rakes any flop (ie: counts as a raked hand). Seems $10 buy in meets the bill.
So I opened and played 2-3 tables basically in the background without even paying attention. I was not winning or losing much, but did not care. It seemed my aces always just won blinds which was strange, but maybe people are noticing tighter play more these days.
The first sign that something was off was after 1000 hands or so I still had only about 300 raked. This made no sense, so I checked to make sure that any rake counted. Yup.
OK, so what was going on? I decided to open 12 tables and play 30ish hands and then start a new table etc. Repeat for a while. Then I loaded all the hands into Poker tracker (had not before then).
After that I sat at a few tables turned on Poker Ace HUD and was stunned at what I saw.
The average VPIP at the table was 5-10%. This was at nearly every table. Also, usually 4-5 players at each table bought in for the min of $2 and had VPIPs of 2% or so. Mainly Germans and Russians.
I have no idea if they are bots or what, but I decided to try an experiment at one of the tables.
I raised preflop 50 hands in a row that it was folded before I acted. Each time to 3x BB of 30 cents if noone in pot before me and 7x BB if there were limpers.
Of the 50 hands I won blinds (and limps) uncontested 38 times. 8 times I was called and 4 times someone went over the top on me for umm 2 bucks more or less heh. Net I made $4!!
One problem for my real needs, since only 1 in 5 saw a flop, very few hands were actually raked...
I have pretty much played Omaha cash games the past couple of years so I am completely out of touch with the NL cash game scene, but is this at all indicative?
I suppose very loose aggressive is a way to win in this, but wow that is a lot of work for not much gain, and this pretty much assured me that Party is not ideal for clearing bonuses with NL poker (unless one plays it anyways). Same with Omaha, it would just be way too slow and silly compared to rakeback/bonus available elsewhere.
Granted, this was just a specific level so I cannot say for certain that all levels were like this, as well it was full ring, and I am guessing 6 max would not have this problem as much. Still, I was almost stunned by the results I saw in terms of the player base at such a small buy in level. As much as I dont want to sound like a paranoid guy, the only explanation that makes any sense are
1) Bots, lots of bots that are doing very simple all in or fold choices each hand.
2) Lots of players from Germany and Russia who are multi tabling and playing like in 1)
even though I cannot imagine this makes much if anything, and it does not even clear bonuses at a good pace.
Give me a table of Brit drunks in Omaha any day, sheesh this experiment pretty much tilted me away from NL games forever :P
Still over the past year I had become King level via a silly amount of +EV casino bonuses and some nice sports bet arbitrage opportunities (last year when they had lots of bonuses and no juice games).
Thus when I got the $500 poker bonus offer (first poker bonus offer in memory) that seemed to be 2x, I figured it was time to see what the games at Party were like now. I checked with customer service about the promotion (as many Party ones are worded badly) and found out the 2x bonus was really a 8x bonus. Well, that is Party for you, but since I needed just 200ish points for Aces level, and they had some 100 point qualify for a tourney thing this week, I figured sure lets have a little fun.
First thing I noticed was that there are now smaller limit games. Hmm, ok I want to grind out as many raked hands without thinking as possible, so which one is the smallest that rakes any flop (ie: counts as a raked hand). Seems $10 buy in meets the bill.
So I opened and played 2-3 tables basically in the background without even paying attention. I was not winning or losing much, but did not care. It seemed my aces always just won blinds which was strange, but maybe people are noticing tighter play more these days.
The first sign that something was off was after 1000 hands or so I still had only about 300 raked. This made no sense, so I checked to make sure that any rake counted. Yup.
OK, so what was going on? I decided to open 12 tables and play 30ish hands and then start a new table etc. Repeat for a while. Then I loaded all the hands into Poker tracker (had not before then).
After that I sat at a few tables turned on Poker Ace HUD and was stunned at what I saw.
The average VPIP at the table was 5-10%. This was at nearly every table. Also, usually 4-5 players at each table bought in for the min of $2 and had VPIPs of 2% or so. Mainly Germans and Russians.
I have no idea if they are bots or what, but I decided to try an experiment at one of the tables.
I raised preflop 50 hands in a row that it was folded before I acted. Each time to 3x BB of 30 cents if noone in pot before me and 7x BB if there were limpers.
Of the 50 hands I won blinds (and limps) uncontested 38 times. 8 times I was called and 4 times someone went over the top on me for umm 2 bucks more or less heh. Net I made $4!!
One problem for my real needs, since only 1 in 5 saw a flop, very few hands were actually raked...
I have pretty much played Omaha cash games the past couple of years so I am completely out of touch with the NL cash game scene, but is this at all indicative?
I suppose very loose aggressive is a way to win in this, but wow that is a lot of work for not much gain, and this pretty much assured me that Party is not ideal for clearing bonuses with NL poker (unless one plays it anyways). Same with Omaha, it would just be way too slow and silly compared to rakeback/bonus available elsewhere.
Granted, this was just a specific level so I cannot say for certain that all levels were like this, as well it was full ring, and I am guessing 6 max would not have this problem as much. Still, I was almost stunned by the results I saw in terms of the player base at such a small buy in level. As much as I dont want to sound like a paranoid guy, the only explanation that makes any sense are
1) Bots, lots of bots that are doing very simple all in or fold choices each hand.
2) Lots of players from Germany and Russia who are multi tabling and playing like in 1)
even though I cannot imagine this makes much if anything, and it does not even clear bonuses at a good pace.
Give me a table of Brit drunks in Omaha any day, sheesh this experiment pretty much tilted me away from NL games forever :P
Comments
Really, I would not say it is anything better then basically some rakeback for regular players.
The bonus codes popped up when I logged in. If I got a poker bonus I think everyone did, probably because they are launching new software soon (badly needed).
Party has a 100% up to $500 first depositors bonus. Not sure how long you have to clear the bonus though. Monteroy's bonus was a reload bonus that was offered this week, only had one week to clear it though. Party can be very tight depending on when you play. I find that playing between 12 noon and 5 pm are the best times to play. From 7pm and on it starts to get very tight and not worth your time. They have some great overlays on the guaranteed tourneys though. Its my opinion that party isn't that fishy anymore.
Monteroy
Didn't play that long at party today. Collected 8.38 party points over 200 hands played. 8.38 points times 20 raked hands equals 167.60 hands. To collect that many points it took me 167.60 hands and I only played 200 total today, pretty good ratio. You were probably just playing at a bad time.
I suspect I would have seen a lot more raked hands percentage wise in the baby NL games if I stopped raising preflop =O.
Perhaps the bonus was a partial reason for it being tighter, but years ago that did not really change things.