Party Poker FAQ
Last Update: May 6th, 2008
Welcome, this Party Poker FAQ is meant to address the many questions that
I see new players asking about Party Poker or just online poker in general. Please be
advised that while I have done my best to ensure the accuracy of all information in this
FAQ, that I am human and mistakes will happen. With that, please enjoy the FAQ - if you
have any questions or comments, please post them in the
discussion forum and I will
get back to you there.
I. Party Poker - New Players
Are Mike Sexton / Vince Van Patten / Shana Hiatt related to Party Poker?
Mike Sexton is the official 'Host' of Party Poker and acts as a poker consultant and spokesman
for the site. Since Mike is actually a professional poker player in addition to an announcer
on the World Poker Tour, he actually does involve himself with direction of Party Poker.
Shana Hiatt is also a spokesperson for Party Poker and appears in a number of Party Poker
ads. She also makes appearances at some of the Party Poker events, such as the Party Poker
Million III event. In January of 2004, Party Poker ran a promotional "Win a dinner date with
Mike and Shana' promotion on their site, so a few lucky players even managed to meet
both Mike and Shana. As of 2005, Shana Hiatt has decided to leave Party Poker as their
spokes girl, which is quite a disappointment to most players of course.
As for Vince Van Patten, he doesn't have any association with Party Poker and is only
associated with the World Poker Tour.
Update: Shana Hiatt is no longer the spokesmodel for Party Poker and has moved on to
greener pastures. Good luck Shana!
Is Party Poker associated with the World Poker Tour?
Party Poker is a charter member of the World Poker Tour and was one of the first companies to give their
backing to the World Poker Tour. For this reason, during the early days, you could often
see Mike Sexton hosting Party Poker commercials on the World Poker Tour. There were very
cheezy commercials, but quite effective at the same time. My own commentary on the
World Poker Tour here.
Party Poker is no longer with the World Poker Tour and has cancelled its
status as a charter member. Reasons given for this were business related, although it
most likely has to do with Party Poker unable to advertise their .com section on
the WPT.
Why is Party Poker the most popular site?
Due to their early advertising on the World Poker Tour, Party Poker really became a mainstream
name. They also promoted aggressively on the Internet with PartyPoker bonus code
promotions that were far better than other other sites. For this reason, it made Party Poker
one of the best poker sites to play at. Coupled with an aggressive online
marketing program, a refer-a-friend programs and an independent affiliate network, Party has
taken the lions share of the online poker market.
As of mid-2004, Party Poker set a record of having over 40,000 players playing at their site
at once, so you can find a game any time of day or night.
How easy or hard is the competition at Party Poker?
Party Poker has some of the worst players that you will find anywhere on the Internet.
This is a good thing, because it means the competition is quite easy at the lower limits.
As the limits go up, especially at the $5/10 game and above, the competition does increase, so
only experienced players should try the higher limit games.
What's your review of Party Poker?
Considering I run a site called the Party Poker Strategy Guide, I am biased and
will recommend it of course. The poker tournaments and limit games are the best (the most fishy)
among the different poker sites. The support team at Party Poker is outsourced to India
however, which means that you are generally dealing with poor quality support if you have problems.
Party Poker customer support actually gained quite the bad reputation in 2003 when
the popularity of poker exploded. However, since then, Party Poker has upped their support
staff and given them more training. With their recent IPO and other expansion, their support
team is better than before, but still leaves something to be desired.
If you decide to join, be sure you sign up with one of the Party Poker promotional bonuses,
which you can find on the home page.
Is it true that I can play in the World Poker Tour through Party Poker?
Yes, Party Poker offers the chance to win a spot into the World Poker Tour events. This
is done through satellite tournaments, where the winner of the satellite can advance to a
spot in the World Poker Tour event. Satellites range from as little as $10 to as much as $600,
depending on the event and amount of players involved. Many other sites such as
PokerStars now offer
such satellite tournaments
Note that World Poker Tour events usually consist of a few hundred participants, so what
you see on TV is the final table of those events. So, you only get to appear on TV
if you make the final table. If you do make the final table, you also get to play with a bunch
of fog machines blasting behind you, swirling xenon lights blinding you from above and
to top it off, a large audience watching your every move. Quite fun :)
Do you have any tips for playing at Party Poker?
Yes, check out my Party Poker Tips page for some Party Poker specific tips.
But if you want the general idea of how to play at Party Poker, just play a solid, tight
game of poker. The games are pretty wild there, so if you play straight up in the low
limits, you'll do fine.
Where can I find more information about Party Poker?
If you need to know anything you can't find on this site, then go check out the Party Poker
website at:
http://www.partypoker.com
Party Poker FAQ - Existing Players
I'm having some issues with Party Poker, who can I contact for help?
The following are contacts for Party Poker:
Can you run Party Poker on Linux or Macintosh?
Party Poker can run on Linux with VMWare but reports of it running on WINE seem to come back with glitches and other issues.
As for the Macintosh, Party Poker is currently not supported on the Mac natively, although there may be some types of PC Emulation
that been reported to run - such as Virtual PC. The best site for online mac poker is
Poker Room, as they have
a java based client.
How does the buddy list work?
The buddy list is somehwat handicapped on purpose in my opinion. You can use the buddy list
to invite friends to a table when you are online or simply see if your friends are online.
Other than that, it doesn't serve much of a purpose. You can't tell what tables your
friends are playing at and cannot use it for communication. Obviously, Party Poker does not want
it's players colluding with each other, so the buddy list is (and should be) limited in
it's functionality.
How do notes work at Party Poker
You can right click on each person's name and open a notes window for that player.
After you've made a note, a small paper icon will appear next to that person's name
in the bottom corner. Notes
are saved to your hard drive in your Party Poker directory as Notes.txt, so you can copy
this to your friends, your Empire Poker folder, or modify it yourself by hand for whatever
reason.
I've also written an article on taking notes which you can check out at my
player notes page.
What are the best times to play at Party Poker?
If you play long enough and keep track of your games, you'll start to notice that certain
days or certain hours are very profitable. Since most players have jobs other than poker,
the sites become more popular immediately after 5pm and then die off after 11pm. Likewise,
Thursday, Friday and Saturday tend to generate more traffic than Sunday and Monday. You can
usually begin to feel which days have more fish than others after tracking your play.
Do you recommend playing multiple tables at Party Poker?
Party Poker will let you play up to three tables at a time. If you play at Empire Poker
also, then you can theoretically play up to 6 tables at once; which some players
supposedly are able to do.
Update: Party Poker now lets you play at up to 8 tables at a time, which covers
the need of most players who need to multi-table. There are many stories of professionals
playing up to 16 tables of a time, but I don't recommend this of course to anyone that
isn't trying to mimick Tom Cruise in Minority Report..
I usually play two tables at once if I am only playing poker, or 1 table if I am playing poker
and doing something else at the same time. I don't recommend players starting out to play at
multiple tables unless your game is solid at that limit. If you are a losing player or have
leaks in your game, playing multiple tables will not only make your game worse, it will double
the amount of money you are winning.
Most of the time, playing multiple tables isn't a problem because you won't have the action on
you all at once, but when you are in the action all at once, it is very important you are
quick enough to calculate all the odds necessary and analyze the situation.
What is a Party Poker affiliate?
Affiliates are people or companies who market for another company and receive compensation for each
sale that they make. Whenever you see a banner for a poker site, or get spam email or see spam
in the newsgroups, it is usually because an affiliate is trying to get you to go to his or her
site.
What's so bad about all the affiliates?
Affiliates are usually considered scum by most of the poker scene and Internet community. This feeling
is in place for good reason, because as mentioned in the previous question, almost all spam you
recieve or see is because of an affiliate trying to make a quick buck. All of the junk websites you
see in the search engines like www.awesome-poker-tips-to-cheat-at-poker.biz/cheat_at_poker.html
and the like are almost always made by affiliates too. These websites are absolute crap and are 90%
pop-ups, banners and misleading links. If you've done any poker related browsing on the web, you'll
know what I'm talking about.
Now, I don't want to say all affiliates are bad, because I am one myself, hence the
Party Poker and Empire Poker banners on this site. However, I like to believe that this site
offers something valuable and gives a reason for people to actually come here, rather than
tricking people to come here. In reality, almost all the poker sites out there are affiliates in
some way or another, but attracting visitors with search engine tricks or actual content is
what separates a sleazy affiliate from a beneficial affiliate.
What happens if Party Poker crashes during a tournament?
From Party Poker's site:
22. a) SINGLE TABLE TOURNAMENTS: If a Tournament is cancelled due to technical issues, any Player who was eliminated prior to this time will
lose their buy-in and entry fee. The remaining Players will be refunded their Buy-ins and Entry fees and will equally divide up the Buy-in
monies from the Players already eliminated, regardless of the chip standing when the tournament was halted.
b) MULTI TABLE TOURNAMENTS: If a Tournament is cancelled due to technical issues, any Player who was eliminated prior to this time will
lose their buy-in and entry fee. The remaining Players will be refunded their entry fees and will equally divide up 50% of the remaining
prize pool. The other 50% of the prize pool will be distributed to the remaining players on a percentage basis (based on their chip count
when the tournament went down).
Is there any way to PM (private message) someone on Party Poker?
Yes and no. To do so, add this person to your Buddy list then invite them to a game.
Instead of inviting them to a game though, simply type what you want to say into the box.
Please note that other players can block your messages and I
know that Party Poker logs these messages. So in other words, don't try to cheat and share
cards with your friends.
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