The Poker Bus

Five things I hate about Party Poker.

5. Blackjack and side bets.
Now gamblers won’t just lose their money to you, they can lose it to Party Poker in a much simpler and always –ev way. 40% of Party Poker’s players play both blackjack and poker.

4. Commercials
I don’t know what PartyPoker’s plan was with their latest commercial. It features someones hands shuffling cards in no special way and an annoying whiney voice in the background repeating ‘Oooooh PaaaaartyPoker’. 5 cards are dealt at a gruelingly slow pace with a generic phrase on it like “Safe and Secure”, “Fast and Fun” and “bigger tournaments”. Some of Party Poker’s ‘bad poker face’ commercials weren’t that bad but this one is terrible.

At the very end of the commercial Party Poker promote’s the high flier jet promo. If you come in 5th to 2nd in this tournament you get a car ranging from $50,000 to $105,000 which is really cool. First place, worth $125,000, is 25 hours of airtime in a luxury private jet with 6 friends. This blows compared to the other prizes. First place will have a fun day while 2nd through 5th get awesome cars. I wonder if this tournament will be a race for second? or maybe it’s just me.

3. Mike Sexton
Lee Jones is so much cooler then Mike Sexton.

2. Rake
The one thing Party Poker does good is take our money. Raking a 20% fee at the $5 tournaments or when the pot reaches $5 in a .5/1 or 1/2 cash game is brutal. Without rakeback or bonuses it’s nearly impossible to be a long term winner with that rake structure.

1. Customer support team
Party poker has by far one of the worst support teams. You can rarely get in contact with someone who can speak proper English and they almost never make sense. You have to pray your first deposit goes through properly or else they’ll make you send a bunch of random documents. Two years ago when I made my first deposit at Party Poker and they held my funds until I sent a letter of permission from my mom (embarrassing).