Wooing players from other sites
Online poker room partypoker has rolled out a promotion this week that is not anything revolutionary, but which has a theme that gets straight to the point. The “$2M Defection Party” promises to give away a couple million bucks to players who need not do anything except play a little poker.
Making the appeal to customers of other sites who feel unsatisfied, partypoker implores people to “experience poker different on a world-class online poker site that puts its players first” via a post on the partypoker blog.
We care about poker. We care about you.”
“Our customers are at the forefront of every decision we make,” says partypoker. “Some of the decisions we make stem from feedback and suggestions from the very people who those decisions will affect. We care about poker. We care about you.”
The $2M Defection Party started Thursday, May 7 and runs through Thursday, June 4.
Easy tasks, small rewards
There are three parts of the promotion that require players to do nothing or next to nothing to be rewarded. The first is to simply login to partypoker. Every day, upon logging in, players will receive either a bonus in their account or a ticket into a $500 guaranteed hyper turbo tournament. Two such tournaments run daily.
The bonus, like any bonus at partypoker, comes with playthrough requirements.
The second portion of the $2M Defection Party is boosted cashback. On the first day (which has already passed) and the last day of the promo, players can opt-in to “Defection Boosted Cashback” under the “Promotions” section of their account to receive an additional 20% cashback that day.
And third, players who complete a daily challenge – again, requiring an opt-in from the account screen – will receive a ticket for the daily $5K guaranteed hyper turbo tournament.
The poker room says that the challenges are “fun, simple poker missions.” They also involve actor/comedian Kevin Hart, who became a partypoker ambassador about a month ago.
Leaderboards extended
There is a fourth segment to the $2M Defection Party, but it is not new to this specific promotion. The weekly cash game leaderboards and both the daily SPINS and Sit-and-Go leaderboards have been extended into June.
partypoker partner Rob Yong announced last weekend that the cash game leaderboards had been extended into May. The leaderboards, which launched in February, have morphed a couple times and now include 16 separate leaderboards, eight for Hold’em and eight for Omaha. In total, the leaderboards pay out $250,000 per week.
partypoker caught several players who cheated the system
Along with that announcement, Yong also revealed that partypoker caught several players who cheated the system. They were subsequently banned from the poker room for life and had their ill-gotten gains redistributed to the honest winners. Yong said the cheaters engaged in practices like multi-accounting and recruiting friends to play on their accounts.