Reports suggest that PartyPoker have taken the decision to remove No Limit Texas Hold em and Pot Limit games with blinds of $10/$20 or higher and also Fixed Limit Texas Hold em with blinds of $50/$100 or greater.
One respected player over on the Two Plus Two forums questioned PartyPoker and received the following email from their support department –
We have removed some of our super high stake games, this decision has been taken to make improvements to our poker ecology and in our players best interests.
We will still offer high stake games at NL1000 PLO1000 and FL 6000.
We believe this change will improve the action at our tables and is in the best interest of the poker room as a whole. The change will remain in place for the foreseeable future
Please let us know if you need help with anything.
Clearly PartyPoker won’t have come up with this decision on a whim so there must be some compelling business reasons for doing this backed up by their own datasets so from an immediate financial decision one can only assume that PartyPoker as a poker room will benefit. It is much harder to evaluate the longer term repercussions.
Will high stakes players simply move down levels so that they can continue to play at PartyPoker? This is unlikely in my opinion. If you have worked your way up to high stakes levels you will want to continue to play at the levels of your choosing and not be dictated to by a poker room. Typically, players will work their way up the blinds scales, not work their way down!
Is the PartyPoker software and clientele alluring enough to keep high rollers playing at lower levels? No, not in my opinion.
So realistically we will see a small number of high stakes players moving over to other poker rooms and given that those players were likely on very generous incentive schemes and were taking money out of the PartyPoker poker eco-system I imagine that in purely financial terms PartyPoker won’t see a massive loss.
I would argue that the greater loss is in the PR side of things. Having active high stakes games is good for PR. Forums dedicate threads to particularly wild high stakes cash games and in poker where room confidence is key it is reassuring for players to see other successful players playing (and being paid) at high stakes cash games. PartyPoker could get a reputation as a lightweight poker room for grinders at the lower end of the spectrum which is not a good perception for a publically listed company where trader confidence is key.
Either way it will be interesting to see what actually does happen and how long it will take PartyPoker to restore all poker games at all blinds levels.