Category Archives: News

No More High Stakes Cash Games at PartyPoker?

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.

PokerStars Mobile App

Not before time PokerStars have introduced a mobile app so you can play the full range of cash games, sit n go’s and tournaments via your iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch or an Android device. Once you have downloaded the app, provided that you already have a PokerStars account, all you need to do is enter your account details and you can be away and playing onlkine poker straightaway.

Hopefully this is a move that will be emulated by the other online poker houses because as it stands the market for mobile poker playing can only get bigger. Enjoy…

P.S You need to sign up for a PokerStars account if you want to play online with the mobile poker app. If you don’t have an account with PokerStars click here to sign up for a PokerStars account.

PokerStars Catering Towards the European Market With New Start Times

Given the catastrophic loss of the US market it was fairly inevitable that many of the major online poker houses were going to start courting the European markets more heavily and so sees the announcement from PokerStars that they are to move the start times of all of their regular major tournaments to earlier times in the day. This is a smart move by PokerStars and one that will inevitably snare more casual players to tourney play. We all know that a decent finish will see an investment in time of several hours so the earlier start times will be welcome to most in Europe.

A round up of many of the tournaments and start times are –

  • Sunday Kick-Off – 17:00 GMT
  • Sunday Warm-Up – 19:00 GMT
  • Sunday Rebuy – 20:00 GMT
  • Sunday Storm – 21:30 GMT
  • Sunday Million – 22:30 GMT
  • Sunday 500 – 23:30 GMT
  • Sunday Second Chance – 00:30 GMT
  • Sunday Supersonic – 02:30 GMT

These new tournament start times begin on Sunday 5th June and as a kicker PokerStars are adding more than $200,000 worth of entries to a selection of daily satellites. Check out the lobby at PokerStars for details on the satellites if you are interested in getting a cheap entry.