Party Poker Problems - Poker Tourney to be Moved

The SEO Poker Tournament must be moved to the 17th of June and we will be choosing a different site to host the Tourney - I will announce where in the next 3 days. I have already contacted everyone who was on the particpants list on Wednesday by e-mail with an apology.

Although Party Poker is financially stable, they have screwed things up beyond belief for my readers, myself and the SEO Poker tournament.

If you are really interested in the insannity I encountered dealing with the Party Poker Affiliate Reps, you can read the e-mail conversation below. It’s pretty amazing but it’s really just drama. If you want the short and sweet version it’s this:

Don’t do business with Party Poker.

I am Q, and Party Poker is PP:

Q: So, what are the requirements for running a private turney?

PP: We do set up private tournaments for players registered under an affiliate. If you could let me know the number of real money players you are able to get to your affiliate account I would be able to give you the details.

 

Q: what if some of the participants already have a pp account not under my affiliate?

PP: If the players are not under your affiliate account we do not have a problem if you want to include them in the tournament. Only thing is that you would not get any benefit from it, thus, I always insist on getting all the real money players registered under the affiliate.

 

Q: OK perfect.

I would like to run the

SEO No Limit Texas Holdem Poker Tournament

for a $100 buy in.

I will be promoting party poker and your affililate program on seoblackhat.com which is read by most of the top SEOs (search engine optimization specialists) in the world. I would like each player to start with 5000 chips and the blinds to go up every 20 minutes.

Additionally, there are a few players I would like to comp as their entrance will help with the publicity of the Tournament (like arron wall, john battelle, and danny sullivan). Perhaps we could work out something like for every X new affiliates that sign up, I get 1 comp to give out.

Also, If you could waive the $9 entrance fee for this tourney, I think that would be helpful.

Also, is there a specific place I should send these future affiliates and tourney players to sign up for the Tournament? how can I keep track of who has signed up to play?

PP: I checked about the tournament to be set up, I see that there could be a few operational issues with the buy-ins such as:

The ready list of players has to be sent at least a week in advance
All the accounts should have enough balance
If a player does not play refund could be an issue

I suggest we start with a free roll with 3000 chips to all the players. I also checked about the blinds going up every 20 minutes, again I am not very sure if that is possible. The prize pool would be $1500 (Party Poker contributing $750 and you contributing $750). If you get about 50 real money players under your affiliate account, you would cover this cost anyways as you would be eligible for the April bonanza. Once we are done with this, depending upon the number of players you get we can set up a buy in tournament at a later stage. Again, please do make sure that all the new players are under your tracker, you may have a few players who are not under you but that would not benefit you in any way. You may create a test account and let me know the account name, I will check and let you know if the players have got tracked to you or not.

Kindly let me know if you accept the above.

 

Q: I don’t want to do a freeroll. What I would prefer is that entrants pay a $100 buy in and that I be able to comp certain High Profile Players. Also, is there a way to set up a “bounty” system where people can win an extra $100 for knocking out certain players?

PP: I have asked for the requirements for the tournament, I will get back to you with any other details that are required once I get an update from the department concerned. Kindly note that we would not be able to set up the system to pay $100 extra for any players and the $10 fees is the operational fees charged thus, I would not be able to get that waived off.

 

Q: I can pay for anyone’s entrance that I want to comp - that’s no problem. The normal fee is $9 for a $100 tourney . . . Can we agree that if the tourney is over 50 people including at least 15 new affiliates that the entrance fee is waived?

PP: I am afraid I would not be able to get the waiver of the tournament fees as that is the basic operational fees we would have to charge. The fee is $10 as per our structure (you would be able to view it on the following link):

http://www.partypoker.com/tournaments/types_tournament/multi_table/entry_fees.html

If you get 50 real money players this month, you would get the April bonanza, also I would be able to offer you a better deal the next month.

 

Q: What if someone wants to sign up to be an affiliate?

PP: To register a sub-affiliate, you need to login to your affiliate account and go to the ‘Register Sub-Affiliate’ link. If you wish to forward the link to someone then you may use the following link:

http://www.partypoker.com/affiliates/experienced.htm?LID=XXXXXXX

Replace XXXXX with the Login ID that you use to log in to your Affiliate Account.

With a regard to the tournament, do let me know at least a week in advance so that I can get the operations team to set it up for you.

 

Q: (exactly one week before the tournament) ok we have the list (i’m missing one party poker account that may need to be added later) for the tournament.

Here is the link for the original post

http://seoblackhat.com/2006/04/27/seo-no-limit-texas-holdem-poker-tournament/

and here is the participants list
http://seoblackhat.com/tournament-participant-list/

let me know what i should e’mail to the people that have signed up and lets make sure we can get the tourney together for the spcifiied date

PP: (on Monday)I apologize as I would not be able to get back to you on this until tomorrow. This delay is due to a technical glitch which would be fixed by tomorrow.

 

PP: (on Wednesday) I see these are 23; I would at least need about 40 real money players to set up the tournament.

 

Q: Well, you´re going to have to do it with 23. You never mentioned a minimum before. It’s good to know for the future, but I’ve already put myself out there and said this is when the tournament will be. I have more had more than 15 major sites link to the original announcement including google blogscope and currently rank number 1 for “Poker SEO”yahoo.

Not having the tournament would look terrible for me and worse for party poker.

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So I called and spoke with the rep and then the manager. They both said that from the above conversation that the tournament was never finalized and

“Actually, we don’t do private tourneys with buy-ins. The only thing we can do is a freeroll. And we can’t do it by this weekend”

Wow. Amazing. The reason I picked party poker in the first place was I figured more people would have that kind of account than any other. I didn’t want to inconvience you, the people who will be playing in the tournament to have to move to another site so I thought “OK, i’ll try to do some kind of freeroll”

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Continuing the e-mail conversation:

Q: OK so lets say we do a freerolll tournament on June 10th, would we need a minimum of 40-50 players? Also, would you want me to contribute half of the entrance fee as was discussed? or would you be able to pay the entire freeroll?
How much could we do the freeroll for?

PP: Yes, we can look forward for 40 or more real money players (registered with Party Poker); we can go ahead with the free roll even if you are unable to reach the 40 players mark. We (Party Poker) would contribute 50% towards the prize pool (depending on the prize pool that we agree upon), kindly suggest an amount and I will see if I can get that approved, if not then I will send you the final figure of the prize pool.

Kindly let me know if you would be informing about this free roll to your players or are we supposed to send the mailers informing them about this. In any case kindly send me the complete final list of players (account names of each player participating in the free roll) by the 1st of June so that I can get the free roll set up on 10th June. We can finalize on the time of the tourney in the next e-mail.

Kindly let me know if you require any further information.

 

Q:Could we do a $4000 prize pool with me contributing $2000 for a 40 person tournament?

PP: Following are my observations and suggestions:

1) I see there are 3 real money players in all under your affiliate account till 30th April 2006, which mean majority of the free roll participants would be the ones who are not tracked you

2) The money from affiliates (for the free roll) is recovered through the payments to be made to them, as you have got just 3 real money players paying back would be an issue

3) As the players are not tracked to you, you would not benefit from them (even after the free roll is done and if they continue playing)

4) As the number of real money players referred by you is less, how would you be able to pay us the $2000, kindly try and understand the situation as I need to justify the cost to the management, how would you have reacted if you had to face this situation.

5) I would suggest you to go ahead with a $500 free roll and we would not charge you for the 50%.

Kindly let me know your comments.

 

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The situation is they said they could do buy in tournaments and cannot. A $500 prize pool is a joke for 40 people in the SEO space. So clearly the tournament will not be held at Party Poker.

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