More Party Poker High Jinks

So, the Party Poker 'upgrade'...

Firstly, what nitwit decided to run an upgrade on a Saturday afternoon(US) or evening(Europe)?

I've worked in IT for ten years, and would have been laughed off every project I ever worked on for suggesting rolling out new software as peak operating hours approached.

It's annoying enough being crashed out of a cash game, but the amount of STT and MTT players affected must be in the thousands.

Secondly, I really don't like the new games as a player, though from a shareholder perspective I can see why they make sense to Party.

If some degenerate gambler wants to blow his cash on Party, I'd rather he did it capping it pre-flop against me with 73s due to it's powerful flushing and straightening possibilities, rather than by handing the cash to Party on a sidebet.

Thirdly, it looks like they have hived off the skin players into a separate database! Right now I am logged into Party, Empire, and Eurobet, and can see the following:

Site	Tables	Players
Party	1864	12748
Empire	560	3797
Eurobet	563	3853

They are also allowing people to 8 table now.

This looks like an attempt to get all the high volume grinders back onto the main site, and off the skin sites offering rakeback. Whether this will work remains to be seen.

Perhaps some people might prefer playing on a site with less grinders.

I'm surprised Party didn't need to publicise this change in advance, as they are now a FTSE100 company. However, I did note that when Sporting Bet pulled out of their takeover bid for Empire, it was stated:

"Neither company provided further details though one source familiar with the matter told AFX News Sportingbet had been concerned by Empire Online's relationship with its bigger rival PartyGaming PLC."

So perhaps the skins already had wind of this.

If this is true, I'm amazed the skins are signed up to an agreement that lets Party cut them off from one of their biggest selling points.

The next few days should be interesting, to see how people react.

Personally, I haven't had time to think it all through properly yet.