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Party Poker FAQ
Welcome, this Party Poker FAQ is meant to address the many questions
that I see new players asking about Party Poker or just online poker
in general. Please be advised that while I have done my best to ensure
the accuracy of all information in this FAQ, that I am human and mistakes
will happen. With that, please enjoy the FAQ - if you have any questions
or comments, please post them in the discussion forum and I will get
back to you there.
I. Party Poker - New Players
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Are Mike Sexton / Vince Van Patten / Shana Hiatt related to Party
Poker?
 Mike Sexton is the official 'Host'
of Party Poker and acts as a poker consultant and spokesman for
the site. Since Mike is actually a professional poker player in
addition to an announcer on the World Poker Tour, he actually does
involve himself with direction of Party Poker.
Shana Hiatt is also a spokesperson for Party Poker and appears in
a number of Party Poker ads. She also makes appearances at some
of the Party Poker events, such as the Party Poker Million III event.
In January of 2004, Party Poker ran a promotional "Win a dinner
date with Mike and Shana' promotion on their site, so a few lucky
players even managed to meet both Mike and Shana. As of 2005, Shana
Hiatt has decided to leave Party Poker as their spokes girl, which
is quite a disappointment to most players of course.
As for Vince Van Patten, he doesn't have any association with Party
Poker and is only associated with the World Poker Tour.
Update: Shana Hiatt is no longer the spokesmodel for Party Poker
and has moved on to greener pastures. Good luck Shana!
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Is Party Poker associated with the World Poker Tour?
Party Poker is a charter member of the World Poker Tour and was
one of the first companies to give their backing to the World Poker
Tour. For this reason, during the early days, you could often see
Mike Sexton hosting Party Poker commercials on the World Poker Tour.
There were very cheezy commercials, but quite effective at the same
time. My own commentary on the World Poker
Tour here.
Update: Party Poker is no longer with the World Poker Tour and
has cancelled it's status as a charter member. Reasons given for
this were business related, although it most likely has to do with
Party Poker unable to advertise their .com section on the WPT.
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Why is Party Poker the most popular site?
Due to their early advertising on the World Poker Tour, Party Poker
really became a mainstream name. They also promoted aggressively
on the Internet with PartyPoker
bonus code promotions that were far better than other other
sites. For this reason, it made Party Poker one of the best poker
sites to play at. Coupled with an aggressive online marketing
program, a refer-a-friend programs and an independent affiliate
network, Party has taken the lions share of the online poker market.
Party Poker Bonus code
: 365POKER . Use promo
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Poker cap!
Up to $100 sign-up bonus - $100 sign-up bonus is at 20% bonus match
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to Party Poker
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How easy or hard is the competition at Party Poker?
Party Poker has some of the worst players that you will find anywhere
on the Internet. This is a good thing, because it means the competition
is quite easy at the lower limits. As the limits go up, especially
at the $5/10 game and above, the competition does increase, so only
experienced players should try the higher limit games.
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What's your review of Party Poker?
Considering I run a site called the Party Poker Strategy Guide,
I am biased and will recommend it of course. The poker tournaments
and limit games are the best (the most fishy) among the different
poker sites. The support team at Party Poker is outsourced to India
however, which means that you are generally dealing with poor quality
support if you have problems.
Party Poker customer support actually gained quite the bad reputation
in 2003 when the popularity of poker exploded. However, since then,
Party Poker has upped their support staff and given them more training.
With their recent IPO and other expansion, their support team is
better than before, but still leaves something to be desired.
If you decide to join, be sure you sign up with one of the Party
Poker promotional bonuses, which you can find on the home page.
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Is it true that I can play in the World Poker Tour through Party
Poker?
Yes, Party Poker offers the chance to win a spot into the World Poker
Tour events. This is done through satellite tournaments, where the
winner of the satellite can advance to a spot in the World Poker Tour
event. Satellites range from as little as $10 to as much as $600,
depending on the event and amount of players involved.
Note that World Poker Tour events usually consist of a few hundred
participants, so what you see on TV is the final table of those events.
So, you only get to appear on TV if you make the final table. If you
do make the final table, you also get to play with a bunch of fog
machines blasting behind you, swirling xenon lights blinding you from
above and to top it off, a large audience watching your every move.
Quite fun :)
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Do you have any tips for playing at Party Poker?
Yes, check out my Party
Poker Tips page for some Party Poker specific tips. But if you
want the general idea of how to play at Party Poker, just play a solid,
tight game of poker. The games are pretty wild there, so if you play
straight up in the low limits, you'll do fine.
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Where can I find more information about Party Poker?
If you need to know anything you can't find on this site, then
go check out the Party Poker website at: http://www.partypoker.com
Party Poker FAQ - Existing Players
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I'm having some issues with Party Poker, who can I contact for
help?
The following are contacts for Party Poker:
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Can you run Party Poker on Linux or Macintosh?
Party Poker can run on Linux with VMWare but reports of it running
on WINE seem to come back with glitches and other issues. As for the
Macintosh, Party Poker is currently not supported on the Mac natively,
although there may be some types of PC Emulation that been reported
to run - such as Virtual PC.
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How does the buddy list work?
The buddy list is somehwat handicapped on purpose in my opinion. You
can use the buddy list to invite friends to a table when you are online
or simply see if your friends are online. Other than that, it doesn't
serve much of a purpose. You can't tell what tables your friends are
playing at and cannot use it for communication. Obviously, Party Poker
does not want it's players colluding with each other, so the buddy
list is (and should be) limited in it's functionality.
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How do notes work at Party Poker
You can right click on each person's name and open a notes window
for that player. After you've made a note, a small paper icon will
appear next to that person's name in the bottom corner. Notes are
saved to your hard drive in your Party Poker directory as Notes.txt,
so you can copy this to your friends, your Empire Poker folder, or
modify it yourself by hand for whatever reason.
I've also written an article on taking notes which you can check out
at my player notes page.
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What are the best times to play at Party Poker?
If you play long enough and keep track of your games, you'll start
to notice that certain days or certain hours are very profitable.
Since most players have jobs other than poker, the sites become more
popular immediately after 5pm and then die off after 11pm. Likewise,
Thursday, Friday and Saturday tend to generate more traffic than Sunday
and Monday. You can usually begin to feel which days have more fish
than others after tracking your play.
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Do you recommend playing multiple tables at Party Poker?
Party Poker now lets you play at up to 8 tables at a time, which
covers the need of most players who need to multi-table. There are
many stories of professionals playing up to 16 tables of a time,
but I don't recommend this of course to anyone that isn't trying
to mimick Tom Cruise in Minority Report..
I usually play two tables at once if I am only playing poker, or 1
table if I am playing poker and doing something else at the same time.
I don't recommend players starting out to play at multiple tables
unless your game is solid at that limit. If you are a losing player
or have leaks in your game, playing multiple tables will not only
make your game worse, it will double the amount of money you are winning.
Most of the time, playing multiple tables isn't a problem because
you won't have the action on you all at once, but when you are in
the action all at once, it is very important you are quick enough
to calculate all the odds necessary and analyze the situation.
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What is a Party Poker affiliate?
Affiliates are people or companies who market for another company
and receive compensation for each sale that they make. Whenever you
see a banner for a poker site, or get spam email or see spam in the
newsgroups, it is usually because an affiliate is trying to get you
to go to his or her site.
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What's so bad about all the affiliates?
Affiliates are usually considered scum by most of the poker scene
and Internet community. This feeling is in place for good reason,
because as mentioned in the previous question, almost all spam you
recieve or see is because of an affiliate trying to make a quick buck.
All of the junk websites you see in the search engines like www.awesome-poker-tips-to-cheat-at-poker.biz/cheat_at_poker.html
and the like are almost always made by affiliates too. These websites
are absolute crap and are 90% pop-ups, banners and misleading links.
If you've done any poker related browsing on the web, you'll know
what I'm talking about.
Now, I don't want to say all affiliates are bad, because I am one
myself, hence the Party Poker and Empire Poker banners on this site.
However, I like to believe that this site offers something valuable
and gives a reason for people to actually come here, rather than tricking
people to come here. In reality, almost all the poker sites out there
are affiliates in some way or another, but attracting visitors with
search engine tricks or actual content is what separates a sleazy
affiliate from a beneficial affiliate.
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What happens if Party Poker crashes during a tournament?
From Party Poker's site:
22. a) SINGLE TABLE TOURNAMENTS: If a Tournament is cancelled
due to technical issues, any Player who was eliminated prior to
this time will lose their buy-in and entry fee. The remaining Players
will be refunded their Buy-ins and Entry fees and will equally divide
up the Buy-in monies from the Players already eliminated, regardless
of the chip standing when the tournament was halted.
b) MULTI TABLE TOURNAMENTS: If a Tournament is cancelled due to
technical issues, any Player who was eliminated prior to this time
will lose their buy-in and entry fee. The remaining Players will
be refunded their entry fees and will equally divide up 50% of the
remaining prize pool. The other 50% of the prize pool will be distributed
to the remaining players on a percentage basis (based on their chip
count when the tournament went down).
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Is there any way to PM (private message) someone on Party Poker?
Yes and no. To do so, add this person to your Buddy list then invite
them to a game. Instead of inviting them to a game though, simply
type what you want to say into the box.
Please note that other players can block your messages and I know
that Party Poker logs these messages. So in other words, don't try
to cheat and share cards with your friends.
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