US Full Tilt pros can now start the process to get their money, however rumours abound that the US Full Tilt Red Pro’s will not get paid out in the remission process. Party Poker re-brand and re-launch has been far from smooth, while 888Poker capitalises taking 3rd place in player traffic rankings.
Party Makeover Stumbles out of the Blocks
The Party Poker rebranded logo is unoriginal to the extreme – Anyone remember Absolute Poker ?
I can’t be the only one who has noticed that the new logo is an almost identical copy of the Absolute Poker diamond logo … but in orange.
Original – No
Inspiring – Not Really
Seriously who the hell did they pay to “design” their new logo and how in the hell didn’t anyone on the board think “hmm this looks kind of familiar”.
On the upside they have some interesting ideas for making their poker room more interesting – not maybe new but a bit more interesting.
With the introduction of missions and objectives like playing x amount of certain types of tournaments leading to extra rewards and tickets, party are hoping to appeal to the more gaming end of the market.
The site is aiming for a much more social gaming feel, unfortunately they relaunch has been plagued with server load issues and so it’s been far from a smooth launch. Traffic dropped markedly and has currently enabled 888Poker to slip into 3rd place.
In other Party news they have confirmed that their recently added 3% ewallet withdrawal charges will be a permanent feature, which will do little to help their stalling traffic. Added to which they have announced that the new player sign-up bonus will be dropped from the industry typical 100% match up to $500 to a less appealing up to $50 offer – none of this is going to be popular with more regular players.
Full Tilt Pro See Red Over US Settlement
Following the leak of an email it seems that US Full Tilt Pro’s as well as affiliates and business partners will be excluded from the remission process overseen by the Garden Group.
The Garden Group are now responsible for overseeing the repaying the US Full Tilt players who are now able to check their balances here on FullTiltPokerClaims.com
The deadline to submit a Petition for Remission is Saturday November 16, 2013
US Players must certify that they are eligible to participate in the remission process, meeting a substantial list of criteria including having actually deposited funds on Full Tilt and not having been a past or present vendor of FTP that received compensation through a FTP player account.
The leaked email appears to include FullTilt Red Pro’s in that description of being compensated by FTP via player accounts. However reports have confirmed players receiving rakeback have been able to process claims for their balances – suggesting this is not affecting non sponsored players.
888 Poker Climb Up to 3rd Place
News that 888 Poker has grown it’s player base again, climbing up to 3rd place behind PokerStars and iPoker brings yet more woes for the “ailing” Full Tilt.
In fact 888 is currently the only poker room that is bucking the generally downward trend having grown by 5% in just the last quarter. Having already surpassed the still struggling Party Poker, knocking Full Tilt down to 4th is a big boost for 888. They have been steadily climbing up the rankings for the past year or more while others have stagnated watching PokerStars draw ever further away from the now limited competition.
With an ongoing focus on putting on new players and recreational players first the games at 888 have remained some of the juiciest online. By simply restricting the max number of tables to 4 the site allows players to multi-table but not to a degree where it would only be possible using HUD’s or artificial help – this puts off multi-table nits and keeps the games rec friendly.
Poker room struggling to gain and retain players really could learn a lot from 888Poker who clearly have proved the can buck the trend consistently putting on new players while others stagnate or shrink – They must be doing something right.
