Has The Party Poker Fish Pool Dried Up?
By Ian McIntosh, Sat Dec 10th

Party has long been known as the place to go to catchunsuspecting "fish". What are fish? Well they are theplayers who are just starting to learn to play or who havebeen around for a while but just aren't very good. They are theprey of the "sharks" and the traditional hunting groundfor the last while has been Party Poker.

Well the bad news for the sharks is that the fish pool seems tohave dried up! It just isn't as easy as it used to be to cleanup at Party Poker. There are a few possible reasons as to whythis might have happened and they are outlined below.

More competition from other sites.

Party Ring tournament tables – where you just join in andplay - have a minimum betting level of $0.50/$1.00 for theirreal money games. This is actually one of the highestentry levels in the industry, many sites now offer $0.25/$0.50tables and there are even some who go as low as $0.10/$0.25 and$0.05/$0.10. The minimum deposit at Party is also high,currently it's $50 and again this is much higher than some sites.

Increased awareness through books and ebooks.

Recently there's been a large number of books and ebooks on thesubject of Party Poker, leading to more educated players at thesite. The information in the books usually tends to be along thesame lines and is basically fairly sound advice, so with moreand more people buying and reading these manuals thestandard of play is bound to improve.

Economic climate.

The economy in general has taken a bit of a downturn since mostof the Party manuals were written and most people now feelthat the dollar in their pocket is worth slightly less than itwas. This means of course that they are more careful aboutsearching out less expensive options to play while they arelearning.

Bonuses.

Party being the industry leader attracts many new sign-upsdaily and in order to try and compete the other sites need tooffer better sign-up bonuses. You need to deposit your own moneyto get the bonus released so a lot of new players are juststaying and playing at the site until their bonus is released.

As an aside, the Party site’s graphics leave a bit to bedesired - they are clunky and old fashioned

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and none of theplayers are smiling! Also it’s not all that user-friendly fornew players and the information provided in the lobby is fairlysparse.

About the author:Article by Ian McIntosh of www.Love-Texas-Holdem.com. Check out the site for all the latest information on TexasHoldem tournaments and poker freerolls. Please feel free to use this article onyour website, newsletter or blog as long as this resource box isleft intact and there's a live link to the site.