Are Fish and Sharks Swimming in Different Tanks at PartyPoker?

Imagine walking into a live poker room and signing up for a game.

You get asked, “Are you a beginning player or an experienced player?”

You answer, “I’m an experienced player.”

Based solely on that response, your name is placed onto a segregated list containing just the veteran players.  Beginning poker players have their own set of tables and games to choose from.  It’s like having adult tables and kiddie tables at a picnic.

If you encountered something like this, would you stick around and still play?

This is apparently really happening.  And it’s not taking at some tiny cardroom in the middle of nowhere.  Based on recent reports, PartyPoker — once the largest online poker site in the world — may very well be quarantining its players based on levels of experience.

READ THE STORY HERE AT POKERFUSE.COM.

If true, this news could be (and should be) devastating for PartyPoker.  Not only is such a practice deceitful.  It’s essentially telling players that if they become loyal devotees to the PartyPoker brand, they’ll eventually be assured of getting less table selection and tougher games.

Gee, thanks for playing.

Here’s what’s reportedly going on.  New players who sign up at PartyPoker have a full slate of open tables and games available to them.  They can choose any game.  Naturally, one expects that most new players play for lower stakes.  So, they tend to gravitate to those games.  However, more experienced PartyPoker customers log onto their accounts and see quite a different menu of available tables and games.  They aren’t able to simply pick and choose any game going at the moment because certain tables have haven programmed to only allow new sign-ups and players with limited playing experience.

So, the more you play at PartyPoker, the fewer games you can choose from and by consequence, the tougher those games will become since there’s general agreement that experienced players are tougher competition than beginning players.  What’s PartyPoker’s new motto going to be — “The More You Play, the Tougher It Gets?”

If PartyPoker wants to “protect” its fish, then so be it.  In fact, one can even make a case that novice players deserve protection.  But such a practice absolutely must be publicly disclosed.  To conceal such a practice, if it’s really occurring, is fraudulent.  It’s a misrepresentation of the website, which implies that all game options are open to all players — which is standard practice for as long as online poker games have existed.

This situation is made worse by online poker already being plagued by years of scandal.  The last thing we need is another, even if this is seemingly innocuous by comparison.  Indeed, most online poker sites have been flushed clean in recent years largely because they’ve had to demonstrate much greater transparency, that is if they ever hope to achieve complete legitimacy and greater expansion into legal and licensed markets (the U.S. being the lynchpin on the next poker explosion).  But so long as some sites continue to practice deceit and then not — as of yet — clearly address these charges honestly, then the entire business sector continues to be weighed down by a veil of secrecy.

Moreover, this plays into a disturbing pattern.  Online poker has been taking hits for more than a decade.  All the sites have been charged with fixed games, action flops, pre-programmed bad beats, and so on (most of it, untrue).  As we know, some sites have even cheated players.  This kind of secrecy does nothing to help the situation.  It only makes it worse.  It leads to the natural follow-up question, which is — if Party Poker isn’t telling us about this, what else might they be doing?  Are they manipulating the software, too?  I’m not making this charge, of course.  But it’s going to be asked (as it rightly should).

It’s pure speculation here and I’ll withdraw the charge if anyone wishes to correct me (in either the comments section or privately), or if someone official goes on record to recant my supposition.  The timing here is everything.  PartyPoker apparently has not engaged in this before (it most certainly have been discovered much earlier had it existed).  So what happened recently that might cause PartyPoker to change its ways?

The one-word answer:  Zynga.

This dubious practice would appear to be entirely consistent with the announcement of Bwin Party’s recent partnership with ZyngaPlusPoker, which was supposedly going to funnel massive traffic from the “social gaming” community into online poker games.  The last thing Bwin Party wants is thousands of clueless Farmville fanatics from the Zynga website to lose their entire bankrolls in tough poker games.  It makes perfect sense to stock a baby fish tank with novices before gradually releasing the fresh catch into the bigger poker ocean [SEE FOOTNOTE BELOW].

If this is actually happening and that’s PartyPoker/Zynga’s business plan — fine.  Just don’t hide it.  And certainly don’t run from the question like you’re on fire and looking for a fire hose when asked about it.

According to the same article referenced above and a related post at the Two Plus Two website/forum from a PartyPoker representative, they’re not denying this practice.  While not outright admitting to player segregation, the statement alluded to “testing” and “research” currently being done.  All this without any public disclosure of course, until the site got caught with it’s pants down.  And even after bare exposure, the company continues to tip-toe around the question, refusing to disclose if and how it makes conditions tougher for some players than others.

This all looks dirty.  It’s time to come clean.

FOOTNOTE — So far, Zynga’s impact on online poker traffic at Bwin Party has been embarrassing.  This deceptive company with a long track record of questionable business practices and poor management should not be licensed anywhere in the U.S.  I’ll have more to say about this issue later.   READ MORE HERE