Today when I confirmed to one of my two prized offspring (for clarification, I only have two children – I wasn’t implying that I have more and I only cherish two of them) that I was indeed born in the 1970’s, the other said that that makes me seem “ancient.” Of course, it isn’t just the mathematics of my age that makes me seem old to them, it is also the stories with which I regale them about how there was no internet when I was kid or how phones had cords or how my parents didn’t have to furnish every piece of equipment when I played Little League baseball. What also makes me feel old is when I think back to how long ago it was that partypoker (once spelled with proper capitalization) was the 800-pound gorilla of the online poker world.
You young twenty-somethings, with your Instagrams and your Snapchats only know of PokerStars as the dominant poker room. But once, more than a decade ago, it was partypoker. The poker room that was a party ruled the roost and we all enjoyed our dealt rakeback and plentiful reload bonuses. But once partypoker decided to pull out of the U.S. market after the UIGEA passed in late 2006, its player traffic sunk like a stone and PokerStars took over. party, while still one of the largest poker rooms in the world for a number of years, has largely been an afterthought since.
This past weekend, though, partypoker hit a level it had not seen for two years: the third largest international poker room in the world. According to PokerScout.com, partypoker now ranks only behind PokerStars and 888poker in terms of dot-com poker rooms that do not accept U.S. customers. PokerStars has a seven-day average of 12,000 cash game players, 888poker has a seven-day average of 1,800 (that’s not a typo – PokerStars is that much larger than everyone else), and partypoker has a seven-day average of 1,050 players, recently eclipsing the iPoker Network, which has 1,000. Bodog is actually ahead of partypoker with 1,250 players, but it still accepts U.S. customers, so it is not a fair comparison.
The poker room’s rise is likely thanks to the “Summer of Grind” promotion it has been running since June 20th. Continuing through August 14th, it is a very simple promotion, rewarding players for playing as many hands as possible. There are two missions: one for cash games and one for Sit-and-Go’s.
The cash game mission is called fastGrind and gives out cash for playing in hands at fastforward tables. It requires A LOT of hands, but fastforward hands are…fast…and there is still a month and a half left in the promotion. Players who play 30,000 total fastforward hands will receive $150 cash. Get up to 60,000 and that’s an additional $150. The 100,000 hand mark awards another $300, while the 250,000 hand milestone pays out $900 more. All told, players can win $1,500 cash if they reach 250,000 hands.
This is the part of the promo that is undoubtedly driving partypoker’s ascent, as customers are grinding away for that free money.
The Sit-and-Go side is similar, just with smaller numbers. The milestones for tournaments played are 400 Sit-and-Go’s, 750, 1,250, and 3,000, with incremental payouts of $100, $100, $150, and $650. That means those who complete 3,000 Sit-and-Go’s during the promotion will receive $1,000 cash.