PartyPoker announced last week that it will soon make changes to its VIP program, appearing to flatten the VIP structure by eliminating the highest loyalty levels.
The initial announcement was made on PartyPoker’s VIP page, but it was tacked onto the bottom of page, making it so that most people would never see it. Most current players who have reached the Palladium or Palladium Elite VIP levels will not frequently need to check that page and if they do, they almost certainly stop scrolling down once they hit the rewards table and thus may not see the message. Potential customers checking out the VIP details likely don’t care about the message, since it doesn’t affect them.
Once players heard about what was going on, a PartyPoker representative posted the following on the Two Plus Two forums:
As you have already heard we have taken the decision to remove the Palladium Elite status from our loyalty scheme and remove all bonuses that pay greater than 30% effective rakeback. We believe the change will allow us to manage our poker room more effectively and ultimately allow for fairer distribution of bonuses across the network – this change will be implemented on as of the start of April 2013 onwards NOTE: players that are Palladium Elite will be able purchase Palladium Elite bonuses for the duration of quarter one (January 1st 2013 – March 31st 2013). Players will also be able to achieve the status in quarter one and purchase Palladium Elite bonuses. If you have any questions regarding the change or your account please contact customer support.
As it stands now, there are five VIP loyalty levels: two Palladium and three Palladium Elite. To reach the Palladium level, players must earn 9,000 PartyPoints in a calendar quarter, while those gunning for Palladium Elite must earn 40,000. At 10,000 and 20,000 points, Palladium members can redeem their points for cash ($600 and $1,500, respectively) or poker bonuses ($1,000 and $3,000). The different Palladium Elite levels are at 40,000, 100,000, and 300,000 points and correlate to cash awards of $3,500, $15,000, and $50,000, or bonuses of $7,000, $20,000, and $75,000.
March 31st will be the final day for the Palladium Elite status, so starting April 1st, there will only be Palladium. Some of the Elite bonuses will be rolled into regular Palladium, though; while the $20,000 and $75,000 poker bonuses along with the $50,000 cash bonus will be gone, the $3,500 and $15,000 cash awards will still be available. The $15,000 cash bonus is a 30 percent rakeback equivalent, the highest that PartyPoker said the poker room will keep.
PartyPoker currently ranks as the third largest online poker room for cash game traffic, according to PokerScout.com. With a seven-day average of 3,650 cash game players, it sits behind Full Tilt Poker (4,850) and PokerStars (24,400). It used to be in a tight battle with the iPoker Network (2,900), but with the recent addition of bwin poker, PartyPoker sits comfortably in the third spot.
