Party Poker is one of the world’s oldest online poker platforms. It’s one of the best gambling sites out there, and we want everyone to know about it. Therefore, in this Party Poker review, you’ll be able to read all about this website, its games, tournaments, bonuses, and rewards.
Table of Contents
About Party Poker
Let’s start this Party Poker review by rummaging through the platform’s history. Party Poker was founded in 2001 during the blooming era of the Internet, and for a good amount of time, it was the most popular card room in the world. However, in 2006, when new US Internet gambling laws came to be, Party Poker had to retreat from the US market. Unfortunately, that’s when its popularity started to plummet.
Luckily, the platform slowly gained back its relevance and became popular once again. Party Poker became known as a soft game platform with a very lucrative cashback and reward system. For this reason, many players chose to take advantage of it.
However, the traffic was more than the platform could handle. In the end, Party Poker ended up abandoning its original reward system in 2013. It introduced new table options only paying users could access. Still, a few months later, after a majority of users complained about the company’s segregation policy, Party Poker had to be redesigned again.
Today, Party Poker has a fairly stable and good reputation. It has an average of almost 2200 players per day, and it’s available in 14 different languages.
Party Poker Games
The next part of this Party Poker review will focus on the platform’s games and features.
Compared to some other Internet gambling platforms, Party Poker doesn’t have many game options. However, they do offer both free and cash games. Their most popular game is by far Texas Hold’em poker.
When it comes to cash games, players tend to choose No-Limit Hold’em, especially the micro stakes tables. In theory, their stakes go from £0.007 to about £300. However, as we said, micro stakes are usually what players go for. In reality, the stakes are between £1.50 and £3.5.
Party Poker also has Fixed Limit and Pot-Limit Hold’em, but they are definitely not as popular, so it’s difficult to find people to play with.
Other games include Omaha, 7-Card Stud, etc.
Party Poker Tournaments
While all of the aforementioned games are a great way to pass the time and have some fun, they’re still just games. If you’re in it for the money, tournaments are the way to go. Fortunately, Party Poker has tournaments for every game in their selection.
Here’s a list of all the tournament types:
- Single-table
- Multi-table
- Scheduled Multi-table
- Shootout
- Knockout Tournaments
Most of Party Poker’s players opt for Multi-table tournaments, so we’ll explore those a bit further. Here are the categories we can opt for:
Boot Camp (£0.22–£0.08 buy-ins)
The Boot Camp category does an excellent job of introducing you to the game with no serious money involved. Moreover, there’s always something going on in this category. We suggest that you always warm up first with this category, especially if you haven’t played in a while.
The Featherweight Category(£4.22–£8.44 buy-ins)
If you’re on a budget but know how to play, take a look at the Featherweight category. There’s a lot of action, with more than 170 tournaments each week. Thus, you can earn some serious money in just a few weeks and move up a category.
The Middleweight Category(£16.88–£42.19 buy-ins)
Easily their most popular category with over 230 tournaments weekly, Middleweight is the primary choice for most Party Poker players. Additionally, the buy-in is reasonable, and it can pay off big time.
Party Poker Rewards
In 2017, Party Poker started using their old cash-back system again, which made many old-school players happy. This old/new system allows users to get back up to 40% of their invested money (tournament fees, for example).
Party Poker uses ‘points’ as currency. For each $1 (£0.77) that a player invests, they get 1 point. And when they collect a certain number of points, they get to reclaim their money.
For every 25 points you collect, you get a £3.84 cash-back, which is 20%. Meanwhile, for every 120 points collected, you get a £28.77 cash-back, which is 25%. The list goes on, and the percentages grow with the number of points. So, the more points you collect — the more cash you get back.
| Points | Cashback Payment | % |
|---|---|---|
| 25 | $5.00 | 20% |
| 50 | $10.00 | |
| 75 | $15.00 | |
| 100 | $20.00 | |
| 150 | $37.50 | 25% |
| 200 | $50.00 | |
| 250 | $62.50 | |
| 300 | $75.00 | |
| 350 | $87.50 | |
| 400 | $100.00 | |
| 450 | $112.50 | |
| 500 | $125.00 | |
| 600 | $180.00 | 30% |
| 700 | $210.00 | |
| 800 | $240.00 | |
| 900 | $270.00 | |
| 1000 | $300.00 | |
| 1200 | $480.00 | 40% |
| 1400 | $560.00 | |
| 1600 | $640.00 | |
| 1800 | $720.00 | |
| 2000 | $800.00 | |
| thereafter 40% for every 200 points earned | ||
In addition, the Party Poker bonus system is a truly rewarding one. They offer sign-up bonuses, rakeback bonuses, and many others. Reaching a certain in-game milestone will also get you a Party Poker bonus.
When you take into account every Party Poker bonus you get and add that to the money earned from cash-back — it’s safe to say that you can earn a lot on this platform.
Now let’s get into the technical aspect of this Party Poker review.
Deposits and Withdrawals
As all successful online poker platforms are, Party Poker is compatible with a wide variety of payment options. Of course, in most cases, it depends on the country you’re in, but you shouldn’t have any reason for concern. For example, most European users use Neteller or Skrill. However, you can just use an e-wallet, a card, or a wire transfer too.
All Party Poker deposits are completely free. No matter which payment method you use, all of your deposit goes straight to your balance. Additionally, you have a chance of winning a Party Poker bonus with your first deposit. Each deposit you make gives you a number of Party Poker bonus tickets that correspond to the amount you deposited. First-time deposits also grant you some extra tickets, as well as a chance to win the aforementioned jackpot.
As for the withdrawals, we were sad to find that you have to go through a waiting period. Fortunately, if you’re using an e-wallet, it’ll go through as soon as they process your request internally. That could take up to three business days. After that, it all depends on your withdrawal method, but it can take up to nine days to see the money in your account.
Party Poker Customer Support
Party Poker has excellent customer support, and there are plenty of ways you can reach them. While most people tend to write an email, you can also ring them up. It’s toll-free in most countries. Moreover, there is a live chat option on the website.
For the sake of our Party Poker review, we sent an email to customer support. They got back to us in an hour or so, but we heard reports that it can take them up to eight hours to answer. From our brief back-and-forth, we got the impression that we’re dealing with very capable staff. Their responses were informative, friendly, and concise.
But, before you turn to customer support, you might want to check out their website for some answers. It has a FAQ section, which can be very informative at times. The FAQ section lists all the common problems or questions that customers might have. Additionally, the Party Poker website is full of scattered information, so feel free to look around. Who knows what useful info you might stumble upon!
All in all, Party Poker’s customer service seems to be more than adequate. They take a while to reply, but we haven’t heard of any other complaints.
How to Sign Up for Party Poker
Let’s face it — nobody likes dealing with exhausting sign-up procedures every time we want to try out a new platform. Fortunately, Party Poker stripped the process down to an absolute minimum. Whether you choose to download the client, or to play instantly, it automatically activates the sign-up process. The only information they want up front is your name and address, and you’re good to go. In addition, each new player gets a Party Poker bonus after signing up.
Unfortunately, the people over at Party Poker reserve the right to suspend your account if they think you’re underage. You would have to provide some valid proof of your age, for legal reasons, in order to get the account back. Even though this may take some time, we can’t blame them for making sure they’re running a legal platform.
Another unfortunate thing is that US citizens cannot use Party Poker. Of course, if you live in any other country where online gambling is illegal, you can’t participate either. Moreover, players from Spain and France are limited only to players within their respective countries, which decimates the number of players significantly.
The Bottom Line
We’ll end this Party Poker review on a positive note. We recognise this platform as an outstanding online poker community. There aren’t many game options, but the games they do have are well designed. Besides, the cash-back system is amazing, and their customer support is excellent. But our favourite thing about this platform is the Party Poker bonus system. It’s rewarding, and it’s fairly easy to get a Party Poker bonus.
While writing this Party Poker review, we didn’t run into any problems with deposits and withdrawals, except for the withdrawal waiting period. However, even though we had to wait for a couple of days, the money came through in the end.
Unfortunately, Party Poker is not without its drawbacks. Exclusion of US customers is a really big disadvantage. Additionally, users from Spain and France are limited to their respective countries’ player base. We can’t recommend Party Poker to them, but we can and do recommend it to everyone else.
If you’re looking for a serious, dependable, and easy-to-use online poker platform, give Party Poker a try. And in case this Party Poker review didn’t convince you, feel free to check out their website and read more about it.