Party Poker
Bonus & Reviews

We've all seen the ads: Party affiliated poker sites (skins) collectively serve more players than all other sites combined. A place where the bonuses are good, the players are loose- I've gotta get out there.  Yep, Party is where it's at. The primary reason for this is, of course, the bonuses. They are plentiful, big, and relatively easy to clear. Party is also claimed by many to be a fisherman's heaven. So if you actually know how to play poker you should have a doubly profitable bonus chase.

So, what are the prerequisites for playing on Party? As I mentioned in my previous article, I think having a sufficient bankroll is the number one requirement for a bonus chaser. A $300 bankroll is recommended, safety wise, for playing .5/1, which is the lowest limit on Party. I've got about $340, so I'm good in that respect. I just need to find a Party bonus I can max out for that amount of money.

Of all the Party skins, MultiPoker has the lowest maximum bonus: 20% to $75 max. I'm giving up about $7 in bonus because I can't max, but it is a 5x bonus, so it's much better than the Paradise bonus that I just spent twenty hours clearing.

So all I had to do was click the ITH link, download, and enjoy (I'm glossing over all the details here about how I had to reboot Windows XP with a different system disk, set a restore point, blah, blah, blah...)

Oops. Wait, the bonus has shown up as 10x in their confirmation email. What a bummer. I go back and look at the ITH link that I used, and sure enough, it says 5x- as does MultiPoker's main web page. An email to customer service produces nothing useful, as they just send a copy of the welcome email back again. Geez.

I stewed about this for many hours, composing the perfect response to their response. But, then I realized that I could be playing poker. It was Friday night. I was planning to clear my bonus within 400 hands and then I would've been stuck for for the rest of the weekend with no bonus to clear anyway. I might as well just play the 680 hands and be done with it. I was spending more time worrying about how perfect my bonus could be than the time I would actually spend clearing it.

Time to deposit and get down to POKER.

Woohoo! This is awesome. Party tables have incredible pot sizes (compared to Paradise.) I put myself on the waiting list of the top six or seven tables and it only took about five minutes to get three tables running. The software is fast, as well. I'm clearing about 100 hands/hour with 3 tables compared to about 75 hands/hour at Paradise. I figure it's only going to take me about seven hours to clear this bonus.

Right smack dab in the middle of my Saturday afternoon marathon I get the wonderful Pay-Pro ID check. Yep. I got called. “Some Indian sounding lady is on the phone and wants to talk to you.” “I don't know any Indian ladies.” (Yikes, my wife has found me out- I've got Indian babes on the side.) ”... Yes, I'm really Jeff Wilson...” “...Yes, I do I live at blah, blah, blah...” All the while, I'm trying to play three tables with the phone balanced on my shoulder.

In spite of all this pain and suffering. I was able to finish off the bonus in about 20 table-hours (6.5 hours of 3-tabling). I ended my first Party stint up $22 in poker winnings in addition to my bonus cash out. I leave the site with $430. Life is good.

Jeff “deNile” Wilson

Next: “The Party continues.”