Paradise poker has a lot of firsts. Paradise Poker was one of the first online poker rooms. Paradise Poker were the first to take encryption and collusion seriously. For a long time Paradise Poker was the largest poker room on the net. Paradise Poker was first to get screwed by the DOJ. Paradise Poker introduced things that are now common in all poker rooms, player notes, statistics. Paradise Poker was the first room to offer poker games besides Texas Holdem. Paradise Poker was one of the first to play sit n go single table tournaments. Paradise Poker was one of the first to bring us multi table poker tournaments. The Paradise Poker game interface is nice. It is pleasant on the eyes, has a nice balance between bells and whistles and functionality. The Paradise Poker lobby is easy to navigate and well laid out. Paradise Poker have decent deposit bonuses. Paradise Poker has a wide variety of tournaments. Paradise Poker also offer a wide variety of games and limits. Paradise poker is a good solid room with a long history as a business. The shuffle, the collusion protection at Paradise Poker is as safe as it gets in any online poker room.
Unfortunately, on Friday October 13th President Bush is expected to sign into law the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The legislation is designed to restrict Americans from being able to fund their online poker accounts and in doing so to prevent Americans from participating in one of their national past times. Full details of the legislation can be found on pages 213-234 at the following link: http://www.rules.house.gov/109_2nd/text/hr4954cr/hr49543_portscr.pdf
Paradise Poker, as part of the SportingBet PLC group of companies, is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange and is obligated to act in accordance with the new legislation. After much deliberation, our Legal Team has advised that in order to comply with the new legislation Paradise Poker will be required to stop accepting deposits from all US players. In addition we will no longer be able to offer US players the ability to transfer funds to each other using the ‘Send Money To Player’ function or to transfer funds to Sportsbook.com.
Please be assured that all US customers will continue to be able to access their accounts and submit cashout requests as normal. Although we will no longer be able to accept their additional deposits, to ensure a professional wind-down for our US customers, they will continue to be able to play at our real money tables with the funds they already have on deposit at Paradise until November 13th 2006. The only players that will not be able to continue playing at our real money tables are players located in one of the following states, where some form of online gambling legislation already exists:
Please note that all players will no longer have access to our casino products or sports betting products. Any Paradise Poker players that have open bets at Sportsbook.com will have the bets cancelled and the funds, along with any other funds held at Sportsbook, transferred back to Paradise Poker. The funds will be transferred back to Paradise Poker within 12 hours.
We very much regret the unfortunate environment in the United States that has prompted us to take these steps. Should there be any positive changes regarding the legal landscape, we will certainly inform players immediately.
For those interested, we recommend visiting http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org/ , a group that has been organized to represent the rights and interests of American poker players.
We thank you very much for your patronage over the years and remain hopeful that the day will come when the U.S. will join much of the rest of the world in recognizing the sense behind regulating, rather than the prohibiting online poker.
Paradise poker has simply not been able to maintain their leadership position in the poker industry. Paradise Poker have steadily grown but at a pace that lags behind the industry as a whole. There are many reasons for this. For a long time while competitors were thinking of ways to get more players, Paradise poker sat on their laurels and were slow to offer player bonuses, a public affiliate program and they let their software lag a bit behind the curve. Paradise Poker also made a few software mistakes with design. One example that I recall was having waiting lists for sit n go tournaments, were the player was given the standard “Your seat is open you have 120 seconds to take it”. This made sit n go tournaments very slow to start. Now you just sit down and wait for the table to fill up. Paradise Poker woke up and now have all those promotions and their software has improved to a point were it is better then many and as good as any. Paradise Poker work on it now and besides offering competitive deposit bonuses, they offer a host of special big money tournaments and satellites too many of the land based majors. If you left Paradise Poker in the past, or you took a look and just were not impressed in the past, take another look.
The affiliate program at Paradise poker is relatively young, coming online around February of 2005. I had an arrangement with Paradise before that, and was told that that arrangement was over and I would need to go over to the affiliate program. Apparently, the company had new management and they were changing their marketing strategies. At any rate, I now make a small fraction of what I did before, something less then 5% of what it was before. Conversion rates fell dramatically, and the new program was laced with the usual affiliate bullshit. The basic offer is monthly gross: $0 - $10,000 25% $10,001 + 30% The reality is that I net about 1/3 of 25% after costs, which are credit card charges, and promotion costs, I assume promotion costs means costs of bonus codes. I am in other programs were I net about 90% with about the same terms. The bottom line, yeah do it if you got the space, you can make some money, but shop around for better programs for your premium space. I rate the affiliate program at 1 on a 1 to 5 scale, 5 being best.
For those interested, we recommend visiting pokerplayersalliance.org, a group that has been organized to represent the rights and interests of American poker players.