Way, way, way back in the day I used to get off work at the Bedrock Rock and Gravel Company and come home and play poker at Paradise Poker. As far as I was concerned it was the only poker room to play at. It had the most players, a good reputation, and it was easy to get money on and off the site.
I’m not sure how long I played there but once I got up to $5/$10 the game selection tanked. I think the most tables they could spread was four and it was all the same people playing on all of the tables. It was almost like being a regular at a local poker room. Every night you sat down to the same exact opponents and everybody basically pushed chips back and forth.
That’s when I decided to give PartyPoker a try. I admit that I got my ass handed to me the first few times at Party. I simply wasn’t used to the aggression and how bad the other players played at that level. I mean, who three bets you at $5/$10 out of position with 6To? Mind you, once I adjusted I loved Party but at $5/$10 it was a rock garden at Paradise.
But my conversion to PartyPoker isn’t the theme of this post. This post is about how Paradise basically had everything going for it and somehow lost it all. They eventually were acquired by SportingBet.com and they are now a mere skin on the 8th largest poker network.
There are many reasons why Paradise Poker sank while the rest of the industry boomed but I think it really comes down to management not keeping up with a changing industry.
Now, I would like to say up front that I don’t know anybody at ParadisePoker. I don’t even know the names of the management team there so nothing should be taken personally. I just thought about writing this after having a conversation with some fellow poker players and we all got started on ParadisePoker and we were pondering what the hell happened to them.
While the likes of PartyPoker, PokerStars, and even Full Tilt Poker started to gain market share ParadisePoker seemed to react by doing absolutely nothing. While other rooms were heavily promoting their affiliate programs, frequent bonuses, and buying up advertising time on any station that would take their money, ParadisePoker seemed to be happy with sitting back and watching their competitors grow larger and larger.
Excuse me if my memory serves me incorrectly as I have been unable to google up much about the exact timing of things like loyalty programs, affiliate programs, etc, were introduced but in my memory ParadisePoker was not just late to market with most of these items but years behind.
The online poker world is fiercely competitive so it’s not unusual to see Poker Room A launch some new feature or value-add only to see it copied by its competitors within a few months. That’s just the nature of the best. But ParadisePoker let months or sometimes a year pass before responding to smaller rooms nipping at its heels. In fact, it wasn’t until they quit nipping and had overtaken them that you got any real sense ParadisePoker was even aware of what was going on around them.
Now, I have two theories on why this might have been. First is that management was so busy stuffing wads of cash into their pockets to notice. I mean, if you set up a website and suddenly it started making millions there are a lot of people who would start coasting. “Hey, why not take a month off and go to Bali? I mean, I’m still going to make a couple of million anyway.”
The second theory is that being early to market they got themselves locked into a poor technology infrastructure and simply couldn’t move fast enough. I’ve seen this a lot in the software world. You hire the cheapest programmers you can find and they build you a system that is a steaming pile of dog crap that technically meets all of your requirements. But they weren’t paid to think about the future so they didn’t and as the business changes you can’t just go in and add the new stuff on top. You have to go back and completely rewrite that whole part of the program.
The second theory might explain why they dumped their proprietary platform almost immediately after being acquired. I mean, why would you throw away several years worth of development effort and give away a not insignificant portion of your revenues if the underlying platform wasn’t more expensive to fix?
Whatever happened, it’s a shame. Everyone I’ve spoken to about ParadisePoker really seemed to enjoy playing on the site. Most only moved when the game selection dried up or they simply couldn’t resist what the other rooms were offering them.
Even in researching this (if a few googles is called research these days) I ran across several poker site reviews and they said basically the same sorts of things. “I have no idea what happened to them.” “I really enjoyed playing on this site when it was the leader.”
This is an industry where you’re constantly forced to innovate. Anybody who stands still too long could end up being the next ParadisePoker.
Other sites may have passed up Paradise in certain aspects but I am a u.s. citizen and I was more then happy with Paradise up until the day the gates of Paradise closed. I miss the old Paradise and would do anything to have it back. RUS-T (my old paradise ID)
No need to mention the UIGEA. By the time the UIGEA hit they had fallen from the largest room in the world to perhaps 5th or 6th and were still falling. The premise of this article was why they fell when back at the beginning of this decade they were far and away the leader in online poker. How / why did Party surpass them? And then Stars, Full Tilt, and other?
This article is poorly researched. No mention of UIGEA?
True they were not on pace with the top two by 2006 but they were still a competitive and growing business despite some mis steps. See Sportingbet’s old annual reports for indication of performance.
UIGEA killed the platform. 80%+ of their liquidity was from the US and they were owned by a PLC. See post #7912762, #7913125, #7913218, #7916856 in this thread on 2p2. http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=7666067&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1