About 2 weeks ago Party Poker turned off observer chat and at the same time turned on side bets and blackjack. I am not going to get into the bad idea it is for you as poker players to get hooked into playing blackjack and making bad odds bets on the color of the flop. Instead I am here to discuss the observer chat getting turned off.
To many this may seem insignificant but to a lot of people it is like taking away a vital part of playing online. I know that many will not agree to what I am about to say but I ask you to listen anyway, open your ears and minds to a different train of thought.
The observer chat was turned off during an upgrade and when you try as an observer to chat on a table it tells you that it is temporarily disabled. It has been a few weeks and I think that temporary is going to become permanent. Actually I fear it will become permanent. "Why?" you ask. Well for many reasons. I talked to a fellow party poker player while writing this article and we both often after a bad beat will use the observer chat to tell the guy that just gave us our walking papers a piece of our minds. Here is an excerpt of our conversation:
TommTwoToes: so what are your feelings about party poker turning off observer chat? And do you think it effects you anger management? Like you are not able to release?
fowler: I hate it, I like to be able to call people fucking idiots. It helps me vent.
TommTwoToes: do you think that we are out of control when we do that? Or that we are justified?
fowler: it is out of control
TommTwoToes: maybe we need an anger management course
fowler: it is childish, but it feels good, I don't care what they think it makes me feel better and i would never do it in person
TommTwoToes: do you think that the bitching is why party poker turned it off? And that the upgrade is just an excuse?
fowler: no, I think they are upgrading it
fowler: why would they care?
TommTwoToes: maybe cause of the people complaining is making it unpleasant for others ?
fowler: I don't think the shit talk is unpleasant.
TommTwoToes: do you ever use peoples responses to the shit talk to gauge their "tilt" or the way they might play in the future?
fowler: I don't use it for anything; I use more of the "hurry up" comments as people that are in a rush.
We agreed on the point about using it to vent and release pressure plus sometimes its just down right fun. But in regards to the information gathering this is where fowler and I differ I use the smack talk in more than one way. I do take notes on people and many of you all know this. These notes may consist of how I think someone sucks, but more importantly about why and if they dealt me a bad beat. I know that if I took the time to write the bad beat in the notes I likely erupted on them. Hopefully I also put what they said in response to that eruption as that may give me an indication of their level of play and or their mentality. The other things that I pay attention to are when I am at the table but not involved in the hand in question and someone else erupts, if they are still in the game I know that they are on tilt and might be willing to play less than premium hands. I also pay attention to the person that lucked out and caught his miracle card, cause after getting berated that player if they truly are new to the game may be a little shocked and not want to look like a fool again. Thus they might be willing to lay down decent hands in the near future. But that that will quickly fade as the game goes on. Thus without the use of observer chat that guy that just got sucked out on never has a chance to distract or rattle the fish that sucked out on him and thus never gives me a chance to take advantage of it.
So why did Party Poker do this? I personally think that they did it cause of the number of complaints that they get about people raging, and that they are using the upgrade reason as a cover story. Why cover it up with an excuse? Well because if they said we are doing it because too many people rage then those people might start raging on them. Why should they not do it? Cause it changes a dynamic in the game. It makes it less and less like a real live game. Their goal is to make it as realistic as possible and this was a step in the wrong direction.
Addition:
So the more I think about this I came up with another rather realistic reason for them disabling the observer chat. There used to be a plethra of people spamming us with come use our secret system and come buy our poker product here. And disabling observer chat eliminates those spammers from the free advertising. Also another side effect is that there are no more of those bums begging for money. Its interesting that they have started to replace that apma with alot more spam of their own.
