PartyPoker USA: How to safely play @ from America in 2023

Partypoker was, at one time, the largest online poker site active in the U.S. market, and many Americans long to return to these “good old days.” Back then, you could find dozens or hundreds of tables running at any hour, and there were hardly any geographic restrictions on who could play.

Unfortunately, this era is long gone by, and the prospects for those who wish to enjoy PartyPoker USA are not as sanguine anymore. The truth is that playing partypoker in the USA is an unattainable dream for most residents of the country.

There are limited exceptions to this USA-prohibited policy on the part of Party Poker, and we'll go over them all of them below. However, if you're one of those who cannot effectively play on partypoker, then we urge you to check out one of our recommended USA-friendly online poker sites instead:

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PartyPoker was the leader in USA online poker back in the early 2000s, but it had to leave the U.S. market in the wake of the UIGEA in 2006. Therefore, there was a lot of excitement surrounding the return of the Party name to America with the PartyPoker NJ site, which opened up in November 2013. Unfortunately, New Jersey is the only US state Party Poker is available in as it is not licensed elsewhere.

Initially optimistic hopes for Party in the Garden State seemed to pan out at first because PartyPoker USA soon became the most popular destination in the New Jersey regulated market for legal online poker. However, the site took a big hit when competitor PokerStars NJ began operations, and Party hasn't regained the top spot since that time.

Regardless, it was probably impossible for the company to fully realize the lofty expectations that customers had for it even under ideal circumstances. The New Jersey market contains just slightly less than 9 million people, and under state law, only those physically present within its borders can play. Even when we add into this mix visitors to the state, who are able to sign up and play at PartyPoker NJ, it's clear that the size of any potential NJ i-gaming platform tops out at a pretty modest capacity.

Indeed, the New Jersey section of PartyPoker sees an average of fewer than 100 simultaneously active cash game players as compared to the global figure of 850 on the worldwide .com player pool. Put another way, the NJ version of the room gets only about one-tenth as much traffic as the global PartyPoker site! In the global poker traffic rankings, Party NJ rates a dismal 37th place.

Even within the constraints of single-state internet poker, USA PartyPoker isn't really a big draw. It's only the third-largest NJ regulated online poker network (of four).

PartyPoker US holds a valid license for online gambling from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. It's partnered with the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City.

The other sites associated with the Borgata Casino for poker are Borgata Poker and BetMGM poker. They share player liquidity with PartyPoker, meaning that you can access the same games and tables from any of the three sites. PalaPoker also operates under a license through the Borgata, but it has a completely separate poker room that doesn't share traffic with the rest of these firms.

Cash Games

There are quite a few blind levels offered at the PartyPoker New Jersey poker room. For No Limit Hold'em, tables exist from $0.01/$0.02 to $25/$50. Six-player games are present at all supported levels, but full-ring is only available at $1/$2 and lower. Heads-up fun meanwhile can be had from $0.50/$1.00 up to $5/$10. Party is actually the preferred NJ-regulated site for heads-up cash as its larger rivals in the market don't have two-seater ring games.

PLO and PLO/8 run at the same stakes as NL Hold'em, but the only table size supported is six seats. There's also Stud (Hi and Hi-Lo) up to $5/$10 and LHE as high as $30/$60.

The most heavily trafficked format is, unsurprisingly, NL Texas Hold'em. During peak hours, you'll encounter a dozen or two games running in this big-bet structure, with the action topping out around $2.50/$5.00 or $5/$10. Here's some footage from a micro-stakes NLHE cash game at Party:

$0.05/$0.10 NL Texas Hold'em Cash Game at PartyPoker NJ

In Pot Limit Omaha, there are seldom more than three or four tables going. Unusually, the few tables that are active tend to be around $2.50/$5.00 rather than the micros, which is what we would have expected.

Split-pot Omaha, Stud games, and Limit Hold'em are more or less vacant. Of these variants, only PLO-8 tends to get any user participation and that only sporadically.

You may be excited to find out that Party's fastforward game has its own tab in the poker lobby. Lest you become too enamored of the possibility of joining this fast-fold game, we must warn you that we've never seen even a single player seated in fastforward.

SNGs

The single-table contests here run the gamut from $1 buyins to $500 at the high end. There are almost no normal-speed games; nearly everything is either turbo or hyper. Neither is there any nine-handed play because the only SNGs present require either 2, 6, or 10 registrants.

Given these restrictions, it's somewhat refreshing to see that PL Omaha sit n' gos are offered at this online poker room in addition to the standard NLHE. Four-card poker is listed from $1 to $200.

During prime time, there may be as many as a dozen sit-and-gos running at once with the maximum stakes being usually $50 or $20. Most of the games that actually fire off are 6-max turbo NLHE competitions, but some HU hypers start up as well.

One unfortunate omission from the New Jersey edition of this online poker site is the absence of SPINS, Party's lottery SNG product, which is accessible from the global .com liquidity pool and lets participants contend for prize pools as high as 240,000 times the buyin. Given the death of players in Party's fastforward cash games, it's unsurprising that management decided to decline adding SPINS to its New Jersey room too.

Tournaments

There are certainly quite a few MTTs on the schedule at this US poker site. However, a close examination of these events shows that they're unlikely to appeal to serious tourney pros particularly those who are used to the five- and six-figure guaranteed prize pools being offered at other online poker rooms.

As opposed to the global Party operation, which boasts several $250K guaranteed MTTs every Sunday, the biggest weekly tournament on offer in New Jersey promises just $35,000 for a buyin of $215.

The Tourney Lobby at Party NJ Is Somewhat Uninspired

Things are a bit better when there's a tournament series running, like the Garden State Super Series. The GSSS has had total guarantees topping $1 million sometimes with six-figure Main Events. However, this isn't any better than competing offshore poker series, like the Ignition Golden Spade Poker Open or the Online Super Series at the Winning Poker Network, which commonly feature multi-million dollar payouts across the series.

Apart from the paucity of cash up for grabs, there are other reasons to take a pass on the PartyPoker MTT series. The 2016 Garden State Super Series had technical glitches that prevented participants from playing mid-tournament, and the Main Event even had to be cancelled. This wasn't the first time Party NJ's premier tourney series was disrupted; similar events occurred in 2014 too.

Tournament Table at PartyPoker

Mobile Poker

Besides presenting users with their choice of PC and Mac download software, the folks at Party have developed a mobile poker client too. It's available for Android and iOS.

Hold'em, in both Limit and No Limit form, is contained in the mobile poker lobby at the full range of blinds available in the desktop software. The only PLO and PLO/8 tables present, on the other hand, are those at $2.50/$5.00 and above. The fact that only higher-stakes PLO is offered on mobile may be one of the reasons why the distribution of four-card games at NJ Party tends to be concentrated on the high end.

Fastforward can be enjoyed, in theory, on phones and tablets although it's always deserted. There's no Seven Card Stud in this mobile poker solution.

The entire listing of sit-n-gos spread by the room can be accessed on mobile, and you can play in multi-table events too. Check out a heads-up SNG that we recorded on our smartphone:

$1 HU Hyper SNG on Party NJ Mobile

Cashier

When you go to make a deposit through the US PartyPoker cashier, you'll see quite a few New Jersey options that aren't widely available in the rest of the United States or indeed the rest of the world. The entire menu of processors for adding money to your account is:

Most of these channels are self-explanatory, but there may be a few that you're unfamiliar with. Party Play+ is a Discover card that you can use to move funds to and from your Party account. PayNearMe is a system whereby you can go to a 7-Eleven store with your money in hand and have it transferred to your balance. Borgata Resort Cashier means that you can go directly to the cage at the Borgata to put money onto your online PartyPoker account.

When it's time to retrieve your money from the site, you can use the same methods as you can for deposits with the exception of Online Banking Transfer, PayNearMe, and credit cards. In addition, it's possible to request a withdrawal by check.

Promotions

There's a pretty decent selection of promo specials at PartyPoker. Some are for newcomers to the NJ poker room while others are designed to reward the loyalty of frequent customers.

100% up to $600 Bonus

Your first deposit at Party will be matched 100% up to a maximum of $600. Then as you collect points by playing online poker at the site over the next 60 days, your bonus will release in portions to your real money balance.

The pieces of the bonus are sized at 10% of your deposit amount. In order to clear each segment of the bonus, you must gather 4 points per bonus dollar.

The rate of point accrual is 2 points per dollar paid in tourney fees or rake. Thus, you need to rake $2 in order to earn $1 of poker bonus for a rakeback rate of 50%.

You can track your progress toward releasing this free money with the “Bonus” tab in the poker client:

Bonus Information Tab at Party

An effective 50% PartyPoker rakeback rate is well above the average for online poker. There are a few other places in the New Jersey licensed internet poker market where you can obtain a similar rate of return, but the Party bonus is the largest of them all at $1,000.

Loyalty Program

The points you gather at the Party NJ tables aren't just used to unlock bonus funds; they also contribute to your placement in the Loyalty system. There are four tiers, and your rank in the program is tied to the number of iRPs you collect in a month:

• Bronze: 0 points ($0 rake) per month
• Silver: 50 points ($25 rake) per month
• Gold: 750 points ($375 rake) per month
• Palladium: 2,000 points ($1,000 rake) per month

Depending on the number of iRPs you generate each week, you'll get a cashback payment every Monday. This cashback starts at 10% for low-volume individuals, but it reaches up above 30% for the most consistent grinders.

In addition, those at Silver level and above will receive a package of tournament tickets every month that gets more valuable the higher the level you achieve. If you can make it to Palladium, you'll receive not only $329 worth of MTT tickets but also a $500 bonus that clears at a 33% rakeback rate.

Missions

Within the Missions screen, you will see a variety of tasks that you can complete to earn a reward. For example, playing 10 hands of NLHE cash game poker will net you a prize of $1. As you progress, you will unlock harder Missions, which will come with correspondingly more valuable rewards.

Casino

On top of the poker games that it runs, Party also has casino fun for you to sample. Within the poker software, there's a selection of more than 75 that you can amuse yourself with as a diversion from the tables. The bulk of them are slot games, but there are about a dozen or so table games and a similar number of video poker machines.

The Guns N' Roses Slot Game at Party

For more casino online gambling, you can open up the web-based platform of the PartyCasino site. This expands the gaming selection a bit. Notably, there are a handful of Live Dealer tables operated by actual human beings, which are absent from the in-client casino.

The gaming menu of the Party Casino will likely suffice if you're not a hardcore devotee of these types of entertainments. However, if you're an enthusiastic casino player, then you might want to consider instead joining up with one of our recommended U.S.A.-friendly online casinos.

Sportsbook

The Garden State now has a thriving sports betting economy, thanks to the May 2018 Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. NCAA, which set aside a longstanding federal ban on this type of wagering. While several organizations, both online and brick-and-mortar, have opened up fully legal sportsbooks within the state, PartyPoker is sadly not one of them. This means you cannot use your PartyPoker balance to put some action down on your favorite teams and players.

Nevertheless, Party's sister site BetMGM does contain a sportsbook, and it also features casino and poker games. If you intend to conduct all your gambling from a single NJ account, then perhaps BetMGM is the better option for you. Another alternative, especially if you seek broader diversions than the dozen or so sports listed at BetMGM, is to sign up for a reputable offshore bookmaker.

PartyPoker NJ Summary

After carefully poring over the details, we find it undoubtedly true that the New Jersey adaptation of PartyPoker is but a pale shadow of its namesake. Beset by low traffic figures and a tough, competitive marketplace, it doesn't really host the level of action that you deserve in your online poker home.

By all means, if you live in New Jersey, register your PartyPoker account and check out what the legal online poker games are like. For microstakers who don't mass-multitable, it may very well be a suitable accommodation. The fact that you can get $25 without even depositing means it won't cost you anything to sample the games for a while.

Even in the event that you elect to devote some portion of your playing volume to Party, though, it can't hurt to explore the unlicensed sites for New Jersey online poker too. By investigating all your alternatives thoroughly, you can make the best choice among the full spectrum of rooms, state-regulated and otherwise.

Those looking to play socially amongst friends might be interested in downloading Partypoker for use as a play money app. However, they have a tough road ahead of them. There are no play money games shown in the partypoker US client, and the worldwide version of the software doesn't even let you sign up for an account if you're in the United States.

As we were trying to figure out how we could achieve our goal of accessing Party practice mode games, we remembered the days when internet poker sites would offer real money games on their .com domains while hosting stripped-down practice chips versions on their .net websites. This was a pretty obvious attempt to get around various advertising laws and restrictions.

We were delighted when a Google search turned up partypoker[dot]net, which promised us the ability to enjoy poker for play money. Unfortunately, though, we were unable to successfully install the partypoker play money software. Every time we launched the program, we were told that we were using an outdated version and prompted to redownload it from the site. However, this just caught us up in an infinite loop, which we were unable to resolve.

We then saw mention of a Partypoker app for phones and tablets that could be used for both real money and practice mode play. Nevertheless, we were unable to locate such an app. The closest we found was a PartyPoker Live app, but this program was merely a way to stay apprised of upcoming and in-progress offline poker tournaments. It had nothing to do with play chip online poker.

We don't know if we were just unlucky enough to become tangled in a web of outmoded software versions, inaccurate installation instructions, and incompatible hardware. Perhaps there actually is a way to log on to partypoker and play for fake chips from the United States. We leave this as an exercise to any of our readers who are broke and bored enough to try to get these games to work correctly on their computers.

USA Partypoker aficionados may be wondering about the other regulated i-poker states in the country. New Jersey is just one of them; the others are Nevada, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and West Virginia. Well, we're sorry to burst your bubble, but Party is not present in any of these jurisdictions.

Nevada

Nevada is the most likely candidate, having had a legalized online poker economy for about as long as New Jersey has. Indeed, Party Poker's parent company, GVC, acquired in May 2019 an online gaming license from the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Yet, this license was granted in connection with a sports betting product known as Roar Digital rather than Partypoker. We can't know for certain if GVC has any plans of launching the partypoker brand in the Silver State, and if so, how long we would have to wait for these designs to come to fruition.

Delaware

Delaware is the only other state with a longstanding regulated internet poker environment. All the sites are run through a single software provider, which is 888. GVC/Party are therefore practically shut out of the tiny Delaware market.

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania is an intriguing state for a potential Party return. With a population larger than that of any other licensed internet gambling state and an already-thriving land-based casino scene, PA seems like the logical next step for PartyPoker in America.

Despite the fact that online casinos have launched in the Keystone State, though, with poker not far behind, the partypoker brand has not yet appeared within the state. However, BetMGM poker launched in partnership with Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course running on partypoker software. Borgata Poker has also entered the market in conjunction with Rivers Casino Philadelphia under a similar arrangement.

GVC has partnered with Valley Forge Casino in King of Prussia, which holds a license authorizing it to offer poker online. All the ingredients seem to be aligning for Partypoker PA to arrive one day, but there has not yet been anything definitive announced.

Michigan

Michigan is another large state that has moved ahead with licensed online casino and poker gaming, but Partypoker itself has not yet deployed in The Great Lakes State. Its partner BetMGM has opened its own regulated online poker room. Whether Party will join its sister site or leave BetMGM to compete in Michigan on its own merits remains to be seen.

West Virginia

West Virginia legalized sports betting in 2018 a couple of months BEFORE the landmark Murphy v. NCAA decision rendered the federal ban on this type of wagering null and void. The Mountain State's appetite for legalized real money wagering went a step further when it passed the West Virginia Lottery Interactive Wagering Act in March 2019 thereby making online casino and poker games legal.

The authorities have not yet crafted the rules that will pertain to this new industry however. Until they do so, which is not expected for another year or two, there will be no chance of a West Virginia partypoker site appearing within the state.

DoJ Shenanigans

Even if PartyPoker does open up in one of more of these regulated online poker states, there's a chance that the games will be ring-fenced for a while and not combine their player pools. The recent Wire Act case that the Department of Justice lost clarified that poker traffic-sharing interstate compacts are legal. Yet, there are only three states that have ever joined together in such an arrangement. It may take a while before these three states can successfully negotiate with their counterparts to bring more states onboard.

Many poker enthusiasts from countries that some sites block, like the United States, opt for using a VPN to bypass any such restrictions. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a service that makes your location appear to be somewhere else, fooling whoever is watching into thinking that you're in another part of the world entirely.

Almost every internet gaming firm discourages the use of VPNs, and PartyPoker is no exception. While these tools do have their legitimate uses in privacy protection and circumventing government censorship, they're also beloved by multi-accounters, botters, and, of course, those looking to mask their locations.

Partypoker's position on VPNs was expressed on the Twoplustwo forums by the company's representative “pokerColette” in response to a customer's query:

With the poker site itself discouraging their use, VPNs are an option only for those who really know what they're doing. If you just employ these services every once in a while and don't fully understand how they operate, then you're setting yourself up for woe by attempting to get around the geographic prohibitions in place against U.S. users.

Even people who are willing and able to properly deploy VPNs for online poker often decide that it's more trouble than it's worth. In order to be able to successfully cash out any of your winnings, you would have to set up a foreign address complete with payment processor details matching this address. You might also be required to submit an ID or utility bill corresponding with the country you're claiming to be based in.

All of this paves the way for a tangled morass of deception and invention that may backfire against you. All in all, we think accessing Partypoker through a VPN is a fine way to get your account banned and your balance confiscated.

We appreciate everything that PartyPoker has done historically to promote the growth of online poker, and the brand will therefore always have a place in our hearts. It's still one of the most prominent actors on the international internet poker stage and remains well-loved by countless fans.

However, these advantages are basically all negated for those who live in the United States with the possible exception of some of the residents of New Jersey. Unless you belong to this group of customers, you'll need to select another way to get your fix of poker for US players than by logging into PartyPoker. For your day-to-day grind, we strongly advise you to pick another site from our list of the top USA online poker companies.

Even after reading the above content, you may still be left with questions regarding partypoker in the US. Look below; for we have collected commonly asked inquiries regarding this topic along with their answers.