PartTimePoker - Biggest Online Staking Community - Shutting Down

PartTimePoker (PTP) has long been known as the place to go for poker players looking to stake or get staked. With a great number of active members, PTP has earned its name as the number one staking forum, not only because of the opportunities it offered, but also because of the efforts of the site staff to prevent cheating and rolling. Sadly, it is all coming to an end.

Unfavorable conditions led to closure

In a post from January 2nd, one of the site owners and administrators, ‘joeker,’ announced that PTP staking will cease operations on February 15, 2015. During this period, all still-running stakes are to be completed and any outstanding funds to be paid.

Following the announcement, many members were left wondering what caused this decision. While the staff did not go into detail about exact reasons, they explained that the conditions in the current poker climate are not favorable enough to justify the costs involved with maintaining the site.

It's clear to all the regular members that circumstances have changed after Black Friday, and action on the site took a big hit. However, until recently it wasn’t clear just how serious the situation was. This move is an indication that the poker economy is simply not as healthy as it was a few years ago and that the costs of operating and maintaining a site as big as PartTimePoker are quite significant.

What happens after February 15th?

The forum will be converted into a ‘read-only’ mode, which means that all the posts will still be available for reading, but members will no longer be able to log in, post comments in the old threads, or start new ones. Other parts of the site, like PTP news, will remain intact.

For many long-time members of PartTimePoker, this is very sad news. The site has been in operation for about a decade and throughout that time it created a huge base of regular members who used the forums not only for staking, but for discussing strategy, general poker topics, and many subjects totally unrelated to poker.

It is truly the end of an era.

Is it really game over?

When asked if PTP was really never coming back, ‘joeker’ used the word indefinitely rather than forever, leaving open the possibility that the forums may come back once conditions become more favorable. Certain events could probably give new wings to the staking world; if PokerStars introduced Bitcoin as a payment option or the U.S. came back to the global players’ pool, for example.

However, as things stand now, the longest standing online staking community will no longer be available to players after February 15th. In the meantime, if you have any unfinished business at PTP and missed the announcement, this is probably a good time to go ahead and wrap things up.