Picking an Online Poker Room
Chapter 8
There are a lot of things to consider when you’re going to pick an online poker site. Things can get quite overwhelming if you don’t know much about it.
You’ve got bonuses, freerolls, player volume, safety issues, deposit issues, compatibility, and all sorts of things to look at.If you are a poker Mac user or Linux user it’s even tougher because your options are somewhat limited. Windows users have hundreds and hundreds of sites to choose from where Macintosh and Linux players really only have a handful of good sites to choose from.
The Bonus Basics
By now most of you have played online poker and realize that bonuses really aren’t all that great. They make you play a butt load of raked hands before they even think about releasing the bonus. A raked hand is simply a hand you play where the poker room takes a rake.
Every time you play a hand the online poker room takes a percentage of the pot and that’s how they can afford to pay you a bonus. So really all they are doing is giving you some of your money back in the form of a bonus.
If you like playing at poker rooms with good bonuses then you’ll have to choose places with quick releasing bonuses. Places like Pacific Poker and Bodog.com are sites that give the bonus to you as soon as you deposit.
These bonuses are called upfront bonuses. They do have safety nets in place so you can’t just withdraw the bonus as soon as you get it. They do make you play with the bonus and don’t allow you to just cash it out as soon as you get it.
Always read the review pages for bonus codes. Most sites like ours have reviews of poker rooms where we set up bonus codes. For example if you want a Carbon Poker bonus you would check out our review for updated bonuses. This lets you get additional bonuses on top of the bonus the poker rooms dishes out.
If you go to places like Full Tilt they give you an even bigger bonus but you have to play raked hands to get your bonus released. They keep track by giving you player points or whatever the poker room decides to call it.
When you get enough points they usually automatically deposit the money into your account. These bonuses are better for players who play higher stakes. The bigger the stakes, the higher the rake, the faster the bonus is given. That’s how that works.
Online Poker Freerolls
There is nothing wrong with play freerolls at online poker rooms. Not everyone has a ton of money to. Freerolls are also great for players just starting out. You do need to consider some things when picking a site if you are joining for freerolls. To find current running freerolls we have set up a live tournament freeroll feed. Just choose “freerolls” in the buy-in type.
Freerolls work somewhat like bonuses. Some sites make you play real money games to rack up enough points to play in the freerolls. The freerolls that don’t require you to use points from real money games generally don’t have a ton of money in the pot but what can you expect, they’re free.
Places like Bwin give you freeroll tickets as soon as you deposit.They don’t make you play with the money just so you deposit they are happy.
Depositing Issues / Safety Issues
Right now this is probably the biggest obstacle for new online poker players. Depositing can be a real hassle if you want to use your credit card. About 90% of banks and credit card companies won’t accept deposits to online gaming companies. Most people have to either register a checking/saving account with the online poker room or use an online transaction company.
Neteller used to be quite popular until what happened with all the US online poker players. A lot of people lost faith with Neteller when they froze US funds.
Safety issues are more of a problem for online casinos. Some casinos have been known to not treat customers fairly and the odds aren’t always right. If you’re going to play at any online casino make sure you choose a big company that gets audited regularly. Any casino or poker room listed at our site is a trusted casino/poker room. We wouldn’t list them if they weren’t.
Player Volume
There is nothing worse than signing up for a poker site, getting to the table and having to wait 10 minutes just to find someone willing to play. Pokerstars com and Full Tilt Poker are 2 of the top sites with good player volume.
Placing in Sit n Go tournaments can be a nightmare when playing at low volume sites. Sometimes you can wait an hour and not have a full Sit n Go table. On the contrary when you go to a site with a lot of player volume they fill up in a matter of seconds. Players will play a lot looser at these sites too because they know they won’t have to wait to join another table if they lose.
Compatibility Issues
Well, if it weren’t for online poker compatibility issues this site wouldn’t be here. Most compatibility issues are there because online poker software is extremely expensive. The majority of computer users use Windows so that’s what most of the software is strictly compatible with. It kind of leaves everyone else behind. Java poker sites really helped a lot but it definitely didn’t solve the problem. Recently there have been a lot of improvements in this area and we expect even more.
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