-
Poker Review Guide
-
Poker Strategy Guides
Top Poker Room
-
A Guide To The best Poker Rooms In 2009
Most poker related portals you will come across will have anywhere from 10 to 100 poker room listed. I've never really understood this. Even before I started creating web sites I always wondered why companies would try and get me to play at a poker room that sucks. I suppose every player has different tastes/preferences but in reality there are only 2 poker rooms that offer an excellent and safe poker playing experience. Sure I can think of several other rooms that are perfectly safe and offer a decent experience but when compared to the two rooms listed below it is like comparing a hamburger to a Porterhouse steak. The Best Online Poker Rooms
The best online poker rooms are undoubtedly Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker. They both accept U.S. players and offer high quality software, bonuses and promotions. Also, 95% of the professional poker players in the world can be found at these two rooms. Pokerstars boasts over 200,000 players during the peak hours and Full tilt Poker is around 100,000. Players that sign up using out exclusive bonus codes will receive a special bonus on top of the standard deals other players receive.
Poker Room Bonus CodeBonusReviewPoker Stars PAWSUB16100% ($50 max)Full Tilt POTZBONUS100% ($600 max)Why These Two Rooms Are The Best
I recently did a little research to find out how many online poker rooms existed. I wasn't very thorough but I would put the number between 700 - 1,000. Most of these poker rooms are just "skins" in a network. I'm sure many of you have heard of the various poker networks like Merge, Cake, Action, iPoker, Ongame, Boss, Cryptologic, Entraction, Prima and probably the most notable the Microgaming Network.
What amazes me about these networks is that despite the fact that they share traffic with hundreds of other skins these networks are not even close to being the most popular poker rooms. The most popular and largest and safest places to play poker online are without a doubt the independent poker rooms like Full Tilt Poker and Pokerstars. There are several reasons why "stand alone" rooms beat "networked" rooms in every category:
1. Better Software - If you have ever played at a room like Crazy Poker, Hollywood Poker or event Party Poker you would have noticed its hard to describe the software without using one of the following words: outdated, antiquated, old fashioned or archaic. To the right I have added an image of the poker room navigation at Party Poker. I just want to show the U.S. players that they are not missing anything since most rooms that accept U.S. players at least offer decent software. Another negative aspect of the software at "networked" rooms is the infamous LAG, and I do not mean loose aggressive players. Network lag and disconnections is a common place occurrence at networked poker rooms. In these 'high speed" days some of you may not even know what lag is. Lag is when you are playing poker and the game just stops or disconnects. You will get folded out of the hand and lose whatever money you had in the pot. The lag isn't coming from your "dial up" connection, the lag is coming from the server that hosts the software so there is no escaping it. This is common with poker networks.
2. Security/trustworthiness - This is one of the main reasons that networks will never be able to compete with independent rooms like Pokerstars. Because there can be over 200 skins on a network cheating is runs rampant on poker networks. This mostly comes in the form of collusion. Granted this kind of stuff happens at any poker rooms but there is a significant increase of cases at networked rooms. This can also be accredited to the underfunded security departments at these rooms. Multi-billion dollar companies like Pokerstars and Full Tilt spare no expense on security. Its not hard to imagine that a network like Microgaming that is probably losing more money than it brings in doesn't have much in terms of a security team.
Another aspect is trustworthiness. Many skins are operated by 1-2 man teams. These networks sell their software for as little as a couple thousand dollars. I consider most network skins as "disposable". These skins come and go, usually with your money. A recent example is Cardspike Poker. They were a skin on the Cake Poker network. They launched with a lot of PR and a few months later they ran off with everyone's money. Players/affiliates looked to the Cake Network for help but as usual it wasn't their problem. Companies sell licenses to join their network and use their software to any one. It is this greed that has made networks so unstable and unsafe.
3. Overall Experience - Networked poker rooms offer little in terms of bonuses, promotions and events. they typically make their first deposit bonuses impossible to clear simply because they can't afford not to. Their promotional line-up is usually just as sad. Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker spend more money to increase the quality of the overall player experience than every other poker room and skin on the internet combined.