I have a feeling that I am not going out on a limb when I assume that by visiting this website, you are interested in online poker. I can probably also assume that if you are reading this article after seeing its title, you are likely new to the internet version of the game. Like any new activity, it can be a bit daunting. Right off the bat, you have to make a big decision: where should you deposit your money?
Like most purchasing decisions in life, there are several factors to look at when determining where to park your poker bankroll. Here, I present to you four of the most important.
Poker Room Size
The concept behind this is as simple as it seems. The more players an online poker room has at its tables, the easier it will be to find games to play. Of course, this assumes that the poker room will offer enough tables to seat the hordes, but this is virtually always the case. All other things being equal, you will enjoy your initial foray into the world of internet poker much more if you are able to login and jump into a game within seconds, rather than having to sit on a fifteen-deep waiting list, or worse yet, sit at an empty table, waiting for someone to play against.
On the right-hand side of the BonusWhores.com home page, you can see a list of dozens of online poker rooms, ranked by size. Additionally, if you click on any of the rooms or networks to read a review, you can read more about the ring game traffic at the particular site.
There is a myth about larger poker rooms, though: the larger the poker room, the more reputable it is. While larger rooms have typically been around a while and have usually had a chance to iron out any kinks, they are generally no more reputable than smaller rooms. Many often feel that if a room is small, it is likely to be a “fly by night” operation geared towards stealing customer deposits and then closing up shop. While this sort of thing could happen, it is very rare, especially as the industry matures. Small rooms are usually just newer rooms trying to grow their player bases or older rooms trying to keep up with their competition.
Game Selection
There are two aspects to game selection: availability of certain game varieties and quality of competition.
For most people, the availability of specific games will be the most important. If you are a fan of a certain variety of poker, yet a poker room has little to no traffic at that game’s tables, then you would be wise to look elsewhere. Even the rooms with the most players typically have their specialties, although the largest rooms are usually the safest bet for variety if you are going to take the plunge blind, without doing any research. Texas Hold’em games can be found at every room, but some are almost solely No Limit sites and some have customer bases who concentrate on the short-handed tables. Some rooms have plenty of Omaha, stud, and other games running, while others have almost no non-Hold’em traffic. Sign up for the sites that have the games you enjoy.
As for quality of competition, you obviously want to try to find the online poker rooms with the worst competition, as these rooms are where you’ll have the best chance to make money. There is really no rhyme or reason to which rooms have the best or worst players. Large rooms typically have plenty of players of all skill levels, while small rooms will often fall at one end of the spectrum or the other.
Detailed game quality and availability scores are available on every poker room’s review page on our site. We grade the competition for each type of game and every site, rate how likely it is for you to find those games, and show you how loose and how fast the tables play. For a multi-room overview, use our Game Quality Grid to see how the competition stacks up across the industry.
One final note on game selection: rooms which accept U.S. players usually have peak hours during American evenings, while rooms which have banned U.S. players will see higher traffic during American daylight hours.
Bonuses
Every online poker room offers some sort of signup bonus. When you make your initial deposit, the poker room will award you a percentage of your deposit in bonus dollars. Most of the time, this bonus will be locked away in a bonus account, to be released after you play a certain number of hands or earn a certain number of points (determined by factors such as hands played and rake). Sometimes, the bonus will be released all in one lump sum and sometimes it will be distributed in smaller increments. Every so often, you will see a bonus deposited into your account immediately, but you will still have to play a certain amount before you will be allowed to actually cash out that money.
Not all bonuses are created equal, though. I will get into the details in a later article, but bonuses vary widely in terms of total dollar amount, percentage of initial deposit, and ease/speed of clearance. Different factors are important to different people, so be sure you understand a site’s bonus rules before depositing so you choose the bonus that is best for you.
On the BonusWhores.com Poker Bonuses page, you can see all of the different exclusive signup bonuses you can receive just by visiting our site. We also update our home page daily to show you the latest reload bonus offers for when you are ready for additional bonuses at sites where you already play. For even more bonus fun, check out the Custom Poker Bonus Ranks page, where we will help you find the perfect bonus based on the games and stakes you like to play. Alternatively, you can use the Poker Bonus Grid to rank bonuses based on clearance rates, using the same information you provide on the Custom Poker Bonus Ranks page.
If you are interested in the same information found on the above pages, but only for a specific poker room, it is all available on each individual poker room’s review page on our site.
Kickbacks
To the uneducated, the above three things would be enough to use to make a decision about where to play. But in recent years, online poker players have been able to earn added bonuses through affiliate sites. Affiliates bring players to the online poker rooms and, in exchange, get paid for each signup. With that money, they reward their players with things like free gifts, free money, or even rakeback (which is just what it sounds like – the customer is returned a portion of his rake each day, week, or month.) Thus, if an affiliate site offers free goodies for a poker room in which you are interested, it only makes sense to signup through that affiliate. Your game experience will be the same, you’ll get the same deposit bonuses (sometimes better,) but you’ll also get free gifts on top of everything.
If you limit your online poker room research to room size, game selection, bonuses, and affiliate kickbacks, you will almost surely find the right room for you. There are more things, such as software, security, and customer service, that are important, as well, but I will save these for the next article.
