Review of Online Poker sites

By Jennifer Schwechten

There are dozens of online poker rooms, and nearly as many mediocre ones. If you are just looking to learn the game and play for fun (no money), then there are a number of free sites such as Yahoo Games where you can test out your skills. If you are looking to play for money, though, your best bet is to stick to one of the major online gaming sites.

The three most popular and highest ranked online poker rooms are as follows:

• Pacific poker 

• Empire Poker

• Party Poker

• Noble Poker

Party Poker

Party Poker is easily the largest online poker room with over 80,000 players. Games of all stakes are very popular here. The site has incredible mainstream appeal and attracts poker players of all skills levels, so the games tend to be fairly soft. 

Due to the incredible size of the site, players will have little trouble finding a table. 

A piece of advice: only play at those tables where the game is loose. 

This will help shield you from the poker sharks that are looking for an easy mark. Take advantage of tables that clearly have inexperienced players and calling machines – this will work to your benefit.

The downside to Party Poker is that it is virtually impossible to keep accurate records of your opponents since each time you visit the site, you are pulling from a pool of thousands of players.

Because of this, you must rely on strong consistent strategy, as opposed to player reads, to win. 

Watch a player’s stack size to gauge his skill – good players will frequently buy in for a lot at limit games and the max in a no-limit game, while lower skilled players will buy in for lower amounts. 

More advanced players can use this strategy to their advantage by buying in for a large amount. This will signal to other players that you are a solid competitor and will likely scare away any sharks that might otherwise play a few hands at the table.

The competition gets much stiffer once you go past $15-$30 games at this site. Most Party Poker players do not play this high, but those that do know the game and put up a tough fight. Only the most advanced players should take a seat at the $20-$40 and higher tables. 

It is especially important to stay off of tilt at Party Poker. There are a lot of bad and inexperienced players and since the software is very fast, it is easy to lose a lot of money quickly. 

Empire Poker

Empire Poker is another popular online poker room with over 10,000 players. The competition at Empire Poker, like Party Poker, tends to be soft. The shorthanded games at Empire Poker are particularly soft. Nonetheless, there are a few key tips that will help you most the most of this site.

Since this poker room is considerably smaller than other sites, it is possible to keep track of individual players and keep en eye on games. This will give you a feel for how some of your opponents play before you sit down with them at a table.

It is also important to note that the games tighten up considerably whenever a reload bonus period occurs. When this happens, a lot of players flood the tables who are just interested in clearing the bonus play - these players tend to be weak-passives. 

When playing against weak-passives, your best bet is to steal a lot of pots against these types of players and bluff at the flop to take control of the game. If these players raise, especially if they raise early in the game, can you be assured that they have a solid starting hand so watch your betting. 

Be sure to take advantage of the multi-table tournaments. The traffic at the tournament tables is surprisingly low as compared to that at the ring game table, in spite of the fact that Empire sponsors several daily freerolls and holds a number of guaranteed prize pool tournaments. Tournament play is not only fun at this site, it can also be lucrative since the site offers some great deals.

Noble Poker

Noble Poker is a newer poker room and it offers a very generous signup bonus at 100% up to $700 max bonus. It is still a smaller room due it its newness, and there are not as many multi-table tournaments and fixed-limit games as you find on other sites. But Noble Poker does have a large amount of soft no-limit games. 

Although Noble Poker does allow multi-table play, the site’s software makes it more difficult to play multi-table than other poker rooms since all games are displayed in a single window. The effect is this is that sharks (who normally play multiple tables at once) are less likely to frequent Noble Poker.

Noble Poker is part of an online casino group, so the site attracts a lot of casual casino players that crossover into the online poker room. This tends to make the games softer since many of these players are inexperienced or lesser skilled players. 

Since Noble Poker is primarily made up of “fish”, the key to winning their no-limit games is a solid strategy. Keep notes on the good players you encounter – the site is small enough to make this a manageable task. Since no-limit Texas Hold’em is highly dependent on player reads, the effort you put into making detailed notes will pay off in the long run and help you win.

Be sure to stay off tilt. The site’s software is fairly slow and cumbersome, so many players get frustrated at the wait. Impatient players frequently make snap decisions to speed the game along, which can work to your advantage if you play close attention. 

As with Empire Poker, pay attention to the stack size of your opponents. Larger stacks tend to be indicative of better players, while inexperienced or weaker skilled players will buy in for smaller stacks.

One final note: for reasons unknown, Noble Poker has one of the softest $2-$4 no-limit games on the internet. There is frequently a big skill level jump from $1-$2 no-limit games to $2-$2 no-limit games at other sites, but this is not true at Noble Poker. 


Next: Index of online poker course