Molly Rating: 4.0/5.0 Guest Rating: No rating. You could be the first!
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Molly Rating: 4.0/5.0 Guest Rating: No rating. You could be the first!
We have not written a review of Noble Poker yet. If you play there and would like to rate this site yourself, please use the rating box below and feel free to write your own review or opinions using the comment section below.
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While playing at UltimateBet that Beach Boys song Kokomo keeps running through my head
Aruba, Jamaica, ooo I wanna take you
Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go
The main theme of UltimateBet is a poker room in the tropical paradise of Aruba. Anyway, behind the all the Aruba promotions is one of the finest poker rooms on the Internet. Besides the standard menu of online poker games such as Hold’Em, Omaha, and 7-stud, you will be able to play in a couple oddball games, Crazy Pineapple, and Triple Draw. Here is a description of Crazy Pineapple that I got from the UltimateBet site.
Just as in regular texas hold’em, there is a betting round after you receive your hole cards, and another betting round after you see the flop. However, in Pineapple a very important change happens here. AFTER betting on the flop is completed, you must discard one of your hole cards.
For example, if you start with a hand of (8h-8s-Jh) and then see a flop of 10h-9h-8d, you have a pretty big decision to make. If you want to keep your open-ended straight flush draw, you’re going to have to discard one of your trip eights (a pleasant dilemma, but a dilemma nonetheless). If you want to keep the trips, you need to throw away the key card in the straight flush draw.
The lobby layout is very nice with easy column based sorting of tables. The lobby’s table list shows, for each table, the table name, the stakes, number seated, number on the wait list, the blind structure, the average pot, the percent of players seeing the flop, and the number of hands per hour. As seems to be epidemic among most online sites this information is on some kind of delay. (Do we have Janet Jackson to thank?) You will commonly open a table with one or two empty seats shown in the lobby, but when you arrive at the table it’s full.
Playability is excellent, however, if you are used to the overhead table view, UltimateBet‘s first person view may be a little disorienting, at first, but you’ll get used to it. Just like every site, you have the standard menu of next move buttons. Play is smooth without hesitations that I’ve seen at some other sites, which I’m guessing means they have servers which can easily handle their loads.
An exceptional feature for those who like to play multiple tables at the same time is the table mini view. The mini view is a narrow window, about 200 pixels high, so that you can stack many of them on your screen at the same time without obstructing each other. The typical screen resolutions will support 4 or 5 of these windows easily. Play is linear, rather than circular, progressing from left to right then back to the left side.
The table also supports the standard stats window and the ability to take player notes. This stats window is laid out much better and provides more information than any other site I’ve reviewed. You can keep notes on all you opponents, however there is no indication that you have notes for the player. What’s missing is an icon or symbol next to the player’s chair that would indicate that you’ve taken notes on that player.
For the beginners and those on a tight bankroll, UltimateBet offers the ultimate in micro limit tables with the rake free $0.01/$0.02 tables in all games. On the other end of the spectrum, the high rollers can enjoy the thrill of $80/$160 tables available for all games, although the action is light. As always, there is more than enough action on the Hold’Em tables. The limit tables over in Omaha are a little light on the action, but the pot/no limit Omaha tables has good action.
The icing on the cake is that UltimateBet is partnered with some of the top pros as you can see from this taken form the UltimateBet.com web site.
UltimateBet.com has been developed with the assistance of many of the world’s leading poker players and authorities. Russ Hamilton, Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth, Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott and Jack McClelland all have given us their expert advice as we develop what we feel is the best online poker experience available on the Web today.
New faces at the Team UB table include “Magic” Antonio Esfandiari, Tournament Ambassador KrazyKanuck, and News Ambassador John Vorhaus.
Go grab a Pina Colada, put on a Beach Boys CD, and head down to Aruba for some serious online poker action.
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Review Date: March 20, 2005
Revised: June 18, 2009
Something that stands out when reviewing PokerStars is that it has quite a reputation for the number of good players. Not only no-name amateurs, moms, dads, college students, who take pride in playing a good game, but also a team of recent World Series of Poker champions such as Chris Moneymaker who was the 2003 champion, Greg Raymer who won it in 2004, Joe Hachem in 2005, and Peter Easgate in 2008. Speaking of the World Series of Poker, PokerStars managed to qualify over 300 of its players for the 2004 event and four of them made the final table! Matt Dean (mattpackage), David Williams (RugDoctor), Michael McClain (mockahai), as well as the champ Greg Raymer (FossilMan), all PokerStars players, made it to the final table of 9 players. So, if you’re in the mood for fishing then you should probably avoid PokerStars and head to one of the known fishing holes such as Party Poker or Pacfic Poker. However, if you are looking for good competitive poker then read on. Beginners should not let this scare you. In fact, if you’re a beginner who has some basic skills, playing against others on the low limit tables at PokerStars is an excellent way to hone your skills.
The poker room lobby presents you with a menu of the featured games, Holdem, Omaha, Omaha H/L, Stud, Stud H/L. Also on the menu are the tournament buttons, which include multi-table and sit & go tournaments. The table list shows you the all the key information and metrics such as table name, stakes ($5/$10), limits (limit, no limit, pot limit), number of players, average pot, players per flop, and hands per hour. This display can be sorted by any of the columns. Highlighting one of the tables brings up a window showing you who is playing on the table and their table stakes.
The table itself is an overhead view featuring several skins. Hold’em table sizes include 9-seat, 6-seat, and 2-seat for 1 on 1 play. A nice feature is the ability to display an uploaded image. You will see pictures of kids, dogs, cats, trains, planes, automobiles, movie characters, team logos, and every once in a while, a picture of the player him/herself. This may seem goofy at first, but it helps to remember players better. You’re probably more likely to remember playing against Yoda, Neo, or Batman than you will against lUv2FSH667.
The user interface is simple, but good. At the table you get the full list of features available at most sites, including chat, player notes, stats, and next play buttons. I do have a gripe with the tables at Stars. For me it is harder to follow the action that at some of the other sites with well-designed tables. The seat blinks to highlight the action, but it does not stand out very well. Also the audible cues are limited. Other sites have one sound for a call and a different sound for a raise, but at stars the sound is the same in either case.
With the quality of the other players, excellent user interface, WSOP and WPT satellites up the wazoo, and reputation, PokerStars is one of the best online poker rooms on the Internet. If you’re a good player (beginner to expert) looking for challenging poker then play here. If you’re a fish (beginner to expert) looking to lose your money then play somewhere else, where the poker is wild and loose so at least you’ll have a good time while you lose it.
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I’m sitting here trying to think of a way to describe my first thoughts when Bodog Sportsbook announced the opening of their online poker room in 2004. It’s kind of like what I thought when Eddie Murphy, the actor/comedian, recorded his pop album. Sure the guy has talent for acting, but singing? Give me a break. So when the online sportsbooks started adding online poker rooms I just assumed that the poker rooms were just going to be some kind of lower quality room. But when you think about it there are so many good online poker rooms that the sportsbooks poker rooms would not be able to survive if they could not compete. Sure there are B-list sportsbooks who have B-list poker rooms, but Bodog, being one of the best sportsbooks on the Internet, should have a poker room to match. They did not let us down. Bodog’s lobby is similar to many of the other online poker rooms. You are presented with tabs across the top for the different games (Hold’Em, Omaha, and Stud) and tournaments (Sit and Go, Multi-table, World Poker Tour satellites, World Series of Poker satellites, and special). A neat feature is when one of the main tabs is selected you have a series of sub-tabs to further filter the visible tables. Under Texas Hold`Em, for example, there are tabs for limit, no limit, pot limit, and one on one. Under the Sit and Go tournament tab there are tabs for Hold`Em, Omaha, Stud, and Qualifier. This just makes it easier to find the table that you are looking for.
Unfortunately the action at the higher limit cash games is less than what I like to see. This is probably due to the fact that the poker room is new and it takes time to build up a good player base, especially at the higher limits.
This means that your wait for a seat could take several minutes. If you’ve come to play 3/6 Hold’Em but all the tables are full, you can put your name on the wait list, which nicely gives you the option of specifying that you’d like to be added to the wait list of all 3/6 tables. Of course, one of the big advantages to online poker is that you can be very selective about the table you play at based on the statistics, such as average pot size, players per flop, and hands per hour. If that’s the case then adding your name to the wait list of all tables is not necessarily what you want to do.
The table layout itself is similar to many rooms, however the smoothness and speed at which it operates is excellent. The table is clean with no chairs or drink tables, just an oval table and the player cards. The window in the lower left corner serves as the chat window, stats window, and the player notes window. You can adjust this by selecting the wide screen layout. The rest of the window is where you select your action. When it’s not your turn you are presented with various next play buttons, but like just about every other poker room, the next play buttons are dynamic. The check button changes to a call button and the call button changes according to the number of bets. Stay away from these buttons if the action is near you because if the player in front of you raises you could find yourself calling a bet you did not want to.
As time goes on the culture of a new online poker room is likely to change, but my impression after playing many hours at Bodog Poker is the skill level of the players is medium, somewhere in between the fish at Pacific Poker and the skilled players at Poker Stars. If, besides poker, you also enjoy sports wagering and/or casino games, with one Bodog account you can gamble to your heart’s (and your disposable income’s) delight.
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Absolute Poker is a medium sized room with a very good table layout. When you first enter AP you are presented with a pretty standard lobby. There are tabs for the games and within each game tab are tabs for the the subtype. There is a nice filtering option to also help you zero in on the tables of interest.
For example, the Hold’Em page for example shows all the Hold’Em cash games. You get to see not only the stakes, but the number of players and waiters, hands per minute, average pot, and players per flop. A couple things of note are the six player tables and the full size tables are only nine players (seven for Stud), rather than the 10 player tables found at many other online poker sites. Look closely at the table statistics in the image below and you should notice low percentage of players per flop as well as high hand per minute rates. What this means is fast tight (well, maybe not real tight, but tighter than many) poker, especially on the six player tables.
Absolute features a very intriguing bad-beat jackpot. As you can see in the images above it was $461K when these shots were captured. This jackpot pays every few days. In a nutshell if you suffer a bad-beat of quad 8′s or better, both the beater and the beaten hands must use both hole cards to qualify. The beaten gets the biggest share, the beater gets a smaller share, and the remainder of the non-sitting out players at the table share the rest. See AP for details. The down side is that players will call down hands that they may fold at a normal table, which results in more suck-outs.
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Have you ever dreamed, or pehaps had a nightmare, about playing poker against a top poker pro?
Here are a list of pros you can find (or avoid) at Full Tilt Poker. Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Jennifer Harman, Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham, Patrik Antonius. That’s just “Team Full Tilt“. There are dozens of other pros, including the “Full Tilt Pros”, the “Hendon Mob, and the “CardRunners”. For those of us who would not be too keen about going up against one of these pros, there are more than enough tables for amatuers.
Learn: Access their library of poker lessons written by the game’s best players
Chat: Get answers to your questions directly from the pros at the table or in the pro chat sessions
Play: Sit down with any of the 100+ pros, who play more than 1,600 hours every week at Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker offers a wide variety of online poker games including No Limit Texas Holdem, Pot Limit Texas Hold Em, and Fixed Limit Texas Holdem as well as varieties of Omaha, Stud, Razz, and nearly every permutation of the mixed games HORSE, HOSE, HOE, HEROS… Full Tilt has ring games, Sit and Go tournaments, and multi-table tournaments. If you can find it in a poker room, you can probably find it at Full Tilt Poker.
Full Tilt offers plenty of action. With tens of thousands of active tables and players there is nearly always a game.
FTP Lobbhy
A couple things to note about the lobby. Red table have a pro seated. There are tabs to select the table type. Filters enable selectively limit your view. Game types clearly show you additonal icons that identify special table features. Take a look at the number of active tables and players! No shortage of action.
FTP $5/$10 Stud Table
The screenshot above shows a $5/$10 Stud table. This skin is very nicely laid out and the action is very easy to follow. There are other skins available. You can choose this overhead view or the first person view. Full Tilt also has animated avatars which can be displayed or not. Molly thinks the avatars are silly and don’t belong in a grown-up poker room, but not everyone is like Molly. Full Tilt Poker is top notch, maybe the best online poker site out there.
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