Why is it that the themes for many online poker rooms, and online casinos for that matter, all seem to be a tropical paradise or a desert oasis? Well I guess the answer is obvious considering the some of the best locals for gambling around the world. Island Poker, with its tropical theme fits right in to the mold. I'm still waiting for the first online poker room with a ghetto theme.

9Poker.com is also the same poker room. This is a convenient advantage for those who like to bet sports as well as play poker since 9Poker.com is part of Nine.com, one of the best online sportsbooks on the Internet. Money deposited at Nine.com can be used to bet on sport as well as poker.

The lobby is easy to navigate. You can switch between the cash games and the tournaments. In the cash games lobby you have Hold’em, Omaha, and Stud rooms. In addition, Island has Guts (poker and beer match the pot game), Pan, Chinese Poker, and Big-2. For each of the game types the tables are shown. You can sort by stakes, number of players, average pot, and hands/hour.

The tournament lobby is also pretty standard, showing the sit-n-go games waiting for players. There are some things to take note of, however. At the time of this review, there are only Hold’em and Pan sit-n-go tournaments and you cannot tell from the lobby’s menu if the Hold’em tournaments are limit, pot limit, or no limit. Spot checking several revealed only the no limit variety. Also, there is a significant shortage of multi-table tournaments.

Big deal, you want to play poker, so what about the tables and the play? One thing that will always stands out for me is a clean and easy to use table, and there are things about Island that I like and some I don’t. As far as layout goes the table is clean and it’s easy to follow the action. The next-play buttons are convenient and the live play buttons appear in a different location than the next-play buttons, so there is little change of clicking a live play button by mistake. However, just about every site, and Island is no exception, make the mistake of the next-play buttons changing meaning from a check to a call, for example. Just be careful and you should have no problems with mistakes.

In Hold’em cash games you are given 18 seconds to make your play, but in Hold’em tournaments you are given a whopping 40 seconds. My personal observation is that the slow players take 5 to 10 seconds to make a play, while the timer only expires when a player has been disconnected, which happens several times during a normal session. The 40-second timer in tournament play is too long. One other thing about the play timer that I don’t like is that it is only visible to the player with the action. The rest of the players at the table do not get to see the timer.

I should mention more about the unique games that Island has to offer. One of them, Guts, reminds me is similar to a game that we play in the home dealer’s choice game I play in every month. In this variation you ante and then you are dealt 3 cards. You decide whether to play or fold. Once all the players have made their decision everyone’s choice is revealed and the high hand wins the pot, and the losing hands have to match whatever was in the pot. The pot resets to normal once all, but one, player folds. This is simple game that can be a good way to break away from the thinking games, especially after having a few too many cocktails.

The other two unique poker games, Chinese Poker and Pan should be very familiar to many of you and should be a welcome feature of Island for fans of either of these games.