Recommended Poker Room
www.We have assessed the best poker rooms for you, comparing them in various categories. If you are playing online poker, have a look at our assessment. Chances are that you might not be playing at one of these best poker rooms. If this proves true, you might consider having a look at the best poker room in your favorite category.
Best Poker Room for Low Stakes Sit and Go (SNG/STT) Tournaments
On low stakes, rake compared to the buy-in is relatively high. It is therefore very important to choose a poker room where there is plenty of fish in order to offset the rake with soft competition. Otherwise it will be difficult to achieve a positive ROI. A fishy poker room will help you significantly to beat Sit and Go (and Double or Nothing) tournaments. At low and at middle stakes, most rooms have enough traffic to enable you to play on multiple tables simultaneously (referred to as mulittabling).
A great choice for beginners to online poker is 888 Poker. The games there are soft, so the bankroll can be increased rapidly. Thanks to the gamblers from the casino area (roulette, blackjack and slots), the poker games are “soft” as well. Soft games mean that the opponents are easy to beat.
Best Poker Room for High Stakes Sit and Go (SNG/STT)
Sit and Go tournaments on higher stakes, which means buy-ins of 50$, 100$ or even more, are offered by many rooms. However, most players play on lower limits. For this reason, it may take some time until a $100 SNG table is filled with 10 players and the game will start. It is advisable to play at one of the bigger poker rooms, where also tournaments on high buy-ins start very regularly.
The best online poker room for Sit & Go’s at higher limits is the market leader PokerStars. Alternative: Full Tilt Poker as the second largest poker room in the world offers more than enough SNG tournaments on high stakes as well.
Best Poker Room for Multi Table Tournaments (MTT)
For Multi Table Tournaments (MTT), PokerStars is our favorite place to play. No other poker site offers so many tournaments with such high prizes. The “Sunday Millions” has a guaranteed prize money of 1.5 million U.S. dollars. Of course, this attracts a large player field, so that you have to get quite lucky to win this weekly online poker tournament. Fortunately, there are also plenty of other tournaments at PokerStars.
A good alternative to PokerStars is Betsson Poker, a well known sports betting company from England and part of the Ongame network (combining the players of poker rooms such as BWIN, Tower and Hollywood Poker). Betsson is a fishy alternative to PokerStars. Every Sunday evening the ChampionChip with a guaranteed prize money of 250,000$ is held. The buy-in costs $ 190 +10 U.S. dollars which is a fair amount compared to the prize money. A ticket for the ChampionChip can also be won with qualifier tournaments, starting at buy-ins as low as $1. In addition, about every hour a larger MTT with usually a guaranteed prize sum of several thousands of U.S. dollars starts.
Best Poker Room for Qualifiers to Live Events Like the WSOP
Poker Stars as the largest poker room in the world has the largest selection of qualifiers for major live tournaments. Among the events to which you can qualify conveniently through satellites are
- WSOP (World Series of Poker)
- EPT (European Poker Tour)
- APPT (Asia-Pacific Poker Tour)
- LAPT (Latin American Poker Tour)
- PCA (Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure)
- SCOOP and WCOOP (Online Poker Championships)
Chris Moneymaker had played a satellite tournament at PokerStars in 2003, where he won an entry ticket to the WSOP. As we all know, he was able to turn his investment of $39 into 2.5 million U.S. dollars by winning the World Series of Poker (WSOP Main Event).
Alternative: A large amount of different qualifier and satellite tournaments for the big events like the World Championship of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas can be won by playing at 888. Because 888 also offers casino games and sports betting, the competition is much softer than at PokerStars.
Best Poker Room for Rush Poker
The only – and obviously best – poker room that is offering Rush Poker is of course Full Tilt Poker. FTP has launched this major innovation in January 2010. Rush Poker is a Texas Hold’em cash game variant in which a player who folds his hole cards is placed immediately at a new where he is dealt two new hole cards immediately. Thus the action on a Rush Poker table is much larger than at a normal cash game table. An average player will see at Rush Poker around 5 times more hands per hour than at a normal online cash game table. In spring 2010, Full Tilt also added Rush Poker tournaments, which are played very similarly as Rush Poker cash games.
If you have not yet tried Rush Poker, you should register at Full Tilt Poker immediately to try out this adrenaline-driven game out.
Fishiest Poker Room
Multitabling pro’s who want to play eight, 12 or even 20 tournaments at the same time are primarily playing at the biggest online poker sites. They find plenty of traffic there, i.e. they will be able to open 10 or more tournaments in a reasonable time frame. Player who play six or fewer tables should rather go to the medium sized poker rooms in order to avoid the multitabling sharks. The ROI players can achieve at medium sized poker rooms is generally higher than at PokerStars and FTP.
One of the fishiest places to play poker is 888 Poker. Still, 888 has a large player base, so it’s also possible to play at multiple tables at higher limits. This poker rooms also offer casino games. Thus, many players are gamblers who think that poker is a game of luck, similar to Roulette, and who therefore play accordingly bad.
Best Poker Room for Beginners
A beginner usually starts playing at low stakes in order to avoid the strong players at the high stakes tables. And the poker software should be easy to understand. Because of the first point, beginners should better avoid Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars – at these two rooms they might encounter some quite strong players already on lower stakes. As already noted, the competition at Betsson Poker is very weak.
So if the gaming experience is important to you and if you do not want to play more than four tables at once (which is absolutely not recommended for beginners), you should try out PKR.
Best Poker Software (stability)
Stability of the poker software is extremely important. Especially for tournament players, it is absolutely disastrous if the poker software crashes. Fortunately, one rarely hears of such cases, as the poker rooms require stable software in order to stay in business. However, one can safely say that the two biggest poker rooms, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, have the best poker software with regards to stability and security. Despite their large market share one never hears complaints from users in poker forums. The player looking for the best poker software makes a good choice by playing at Stars or FTP.
Best Poker Software (Design)
Looking at the user interface of online poker rooms might quite disappoint players starting to play poker online. The tables are presented in 2D and do not quite remind one to the adrenaline rush that you experience in a casino or in a live game. PKR has recognized this niche and this need from online poker players: they have designed the most realistic and by far the best poker software. Games at PKR are displayed in 3D like you know it from modern video games. Players have an avatar which they can customize in any way they wish: hair color, lips, clothing – everything can be changed. One can buy jewelry and teach his character new tricks such as playing with chips. During the game, it is also possible to make a face or to laugh at other poker players. Thus, PKR clearly deserves the victory in the category “Best Poker Software (Design)”. Unfortunately for the players, this room has closed on May 2017.
Safest Poker Room
The confidence of poker players in the security of a poker room is one the most important elements for a poker room. Therefore the security precautions of poker rooms are similar to the ones of large (online) banks. An extremely safe and secure poker room is PartyPoker. PartyPoker is already active since 1997 in the poker business, without that there were any irregularities known. As a special safety feature, PartyPoker offers an RSA token which can be ordered in their poker shop. Tokens like that one are also used for online banking. The token has a small display showing a six-digit number. This number changes every 30 seconds and must be entered in addition to the login and password when trying to play online poker. Only the person who has username, password and the token can access the poker software at PartyPoker: the RSA token therefore adds a third element of security. PartyPoker has also taken precautions against the use of bots (non-human poker players). Players who play many tables might sometimes suddenly see a window which asks for a “Captcha” code to be typed in within the next two minutes in order to prove that they are human players.
An alternative to PartyPoker regarding “best security” is PokerStars. The largest poker room is also very safe and also provides an option to use a RSA Security Token.
Largest Poker Room
PokerStars is the world’s biggest online poker room. With a market share of 40% is has almost twice the size as the number two. Due to its limitation exclusively to online poker (without casino games like blackjack or roulette), reliable software and good marketing, PokerStars has become by far the largest online poker room over the past five years. Through this huge size there is always plenty of traffic also at the higher limits and at games which are less common than No Limit Texas Hold’em. This means that even multitabling players on the high stakes will get enough action. Sooner or later, that is why every successful poker player ends up having an account at PokerStars.
Alternative: Full Tilt Poker is the world’s second largest poker room with a market share of about 20%. FTP is about three times as large as its closest pursuer. This makes FTP a good alternative to PokerStars.
Largest Publicly Traded Poker Room
888 Poker is a 100% subsidiary of the listed company 888 Holdings. The world’s third largest online poker room is the largest poker room which is publicly traded on a stock exchange. Poker players who want to buy shares of their poker room can buy them on the stock exchange in order to benefit indirectly from the poker boom.
You have you read through this selection of the best poker rooms? Well then, it’s time to choose one of those poker rooms and to start playing poker there. Don’t forget to have a look here and grab the poker bonus code for your preferred poker room.
TIP: Full Tilt and Stars are both closed to US players. The best alternative for US players is Betonline Poker. Get your $2000 bonus on signup now!
