Review: Hollywood Poker

Hollywood Poker is hosted by the Pokerroom network (BetOnBet, Bayou, Eurobet etc) and sports perhaps the best competition I've ever come across. And by that, of course, I mean it is soft soft soft! Cash games As with all networks, traffic is highly dependant on time of day. USA evening is the busiest, with games beginning to empty after midnight. Hollywood has a thriving low-stake Pot Limit (PL) community. I highly recommend $10PL as the players are extremely loose and a tight fearless style totally destroys them. Currently, at 2pm GMT weekday, there are twelve full $25PL tables, but higher limits see this dwindle to only one. Limit and No Limit Holdem are heavily populated, although there are relatively very few players in Omaha, 7 Stud and 5 Draw tables and their corresponding hi/lo games. You won't really find anyone above a certain stake here, but there are playmoney tables to mess around in while you wait. Instead of the usual 6max, Hollywood has 5max tables. These are incredibly loose, and you'll need to adopt a particular style to deal with this. If you can cope with the bad beats they'll be extremely profitable for someone who knows what he's doing. At 2pm GMT weekday there are sixteen of these running at $100nl. Highstakes tables at Hollywood are $200nl, $400nl and $1000nl. Only 2-3 full ring tables are currently occupied in each of these, but 5max is far busier. $2000nl and above are totally empty. Tournaments There are masses of Sit & Go tournies, from 5max to 30max, running at all times. These are almost exclusively Holdem, but I can see a handful of Omaha/O8 ones too. Stacks begin at 1500 chips and blinds are every 8 minutes, which is pretty standard. Buyins range from $2+0.25 to $500+25; I can see four $100+8 running at the moment so traffic here isn't bad. There's a large selection of miscellanious events such as the $4000 Frenzy and $10+1 rebuy, and also a number of qualifiers that'll lead you to a Weekly Big Deal deepstack with 15 minute blinds (among others). There're a couple of $20 and $30 freerolls each day, with $1000-$4000 freerolls scheduled sometime next month. These aren't difficult to qualify for if you're a regular player. Competition Imagine the PartyPoker players are trees. Strip out their leaves, cut off their branches, and then set fire to the trunk. Bit of a weird anaology, but that's the Hollywood players in a metaphorical nutshell. They're crap. Software Hollywood Poker is pretty trashy. On the surface it looks nice, with an aesthetic display and good number of options for customisation, but really it sucks, and every moment you spend there it sucks harder and harder. Firstly, your opponents' cards are red on a red background; if you want to see who's active, you'll have to squint. The button is also tiny and annoying to locate in a hurry. I ended up changing my monitor settings to deal with this. Joining tables is easy, but you are restricted to a maximum of four. Ignore this - sit down at a few and then just join the waiting lists for the rest; they'll open themselves up without any problem. If you ever want to restack you'll have to first sit out before you can access the cashier. This presents problems if you were just involved in a showdown: you'll either miss your next hole cards or will have to play your next hand without a full stack. It's especially annoying if you're playing fast-paced 5max and happen to miss a turn due to bad timing. Players are given just over 20 seconds to act. You heard me right. Additionally, if you are disconnected, you will be awarded another few seconds, but then immediately sat out and removed from the table. You will lose your seat and have to rejoin the waiting list. I don't know if this only happens if you're supposed to be posting the blinds; regardless it's irritating to say the least. The 5max game type may be disappointing to those who are accumstomed to 6max. With blinds of $.75 / 5 hands you're being hit for $150 per 1000 hands, so be wary if you intend to play tight. Another way used to get more chips on the table is the forcing of TWO big blinds (no small) in all Pot Limit games. Everyone knows the small blind calls every time anyway, so I guess it doesn't make much of a difference. Like with other clients, tables will flash in your taskbar upon action, but on Hollywood they will continue to flash indefinitely unless you spend more than a few seconds with focus on them. This is especially annoying for fast/multitable players, as you can end up with your whole taskbar coloured blue and will have difficulty seeing which one you're supposed to act on. Hence you can spend half your time clicking on tables just to get them to stop flashing. Tables do NOT flash when asking for blinds or when you've come to the end of a waiting list. Again, if you're multitabling and can't see all the tables at once, you'll be frantically searching to see which one just beeped. Infact, when you come to the end of a table waiting list, there is no alert whatsoever; you just have to hope you notice it. Speaking of alerts, sound is either on or off. If you want notifications then you'll also have to listen to the incessant crackling of chips and shuffles. If you are living with others, beware that they may mistake it for machine-gun fire and attempt to disarm you. If you are living alone, find a housemate because a few days alone with this shit will drive you crazy. [I did try to delete the sound files from directory but they continued to play. I shall try again.] Complaints aside, Hollywood does offer some decent software options. You can choose to catagorise players using icons, turn lobby chat and player characters off, and even use hotkeys - F1 to fold, F2 to check/call and F3 to minbet. To be honest, the hotkeys alone are quite a redeeming feature. Statistics Hollywood records your session and all-time stats permanently. There have recently been errors with this but I believe they've fixed it now. Hand histories are accessed via their website. You can click a link on your table to go to that table's history in your browser, but must then browse by hand number using 'previous' and 'next' buttons. Histories do not display your hole cards until after the showdown, and player actions are all shown on a single line per street, which makes the hand difficult to read. They do however include net loss and gain, which is convenient. Pokertracker and Gametime both support Hollywood, and a special program named PRfetch has been coded to extract statistics from the server without the need for table observation. This is useful as it means you can sit down and instantly have hundreds of hands of data on your opponents. Bonuses and rake Maximum rake per pot is displayed in the table below. Buy-in No Limit Pot Limit $10 $0.10 $0.20 $25 $0.50 $0.50 $50 $1 $1 $100 $2 $2 $200+ $3 $3 Promotions are widely publicised on Hollywood; there's even a button in the lobby linking to them. Deposit bonuses range from a 'tournie package' and '100% up to $50', to '1500% up to $1500'. However, the higher the bonus, the harder it is to clear. Ultimately you're probably better off taking the middle ground and going with our own 500% up to $1000 offer. I say this because anything higher may take several weeks to clear, and you'll miss out on the monthly reloads. The 100% up to $50 took me about 6 days to clear on 10nl with casual sessions on 7-12 tables. I'm currently playing a 1000% up to $1000 bonus, which is released in $50 increments, and must say it is utterly worthless. You may be better off just finding a client with rakeback (for example Battlefield Poker). Lastly, there's an interesting 'refer a friend' deal that gets you both $75 with pretty easy requirements (easier than the $50 deposit bonus) - this I would recommend. Support Actually the support at Hollywood is quite nifty. They responded quickly to my emails and, although at first glance it's quite unprofessional, it really is handy to have a member of staff chatting away in the lobby 24/7. I witnessed a number of complaints regarding SNGs which apparently crashed or something, and believe the players were consolidated and reimbursed promptly. Cashing out was a bit odd in that it would only process a whole number. For example $382.54 will cause a glitch; $382 will work. I'm just wondering what they do with all the dead pennies.. Other fun things Hollywood Poker really does live up to its name, currently boasting the Michael Woods Celebrity Invitational, and trademark Celebrity Classic Tournaments hosted by names such as Josh Malina (Celebrity Poker Showdown; The West Wing), aswell as a number of other increasingly ridiculous events. Did I say ridiculous? I meant ridiculous. Whoops, did it again.. A big attraction to this site is that celebrities play here, and their names are marked ingame by a star. They're also announced in the lobby chat window - infact "Kane Hodder" has logged in this very moment! I had to look him up on IMDB, but rest assured I'm even more excited now that I know he was a stunt co-ordinator for Daredevil. Great. Conclusion Hollywood is a pleasant site for the casual gamer, with personalised support and lots of fun events to participate in. However, bad bonuses and tiresome software should deter the serious player - his only attraction being the consistently high traffic and countless number of fish.

Reviewed by: Ibsu Bai Hui

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pinbaLL    Sweden. Jan 31 2006 11:58. Posts 7243 Awesome sauce! Gj sir Ibsu

anon   Lithuania. Jan 31 2006 14:03. Posts 5965 oh Soft competition 10 - this is very attractive :o Doyle Brunson: Fights with your wife or girlfriend are not healthy for you bank roll Last edit: 31/01/2006 14:05

YoMeR   United States. Jan 31 2006 16:27. Posts 12438 just build a 5k or so bankroll and hit up the NL200 tables and work from there eZ Life.

PuertoRican   United States. Jan 31 2006 20:50. Posts 13257 Great article Ibsu. Rekrul is a newb

Rocks2BeGood   Netherlands. Feb 01 2006 01:14. Posts 3582 good post! iD.VaLi on Pokerstars !!

Baalim   Mexico. Feb 01 2006 05:10. Posts 34312 <3 Ex-PokerStars Team Pro Online

pdk001   Korea (South). Feb 02 2006 16:54. Posts 9 i tried to creat an account as pdk001 because it's supports on the linux but some one has already been pdk001 (-_-; i hope to make a good friend with native english

Ibsu Bai Hui   United Kingdom. May 26 2006 12:11. Posts 3390 some other stuff: tables will unexpectedly (hah) CRASH if you play too many for too long (happens on 12+ maybe 10+ dunno). when it starts to happen i hit cnt-alt-del asap and manage to ONLY get removed from 8 or so.....bs handhistory server seems to break down every few days seem to be able to join tables with any amount, meaning a lot of gaystacks (its not that bad on 50nl tbh) Floofy says: my sis always goes around in bra but its annopyying to me

Ibsu Bai Hui   United Kingdom. Jun 17 2006 05:18. Posts 3390 seriously there is not a day that goes by without this place fucking up one way or another. currently my bonuses are bugged for an indefinite time, meaning i can't see how far complete they are or receive their rewards until "this issue is sorted out" Floofy says: my sis always goes around in bra but its annopyying to me

Ibsu Bai Hui   United Kingdom. Jul 07 2006 15:56. Posts 3390 site is sensative to your net connection if you get disconnected for a few seconds every hour or so for whatever reason (seriously id like to know what reason..) then dont bother to play heree Floofy says: my sis always goes around in bra but its annopyying to me