Room Reviews!

We are proud to finally launch a new, fully functional and entirely revised version of our Poker Room Reviews section. The new version contains very thorough reviews of 14 of the most popular poker rooms out there (and we will keep adding more as time goes by). They were written by a professional writer who himself is a poker player, so you can expect the reviews to be of high quality and with very precise information.

Each poker room review has information on Software, Game Selection, Competition, Traffic, Support, Bonuses and Rakeback, Deposit & Withdrawal Options and Security, plus screenshots, special bonus codes for exclusive promotions, and information on whether that specific room accepts US players. We are confident that those reviews will be helpful to many of you and will support you in making the final decision regarding which pokerroom to play at!

We'd love to hear your comments here under this news, and we will try to make the poker room reviews section as informative as possible.

You need to put:
1) The date of the review
2) The name of the reviewer

hmm nobody here would know the reviewer and we are trying to keep the reviews up to date so i don't see much relevancy in those fields.

Like saying a review is from 2006 would make it look very outdated while it could have been updated on a monthly basis.

the fact that stars is rated the same as party and cdpoker is kinda strange but nice addition to the site

On November 22 2008 16:21 Jamie217 wrote: the fact that stars is rated the same as party and cdpoker is kinda strange but nice addition to the site

true, and i agree that rates could have been higher so i adjusted them heh.

the reason that stars isnt #1 is because their bonuses kinda suck.

Wow, great work thnx

By the way luckyacepoker:
Accepting U.S Players flag
Cons: Does not accept U.S. players

so by bonuses the reviews specifically mean for starting players, and not for longterm benefits of hardcore players and stuff?

i mean just at a glance, everyone around here seems to say that full tilt poker's software is not a perfect ten, and that stars is the best software around. is this really accurate?

and i wish it would talk about fpps and stuff because when you just hear "stars has weak bonuses" well. cmon

like i guess it sounds like the reviews are aimed towards somebody who knows nothing about poker, maybe thats okay or something :o

Titanpoker review also has the accept US players flag, but does not accept US players under cons.

Good stuff guys, thanks.

thanks i fixed the usa flags

On November 22 2008 16:05 Liquid`Meat wrote: hmm nobody here would know the reviewer and we are trying to keep the reviews up to date so i don't see much relevancy in those fields. Like saying a review is from 2006 would make it look very outdated while it could have been updated on a monthly basis.

about this, people like to know who wrote the review because it might provide insight into any biases. Also, you should have a thing that says "review last updated 6/9/69" or whatever

69 is a great number

how the hell did ftp get a better score than ps

its so standard that ps > ftp right?

On November 22 2008 16:05 Liquid`Meat wrote: hmm nobody here would know the reviewer and we are trying to keep the reviews up to date so i don't see much relevancy in those fields. Like saying a review is from 2006 would make it look very outdated while it could have been updated on a monthly basis.

Then put the date like. Reviewed in Mar,2006. Rev in Apr,2008. The whole idea of posting a review of something dynamic without a date sounds ridiculous to me.
Also whoever reviewed it has to have his name somewhere. The fact that people know him or not is irrelevant.

I dont know maybe Im just too strict when it comes down to stuff like this.

capaneo is dead on, whats the point in creating content like this if you are not going give it credibility. seems to good quality for these reviews, as with all room reviews they are hard pressed to have much real info in them, but i guess it will help generate search hits.

On November 22 2008 19:01 Syntax wrote: how the hell did ftp get a better score than ps its so standard that ps > ftp right?

theyre both scoring 10s on a lot of things such as software but ps has a 5 for bonuses. I like PS more as well personally but them scoring lower is justified. Both sites are good with everything so PS slacking with their bonus hurts the rating.

On November 22 2008 19:59 capaneo wrote: Then put the date like. Reviewed in Mar,2006. Rev in Apr,2008. The whole idea of posting a review of something dynamic without a date sounds ridiculous to me. Also whoever reviewed it has to have his name somewhere. The fact that people know him or not is irrelevant. I dont know maybe Im just too strict when it comes down to stuff like this.

In order to be objective these room reviews are presented without a writer. This approach is similar to the larger pokersites (pokernews for example). A strategy article has no obligation to be objective and presenting it with a writer makes more sense and is also largely about self promotion.

The date can only have negative effects with people disregarding the review because its a few months old, whereas the review might still be relevant.

I see your arguments and they make sense, I won't discredit them because they're completely justified. There are pros and cons to showing these things, your points are the pros but we consider the cons to be larger so we've chosen to do it this way.

FTP review states that they are compatible with Poker Tracker 3. You should also mention they are compatible with Holdem Manager.

Nice job.

Giving a 9 to FTP support, a 9 to Party Poker and only an 8 to PokerStars is really weird though. It would be more like 7, 4, 10 in my opinion.

edit : I know it's because PS doesn't have phone support, but I included that factor in my ratings.

eww FTP is 9.2? bollocks

100% agreed with catuls point about support ratings re: ftp vs ps. and while we're on that note let me rant it up:

bonuses/rakeback 8 for ftp vs a ridic measly 5 for ps is pretty harsh too just because ftp has a higher first time dep bonus. for a high volume professional the rewards benefits pokerstars offer (vipclub + fpps + milestone bonuses + whatever else) work out to an incomparably way way higher effective rakeback % than ftp's 27% (which is actually definitely even lower than 27% when you look at the big bites ftp take out of your mgr totals for everytime you deposit money or order anything from the ftp store with your crappy points). i think this more than balances the fact ftp might be more favourable for new smallstakes players. im pretty sure the amount of extra 'rakeback' ive made from putting in volume on pokerstars than the amt i would have generated if i put in the same amount of volume on full tilt as i did on stars is by now easily in the FIVE figures.

also pokerstars is the clear unrivalled industry leader in terms of traffic so it rightly deserves its 10/10 for cashgame traffic but how does ftp score a 10 here as well when it isnt close to comparable? ftp should have a 7 to 8 score if this 'scale' is to have any meaning at all and partypoker should be significantly lower still.

catul style edit: i know after you get to a certain level of traffic you dont 'need' any more and there are diminishing returns on having more traffic, my proposed rating accounts for that. just use pokerscout.com for cashgame traffic indicators to see ps always has like double the cashgame traffic ftp has so ftp would need like a 5/10 rating in that area if it were done linearly.

I really dont find the traffic at FTP to be that great at all. I have rakeback on FTP and still keep a roll on stars just because I get so much more action there. I mean I know most people have rolls on several sites, but basically the ONLY reason I play on FTP is for rakeback. Also last time I emailed them they responded the next day with an email apologizing for the delay, and that they will get to me eventually. Stars responds in about 5 minutes.

Anyway all in all I think the reviews are fine though. Just had to point that out.

Wow pretty surprised to see that partypoker seemed to be the worst for micro stakes as i thought it'd be more profitable because there'd be more fishes. I guess the rakeis killing me and i agree the points are somewhat worthless.

On November 22 2008 20:35 Catul wrote: Nice job. Giving a 9 to FTP support, a 9 to Party Poker and only an 8 to PokerStars is really weird though. It would be more like 7, 4, 10 in my opinion. edit : I know it's because PS doesn't have phone support, but I included that factor in my ratings.

2 years ago I would have given stars a 10 for phone support, now however i think an 8 is justified. Their support is still good, but worsened a lot.

I agree that a 9 for party support is too high, my personal experiences with them are pretty outdated though.

On November 22 2008 23:52 Ket wrote: 100% agreed with catuls point about support ratings re: ftp vs ps. and while we're on that note let me rant it up: bonuses/rakeback 8 for ftp vs a ridic measly 5 for ps is pretty harsh too just because ftp has a higher first time dep bonus. for a high volume professional the rewards benefits pokerstars offer (vipclub + fpps + milestone bonuses + whatever else) work out to an incomparably way way higher effective rakeback % than ftp's 27% (which is actually definitely even lower than 27% when you look at the big bites ftp take out of your mgr totals for everytime you deposit money or order anything from the ftp store with your crappy points). i think this more than balances the fact ftp might be more favourable for new smallstakes players. im pretty sure the amount of extra 'rakeback' ive made from putting in volume on pokerstars than the amt i would have generated if i put in the same amount of volume on full tilt as i did on stars is by now easily in the FIVE figures. also pokerstars is the clear unrivalled industry leader in terms of traffic so it rightly deserves its 10/10 for cashgame traffic but how does ftp score a 10 here as well when it isnt close to comparable? ftp should have a 7 to 8 score if this 'scale' is to have any meaning at all and partypoker should be significantly lower still. catul style edit: i know after you get to a certain level of traffic you dont 'need' any more and there are diminishing returns on having more traffic, my proposed rating accounts for that. just use pokerscout.com for cashgame traffic indicators to see ps always has like double the cashgame traffic ftp has so ftp would need like a 5/10 rating in that area if it were done linearly.

I agree that if rakeback / fpp bonus system is taken into consideration then a 5 is way too low for stars. When given this rating the reviewer seems to have only taken the first deposit bonus into account. However the rating is for all kind of bonuses: first deposit bonus, reload and fpp stuff. We will also add an extra paragraph to this because the fpp store isn't mentioned at all.

If the scale for traffic meant the number of players, so the highest being the standard and the percentage of traffic the room get is their rating then i would agree with you on the low ratings for party and ipoker. That however isn't the case, the rating means "Is the traffic good" and not "Is the traffic the same as stars". Those rooms always have plenty of tables available so their traffic is good. Otherwise we would have to give the 3rd biggest available network (iPoker) a negative rating on traffic and that doesn't make sense to me.

On November 23 2008 04:47 Liquid`Meat wrote: Show nested quote + On November 22 2008 20:35 Catul wrote: Nice job. Giving a 9 to FTP support, a 9 to Party Poker and only an 8 to PokerStars is really weird though. It would be more like 7, 4, 10 in my opinion. edit : I know it's because PS doesn't have phone support, but I included that factor in my ratings. 2 years ago I would have given stars a 10 for phone support, now however i think an 8 is justified. Their support is still good, but worsened a lot. I agree that a 9 for party support is too high, my personal experiences with them are pretty outdated though.

True, like it sometimes takes them over a week to create a private freeroll (if they don't screw it up). I wouldnt give that a 10 either, even though they are really fast and helpful most of the time.

The more I read about Cake the more tempted I am to switch to there from PS.

party based on old software?

On November 25 2008 05:03 Critterer wrote: party based on old software?

yes, we have been working on the reviews for such a long time that the party one is still based on the old software. We just realized this yesterday and are currently updating it.

I think the first step should be for you guys to get room reviews for all the rooms you are offering rakeback for.