Choosing the right Poker Room for you!

Originally posted by z1pz0r
Hi Marc,

I'm 4-tabling NL200 on Stars but I'm kind of getting tired of all multitabling regs. I already started playing on PKR, with stars being my main playing site, but I'm probably switching to Party soon.
Also I'll be moving to NL400 soon.
Any suggestions?

Hey z1pz0r,

I play on party myself and it is ok. There is consistent traffic and the software isnt too bad, though it disconnects occasionally which is pretty tilting.

I would recommend you go for William Hill on iPoker instead though. For your limits, the traffic is going to be pretty similar for both networks. The VIP system offered by William Hill is going to give a greater rakeback % than Party however and probably has less regs.

Admittedly the software isnt as pretty or as functional, but what it lacks in these areas it makes up for in speed.

So yeah, raking ~2k a month on party will probably give you 20ish % rakeback (maybe less if you go for cash instead of poker bonus) versus the 30ish% on William Hill. So if you can survive the software, then it will increase your profitability to play there.

I play 10NL SH on pokerstars and i'm thinking of moving up a limit. I play around 60k hands per month and i would like to see your opinion for choosing my poker room.

Originally posted by tadejkkk
I play 10NL SH on pokerstars and i'm thinking of moving up a limit. I play around 60k hands per month and i would like to see your opinion for choosing my poker room.

I'd recommend PartyPoker for you because the games there are definitely soft (think of all the money Party spends on attracting fish by advertising WPT, etc) and you'll comfortably be able to put in the right volume. With enough traffic for the volume you're playing (by far) and fishier tables you'll be making money at Party than you ever did at PokerStars!

What's more, you'll get a nice first deposit bonus and will be able to earn StrategyPoints to unlock our educational content.

Hi,

I am looking for a new room where I would play:

1. SnG;
2. 3-5$
3. Full Ring
4. 200-300 Tournaments monthly;

Thank you!

Hey Marc,

If would be awesome, when you have the time to do a small research for me since I lack of overall information.

Which poker room offers a good (or/and the best) first deposit bonus system. I want to know how much rakeback (in %) I receive during my clearance of my first deposit.

I did a small and quick research on William Hill for example, if my calculations are correct they offer a bonus of 200% up to $2000 but the rakeback of the first deposit bonus is about 11.1% which is a joke and near impossible to clear.

I need to at least be able to play 6 tables. As long the website isn't inflated with regs due good VIP-scheme like Stars I'm fine.

Could you at least check the rakeback% of a first deposit bonus of Party poker, William Hill (if my calculations were wrong), 888poker, bwin, betfair, unitbet and PKR.

I just want to know the rakeback% of my first deposit bonus.

Edit: I plan to generate about $1000 rake per month for them. So I want a bonus clearable in 30-60 days.

Originally posted by ragney
Hey Marc,

If would be awesome, when you have the time to do a small research for me since I lack of overall information.

Which poker room offers a good (or/and the best) first deposit bonus system. I want to know how much rakeback (in %) I receive during my clearance of my first deposit.

I did a small and quick research on William Hill for example, if my calculations are correct they offer a bonus of 200% up to $2000 but the rakeback of the first deposit bonus is about 11.1% which is a joke and near impossible to clear.

I need to at least be able to play 6 tables. As long the website isn't inflated with regs due good VIP-scheme like Stars I'm fine.

Could you at least check the rakeback% of a first deposit bonus of Party poker, William Hill (if my calculations were wrong), 888poker, bwin, betfair, unitbet and PKR.

I just want to know the rakeback% of my first deposit bonus.

Edit: I plan to generate about $1000 rake per month for them. So I want a bonus clearable in 30-60 days.

Hey Ragney,

You calculations for William Hill were off

They actually offer the best deposit bonus that I have seen, with a rakeback equivalent to 43% for SnG players. Bear in mind that for cash game players it is very difficult to give an accurate % due to the many variables which determine how much rake you generate. So we use tournament fees ($10+1, 5$5+$0.50 etc) because they are static.

So I would actually recommend WH. If you deposit $500-$600, you will get a $1000-$1200 bonus. The $1,000 bonus requires about $2,333 rake to clear over 2 months, so it is easily clearable with ~1k a month if you can push yourself to make a little extra rake so you get the full value from the bonus.

Again, this is calculated for SnG players, may take little longer for cash game im afraid.

Even so, WH offer a highly competitive FDB, plus their VIP system at $1000 rake a month will add an additional 15-20% when you cash in your Will Hill Points,

Hope that helps mate!

Originally posted by Laiwinsh
Hi,

I am looking for a new room where I would play:

1. SnG;
2. 3-5$
3. Full Ring
4. 200-300 Tournaments monthly;

Thank you!

I would suggest Betfair on Ongame.

Ongame SnG traffic is very good, their bonuses and VIP systems are geared more towards SnG players than Cash Game (imo) and you will always be able to find a game.

The software isnt necessarily the best (compared to stars etc), but for 200-300 tournaments a month, you want good, soft games, that always there. So I would recommend Betfair.

Hope that is useful matey.

Originally posted by DtotheC

Originally posted by ragney
Hey Marc,

If would be awesome, when you have the time to do a small research for me since I lack of overall information.

Which poker room offers a good (or/and the best) first deposit bonus system. I want to know how much rakeback (in %) I receive during my clearance of my first deposit.

I did a small and quick research on William Hill for example, if my calculations are correct they offer a bonus of 200% up to $2000 but the rakeback of the first deposit bonus is about 11.1% which is a joke and near impossible to clear.

I need to at least be able to play 6 tables. As long the website isn't inflated with regs due good VIP-scheme like Stars I'm fine.

Could you at least check the rakeback% of a first deposit bonus of Party poker, William Hill (if my calculations were wrong), 888poker, bwin, betfair, unitbet and PKR.

I just want to know the rakeback% of my first deposit bonus.

Edit: I plan to generate about $1000 rake per month for them. So I want a bonus clearable in 30-60 days.

Hey Ragney,

You calculations for William Hill were off

They actually offer the best deposit bonus that I have seen, with a rakeback equivalent to 43% for SnG players. Bear in mind that for cash game players it is very difficult to give an accurate % due to the many variables which determine how much rake you generate. So we use tournament fees ($10+1, 5$5+$0.50 etc) because they are static.

So I would actually recommend WH. If you deposit $500-$600, you will get a $1000-$1200 bonus. The $1,000 bonus requires about $2,333 rake to clear, again, for SnG players, maybe a bit more for cash game im afraid. Over 2 months it is easily clearable though.

Even so, WH offer a highly competitive FDB, plus their VIP system at $1000 rake a month will add an additional 15-20% when you cash in your Will Hill Points,

Hope that helps mate!

According to:
http://poker.williamhill.com/help/wh-points/

The rake for every $1 on avarage is much lower than tournaments/sng.
SnG rakeback= 70wh per $1, $1 sng rake = 30 wh.
Means 30/70 = 43%

Cash game= 70wh per $, $1 rake is about 8 wh
Means 8/70 = 11%

Could you explain me how cash game is not 11%?

Also is it possible to deposit multiple times on WH? On pokerstars you can do 3x $200 deposit and still get a 100% bonus up to $600.

How about the other sites? I'm mainly interested in partypoker and other sites.

Thanks!

Your calculations were based on averages, which is ok for getting a rough idea, but doesnt actually tell us what you personally would get.

But tbh, I agree, for cash games the "rakeback" isnt great and that doesnt change on any room that I have seen. But there is some logic behind that.

Say you invest 30-40 minutes playing a single SnG and get $0.50 rake for $5.50 tournament. Thats 10% rake.

Now if you play a cash game for 3-40 minutes, you can easily rake $0.50 in that time. The rake however is half at roughly 5% for most rooms.

So yes, your rake and therefore your rakeback is higher on SnG's, however your rake in terms of BB's per 100 is lower on cash game, making it easier to get a better ROI.

Overall I think the systems are designed to be balanced evenly, but it depends on your play style. If you want to play "break-even" then I would play SnGs as the rakeback is better and bonuses are much easier to clear. However if your focus is win-rate/ROI then I would go for cash game. (sure some people can be exceptions to this rule, but generally it is accurate)

Ok, so in terms of suggestions:

PartyPoker has good traffic, their bonuses arent too hard to clear, but arent going to give you more than 15% rakeback on cash game. They also use Weighted Contributed as their rake model (may have seen the news recently), which means if you play tight, you will make less rake/rakeback.

This is the same for most rooms now tbh and it is a good thing, because it increases the fishiness of the tables, which for people who take the time to learn poker properly, means more profit. So, I would focus less on deposit bonuses as cash game player and focus more on win-rate/ROI.

For this reason I recommend 888/PKR. Both can support 6-tables, fishy as hell, both have deposit bonuses and you should make a killing at the tables. Their cash game traffic is good enough to get a game any time of the day and the fishiness means you dont need to worry too much about table selection.

Check out our reviews for them both below:

PKR
888

So yeah, I would recommend seeing the FDB as just that, a bonus and focusing on rooms that will give your BB's per 100 the biggest boost.

Hope that is useful mate, apologies if the news isnt what you wanted, but unfortunately cash game players will always get less rakeback % because their rake % is lower.

I'm not a tight player. I'm actually a good winning player (10+bb/100hands over 40k sample) on pokerstars at NL25. Since I won't be reaching supernova this year I want to try out some other site. Weighted contribution fits my 24/21 playstyle very well.

My last question would be, which pokerrooms are you allowed to do multiple deposits while retaining the first deposit bonus up to $xxx.

For example, on pokerstars you can deposit 3 times and get a bonus up to 600$. So you "lose" your first deposit bonus after 3 deposits.

Originally posted by ragney
My last question would be, which pokerrooms are you allowed to do multiple deposits while retaining the first deposit bonus up to $xxx.

Hey ragney,

as far as I'm aware, it's only PokerStars which offers this functionality, but let me check right quick.

M

Hey Ragney,

As Marc said, Stars is the only one afaik. I would also recommend pokerheaven, as they have a flat 30% rakeback system, plus our rake race on there is really soft, with last months top raker (getting a prize of $1200) raked about $3.4k.

$1k rake will net you $200, so 20% rakeback on top of your 30% flat. The FDB is pretty much equal to WH though.

Thank you guys. I will decide later where to play.

Btw, I can't find on Party Poker how many PP you need to clear a part of your FDB, do you have any idea?

I know you get 2PP every $1 raked.

You will need 8PP to clear $1 of the bonus and it is released in pieces of 10% of the total deposit amount

Originally posted by ragney
Thank you guys. I will decide later where to play.

Btw, I can't find on Party Poker how many PP you need to clear a part of your FDB, do you have any idea?

I know you get 2PP every $1 raked.

Hey ragney,

From this page:

The bonus will be cleared in 10 steps. Every time you complete a step, 10% of the bonus will be released.The bonus is cleared at a rate of 8 PartyPoints for every $1, 10 PartyPoints for €1, and 12 PartyPoints for £1. This is according to the currency that you have chosen for your account.

Hope that helps!

M

edit: not as quick as ninja DC

Lols, too slow Marc already posted the answer

Originally posted by DtotheC
You will need 8PP to clear $1 of the bonus and it is released in pieces of 10% of the total deposit amount

That is equal to 25% rakeback on my FDB. And I can still use the PP to buy cash for extra rakeback right? If so I'm probably going to PP.

Also, do you gain more PP if you have higher status, like Palladium?

That is equal to 25% rakeback on my FDB. And I can still use the PP to buy cash for extra rakeback right? If so I'm probably going to PP.

Also, do you gain more PP if you have higher status, like Palladium?

Yep you can still use your points to buy cash, but the rakeback for them is pretty low until you hit paladium etc.

Check out this thread for all details about PP promos and vip system. And yep, based on SnG's but it will give you an idea at least of what you can expect:

PartyPoker - Just follow the links here to the VIP thread.

Bear in mind, palladium level requires 4.5k rake per quarter to achieve and is awarded at the end of the quarter.

Whilst clearing the FDB you will be bronze first, then either silver or gold, meaning you cant buy anything above a $300 cash reward, worth 10% rakeback until at least the end of the quarter.

edit - No you dont get more points for being a higher VIP level.

2nd edit - SnG fees and cash game both equal the same amount of points, so those figures all accurate for cash game as well.

Did you find that PP thread I created useful btw?

Thank you very much, it made things much clear now.

I decided to play and try the Ongame network, do you know if bwin, europoker and betfair have the same bonus clearing policy?

EG. How many points do I need to clear a certain amount of money? And how many points I get per $1 rake cash game?

Originally posted by ragney
Thank you very much, it made things much clear now.

I decided to play and try the Ongame network, do you know if bwin, europoker and betfair have the same bonus clearing policy?

EG. How many points do I need to clear a certain amount of money? And how many points I get per $1 rake cash game?

I recently deposited small on bwin, so I could try out their android client.

I deposited $100, and it's being cleared at 10 points / $, increments of 10%, so 100 player points / $10 increment.

I'm afraid I don't know just how it's calculated for points/rake.
I've read that the points are calculated on relative player strenght based on 90 day history for each player you play against or so, I found it somewhat confusing myself.

but from: http://www.pokerstrategy.com/bwin-poker/download/

In general, poker players get 3.25pp for each $1 contributed rake in cash games and 5pp in tournaments.

The way points are calculated depends on many different factors, among which the relative strength relationship between the contributing players.

Each player’s performance over the last 90 days of active cash game play is compared with that of the others and adjustments are made by bwin. In extreme cases, a player may end up collecting multiple times the amount of points they would collect in another hand of the same size against other players.

Regards,
Richard