Best poker site?

Bengaboy · 23 Jul 2008 at 15:35

Hi guys, I want to start playing poker again and dont really want to use ladbrokes (their river cards are always "WTF!?!?!" - constantly

).

So I was just wondering what do you guys use? Any poker sites have incentives at the moment?

Cheers guys

el_dazza · 23 Jul 2008 at 15:45

Bengaboy said:
Hi guys, I want to start playing poker again and dont really want to use ladbrokes (their river cards are always "WTF!?!?!" - constantly ).

I found that with ladcrooks, but there's a lot of info on their site about their randomized number generator thing. Gives a detailed breakdown of how often each card appears, and each one is approximately the same.

I play at Full Tilt, there's so many people on, it doesn't matter what stakes you're after, you'll get a game, and there's a lot of decent small buy-in tournaments. Only downside is, it's minimum $50 deposit and withdrawal.

Thomas. PLease. · 23 Jul 2008 at 15:47

same with pkr.

el_dazza · 23 Jul 2008 at 15:57

whatleytom said:
same with pkr.

People only talk this up because it looks pretty.

FT is fairly straightforward, and it's easy to keep track of what's going on.

Their promos are far better than PKR as well.

Sh3rlock · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:10

Its amazing, some people make a fortune off online Poker.

I had three 19 years olds renting a 4 bedroom house for £1200 PCM off me. All funded by there winnings from online Poker. They never missed rent, bill payments nothing and they had mint tv's, consoles and all in the property.

weringo · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:25

I play on PokerStars, I find the only downside of playing there is that they don't your opponents' hole cards once your both all in and racing in cash games. For example, if you and your opponent are all in pre-flop and you have KK, you have to wait until the river to find out the good/bad news.

There also seems to be a large number of questionable river cards but I'd probably say that whatever site I play on

Rudeboy · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:25

Damien. said:
Its amazing, some people make a fortune off online Poker.

I had three 19 years olds renting a 4 bedroom house for £1200 PCM off me. All funded by there winnings from online Poker. They never missed rent, bill payments nothing and they had mint tv's, consoles and all in the property.

I stuggle to understand how anyone makes a profit from it.

My balance goes up and down like I don't know what. I put $50 in about 6 weeks ago and fluctuate anywhere between $35 and $120.

The cards never seem random and always in favour of the lower hand on the river in a showdown situation that it's freaky. It's got to the stage now where I'll almost go all-in on a worse hand as I know I'm more likely to hit something on the river.

Perhaps I need to be playing higher stakes games, but the other thing that annoys me is people going all-in every hand. Ohh, I've got an Ace therefore it's an automatic all-in :rolleyes:

el_dazza · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:34

weringo said:
I play on PokerStars, I find the only downside of playing there is that they don't your opponents' hole cards once your both all in and racing in cash games. For example, if you and your opponent are all in pre-flop and you have KK, you have to wait until the river to find out the good/bad news.

There also seems to be a large number of questionable river cards but I'd probably say that whatever site I play on

A lot of sites dont show the hands heads-up in cash games, I don't get why :confused:

Energize · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:44

Rudeboy said:
I stuggle to understand how anyone makes a profit from it.

My balance goes up and down like I don't know what. I put $50 in about 6 weeks ago and fluctuate anywhere between $35 and $120.

There will be a large standard deviation, but as long as you are a very good player the odds will be in your favour and you will make a profit.

Killerkebab · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:48

Rudeboy said:
I stuggle to understand how anyone makes a profit from it.

My balance goes up and down like I don't know what. I put $50 in about 6 weeks ago and fluctuate anywhere between $35 and $120.

The cards never seem random and always in favour of the lower hand on the river in a showdown situation that it's freaky. It's got to the stage now where I'll almost go all-in on a worse hand as I know I'm more likely to hit something on the river.

Perhaps I need to be playing higher stakes games, but the other thing that annoys me is people going all-in every hand. Ohh, I've got an Ace therefore it's an automatic all-in

There's your mistake

You want to make a profit from online poker, you want to be properly bankrolled. Choose what stakes you want to play at and deposit at least 500 times the big blind for your stakes. If you play tournaments, you want at least 15 times the buy in. That way when you lose out to freaky river cards (and trust me, that doesn't happen often UNLESS your cards aren't that great to begin with

) you have some money left to bring you back up.

Poker is a long term game. It might be a rollercoaster going up and down but in the long run it is going up.

Killerkebab · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:49

el_dazza said:
A lot of sites dont show the hands heads-up in cash games, I don't get why

It helps to protect your game. In a tournament they can show when you shove all in because if you lose you're out so it doesnt matter what information you've given your opponent on your play.

Wheras in a cash game, you can always rebuy

Rudeboy · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:51

Killerkebab said:
There's your mistake You want to make a profit from online poker, you want to be properly bankrolled. Choose what stakes you want to play at and deposit at least 500 times the big blind for your stakes. If you play tournaments, you want at least 15 times the buy in. That way when you lose out to freaky river cards (and trust me, that doesn't happen often UNLESS your cards aren't that great to begin with ) you have some money left to bring you back up.

Poker is a long term game. It might be a rollercoaster going up and down but in the long run it is going up.

I mainly play sit & go's.
Sounds like I need to start playing the cash tables.

weringo · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:52

Killerkebab said:
There's your mistake You want to make a profit from online poker, you want to be properly bankrolled. Choose what stakes you want to play at and deposit at least 500 times the big blind for your stakes.

Even that's not really enough, 500 BB = 5 buyins can dissapear very quickly with some horrible luck. You should have 10-15 buyins at a minimum imo to factor for the variance.

Killerkebab · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:53

Rudeboy said:
I mainly play sit & go's.
Sounds like I need to start playing the cash tables.

I was told a good place to learn is SNG and a good place to make money is cash tables. Remember that whilst you can make more money on cash... you can also lose a whole lot more

weringo · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:53

Killerkebab said:
It helps to protect your game. In a tournament they can show when you shove all in because if you lose you're out so it doesnt matter what information you've given your opponent on your play.

Wheras in a cash game, you can always rebuy

But you can see what your opponent had anyway by looking at the hand history after the hand, so I just don't see the point.

el_dazza · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:54

That's a good point. On High Stakes Poker they don't have to show their cards, and it's been mentioned before that in cash games in Vegas, you don't have to.

I was talking to Chris Ferguson on FT the other day, and he says although he's a multi-millionaire, he'll often play small games to tune his game. He also said to me to never play more than 5% of your bankroll in tournament play, and have at least 500 times the big blind for cash play (e.g playing .25/.50, have a $250 bank).

Although most people play smaller stakes online, even if you're playing .05/.10, you don't risk much. I've played some .05/.10 CAP PL Omaha today and made about $30 from a $8 buy-in. Slow and steady progress is the only way to make money.

Killerkebab · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:54

weringo said:
But you can see what your opponent had anyway by looking at the hand history after the hand, so I just don't see the point.

You can't see what they had if they lost to you, as they can choose to muck

el_dazza · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:56

Killerkebab said:
You can't see what they had if they lost to you, as they can choose to muck

You can. On Stan James, and Full Tilt (sites where I regularly play), you can see the losing hand by viewing hand history. Don't know about other sites.

At least if you see each other's cards in an all-in situation, you know where you stand, rather than it being a guessing game.

Killerkebab · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:56

weringo said:
Even that's not really enough, 500 BB = 5 buyins can dissapear very quickly with some horrible luck. You should have 10-15 buyins at a minimum imo to factor for the variance.

This is true, but 500BB was quoted as a strict minimum. I think you can get away with less than 15x for cash tables on the assumption that you dont risk your entire buyin with every hand - wheras on a sitngo there's no coming back

el_dazza said:
I was talking to Chris Ferguson on FT the other day, and he says although he's a multi-millionaire, he'll often play small games to tune his game. He also said to me to never play more than 5% of your bankroll in tournament play, and have at least 500 times the big blind for cash play (e.g playing .25/.50, have a $250 bank).

Here's another good one, in a given day of poker try not to risk more than a small percentage of your bankroll. This is where it helps to obviously deposit a lot to win in the long run

weringo · 23 Jul 2008 at 16:57

Killerkebab said:
You can't see what they had if they lost to you, as they can choose to muck

Any called hand on the river can be seen by anyone at the table, in live poker it's unethical ask to see the losing hand but you can if you want to. On online poker there's nothing anyone can do if you want to see the losing hand.