Places to Play
Throughout our site we feature online poker room PokerRoom.com. Let's take a closer look at a few of the reasons this site is one of the best online. First, you don't need to download the software onto your desktop, it's as easy as opening a Yahoo email account. You can log on from any computer, anywhere in the world, and play poker online. This is such a nice feature, unique to PokerRoom.com, which makes signing up a piece of cake. Especially when you travel, it's so easy to log on and just play. If you feel inclined to download it to your desktop, you can do that as well.
Another very special resource that makes PokerRoom.com our featured online poker site and gives them competitive advantage is the ability to color code players or tag the fish. (see banner below). This is a brand new concept and a secret ingredient that differentiates them from other poker sites. For our money, this is an invaluable online asset.
This tool, unique to PokerRoom.com, allows you to distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly. This is an amazing feature if you use it properly, since knowing your opponents tendencies is half the battle. Online Texas Holdem poker is an information game, the more information you have about your opponents, the better your chances of winning. Not only do you have notes on many of your competitors but as your single table tournament fills up you can see exactly what level you have assigned to that player. (For more on game odds see outs and odds and pre flop odds.) That's a great feeling.
You can organize your opponents into different categories and draw upon that advantage at any point in the future. (Beats the heck out of keeping a hand written log that I used to keep many moons ago, lol). This is a major reason PokerRoom.com comes highly recommended and is one of our favorite places to play.
Pokerroom.com offers a busy calendar of events and the full gamut of single table tournaments, multi table tournaments and Texas Holdem cash games. They have qualifying for the World Series of Poker and the WPT. Also, if you're a MAC Computer user this is THE place to play Texas Holdem. Because of software compatibility issues, MAC users can't download the other poker sites on to their hard drive.
PokerRoom.com is a
very popular site with an attractive game client
and excellent player promotions. Currently, they
are looking to add a player to Team PokerRoom and
become a pro for a year. Included in the prize is
buy-ins to the major tournaments, worth over
$140,000, and a salary, airfare and accommodation
worth at least $100,000. The entire prize package
is worth $240,000. It could be you...
Lets cut the chit chat, and Just Play Texas Holdem.
PartyPoker.com is another premier online poker site and the ‘big kahuna' of online poker. They have an incredible variety of poker and advertise over 50,000 players on their site everyday. If you're looking for a game, any poker game, anytime, and quickly, then PartyPoker is a great place to play.
There are 10 players per table at the single table events and their big multi table tournaments sometimes have over 2000 players. The prizes for the top players can run well over six figures. It's an amazing concept; you can start your day the same way as 1500 other players and end it with a huge payoff, all because of online texas holdem poker. First prize routinely pays over $100,000 and can change your life.
At PartyPoker.com, in the single table tournaments, they start you off with 800 or 1000 in chips and their blind structure moves quickly. Because it moves rather swiftly, towards the end there is a lot of pre-flop all-ins, making deals at PartyPoker a viable option.
One of the nice things about PartyPoker.com is you don't have to sit down for 2 hours to play a single game. Also, in single table tourneys there it usually takes less then a minute for your table to fill up, minimizing your downtime, allowing you to maximize your efficiencies. PartyPoker provides qualifying for all the major poker events including the World Series of Poker and their own World Poker Tour stop.
PokerStars.comis also an excellent poker site to play texas holdem. They have a tremendous variety of poker. You can play single table, multi-table texas holdem tournaments, heads up, as well as No Limit and Limit cash games. There are 9 players per table at the single table events and you can have a customized image to accompany your handle. They provide qualifying for all the major poker events including the World Series of Poker and their own World Poker Tour stop.
Their software is appealing and when your heads up All-in, they show both players hands before the flop, which I like. At PokerStars.com they start you off with 1500 dollars in chips and their blind structure does not move all that fast, which I like. It gives the more skilled player an opportunity to outplay his opponents and build a stack, lessening the likelihood of having to do a deal later on. But it takes longer to get through a sit and go for that reason.
PokerStars.com does a good job of making you feel like you're more than just a number. PokerStars provides FPP's or Frequent Player Points. You earn these points by playing different events that give you varying amounts of points depending on the structure and Buy-in for the specific event. You can use these points to enter other poker events or redeem them for cool items in the FPP store. With 17000 FPP's you can choose a customized set of PokerStars chips and carrying case, I can tell you they are very nice.
A fourth site I have been playing at is HugePots.com. I was turned on to this site by a friend of mine that is a very successful online player. At HugePots, like many of the lesser known poker rooms, the level of play, in my opinion, is not as high as it is at some of the big name sites, making it a great place to play. Because of the explosion in online Texas Holdem, many of the better players are playing at Pokerroom, PartyPoker, PokerStars, etc. where the competition has become pretty stiff. HugePots is a smaller site but growing rapidly and worth a trip if you're looking for a soft seat (see Vocabulary section) or a place to catch some fish.
HugePots.com offers the full spectrum of Texas Holdem poker games and has qualifying for the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour. The limit and pot limit cash games are where most of the action is at this site.
I feel very comfortable recommending all of these sites, since they are, predominantly, where I have played and continue to play. I've never had any problems at any of the above sites.
New recommendations will be coming in the near future.
If you simply want to play then click on how to get started