Poker Stars
Quick Overview
Poker Stars opened for play money beta testing September 12th 2001 and began offering real money games in December 2001. As the leading tournament online poker room it has produced players who won their way to become the 2003 (Chris Moneymaker) and 2004 (Greg Raymer) World Series of Poker Main Event Champions.
Up to 15,000 cash game players and 100,000 tournament players can be found at the Poker Stars tables during peak periods. This makes Poker Stars by far the largest online poker room for both cash game and tournament poker.
In previous years Poker Stars had a reputation of having very tough players at any game or limit. Recently the competition gotten easier except there has been an influx of tougher players at the higher limits making these games more difficult.
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Full Tilt Poker
Quick Overview
Full Tilt Poker opened for business in July 2004 and with an aggressive marketing campaign has gradually grown to be one of the leading online poker rooms. Full Tilt sponsors some of the biggest names in poker including Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer and Phil Gordon, who can sometimes be seen playing at the tables.
During peak times there can be up to 60,000 tournament and 10,000 cash game players found at the Full Tilt Poker real money tables. The cash games consist mainly of Limit or No-Limit Texas Hold’em tables.
Historically even at lower limits the players at Full Tilt Poker tended to be quite a bit tighter than those found at most other online poker rooms. Although these tight players were not necessarily be good players it did make it much more difficulty to win than rooms with looser players. However as the room has grown in size the competition has gotten considerably easier, especially in the Omaha games.
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Party Poker
Quick Overview
Party Poker opened in 2001 and is credited by many as playing a large role in the creation of the online poker boom with its aggressive marketing. Party Poker is currently listed on the London Stock Exchange (PRTY – PartyGaming PLC).
Once the largest online poker room with a reported 5 million users, Party Poker has been overtaken by Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. However there are still 10,000 cash players and 60,000 tournament players during the busiest times. Due to the number of players from all over the globe a game can generally be found quickly no matter the time of day.
Many of the players are beginners or casual players, especially at the lower levels. As you play higher level games they do get tougher as expected however you can still find many opportunities to play players of a lower standard.
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Doyle’s Room
Quick Overview
Brunson is regarded as a bit of a god in the poker world having written the so-called ‘bible of poker’ entitled Super System. He’s also won 10 World Series of Poker bracelets since the 1970s and continues to take part in a number of tournaments around the world.
Doyle’s Room operates only by the download software provided, although the 7.36mb download should be manageable for most players. It’s also worth noting that unlike online casinos, once the software has finished its installation there is no more hanging about waiting for further files to be downloaded. Doyle’s Room is part of the Microgaming-powered Multi Player Poker network and as such anyone that’s played on this network before will use the same table name even though they are now playing through Doyle’s.
The range of games at Doyle’s is sufficient with low-limit tables running with blinds of just $0.05 / $0.10 and high-end tables offering players the chance to participate in $200 / $400 No-Limit games.
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Everest Poker
Quick Overview
Everest Poker is medium sized poker room that is targeted towards European and Asian players. It was the first online poker room with multi-lingual support. Currently 16 different languages are supported including Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese and many others.
During peak times there can be up to 5,000 cash game players and 10,000 tournament players found at the Everest poker tables. The most trafficked times are during evening hours for European players.
The level of play is slightly worse to average compared to other online poker rooms. The lower limits have many bad players and a soft table is usually easy to find. As the limits increase the quality of play and number of tough opponents increases considerably.
