I play on pokerstars because there is lots of very best players in the world, and I want to crush their spirits and send them home on their bicycle. Variance works against me though. :D
I suspect every non US player will pretty much say the same thing as you too, PokerStars! Biggest field, best structure, lowest rake, least amount of BS/red tape from support. Especially considering how the 2nd and 3rd largest sites either rake too much at most stakes players play (Party) or have some weird structures, combined with a few other inferior points (Ipoker).In the USA, this is a more interesting question for heads up sng players. Bodog appears to be a decent place to make some profit, but they only offer up to $100 level heads up sngs, they have no rakeback and there is a lot of bs and hoopla surrounding their little crusade against sharks (Hint: They just want the profit from the fish in the sportsbook and casino, so they try to avoid their fish losing it all to regulars in poker, where Bodog gets a much smaller profit return on average. That's literally the hoopla in a nutshell, don't get caught up in it, just play and win and be done with it).Merge of course has a claim to being the best heads up sng place in the US still as well. But it really depends on where you play. Places like Lock seem to operate in a less than stellar way (Casino bonus that you have to wager 40x to play through, effectively making it worth less than half of the "advertised" rakeback bonus they equate it to, cashout maxes of $5k a month or so, effectively opening up an underground player market where cashouts require you to give up 10-15% of your profit, disappearing cashout methods, the least open skin about segregating funds, girah scandal promises that have not been fulfilled, etc.).Carbon, I personally find them to operate more ethically, but back when we featured them here, we ended up switching to black chip because we had some complaints about Carbon support, and I experienced the same thing on our end of things.RPM was a skin I actually liked in the past, but having seen RPMSeth's justification for several shady actions on 2p2, I will never give that man a penny of my business nor recommend any business partners to do the same.Hero poker is great, their CEO is informative, open and honest. He's the model for how to run your online poker business. Unfortunately they do not service US players (they are on the Merge network though).And Black Chip, we feature them for a reason. The best deals for players + excellent customer service makes this a winning combination.There are other skins like Sportsbook/PlayersOnly, but given that they recently removed heads up sngs over $100, again, a Bodog like reaction to their fish losing money at the poker tables and not the casino/sportsbook, it's not a place I would choose to play at on Merge, especially with options like Black Chip.I don't know a ton about skins like Nordica or Overbet, they are smaller and with sites like Black Chip or Carbon already offering the network maximum deals and Black Chip having excellent support, it doesn't strike me as likely that the smaller skins are worth exploring too much.I've heard Cake is improving, but have not yet looked into it in detail. I got rid of our Cake signup offer on rakeback.husng.com because I wasn't a fan of how they operate.Everleaf is the other US facing network that is somewhat relevant. They are smaller. It wasn't advertised right away, but their recently $1 rake max thing was only applicable to cash games in US dollars, not SNG games. I spoke to somebody about doing something for sngs, they told me it was a great idea and they would get back to me, etc. But nothing there yet.
Thanks for the answer in detail. Have you played recently at bodog? You don`t see who you play against anymore. Your opponent is just named "Player 2" or "Player 1". You can`t make notes or use player stats.
Great, informative answer Ry. Today is my first day on the site and I play pokerstars but have been very lazy in my poker for years and basically just never bothered learning. Stars is good for me as I have never had a problem with cashouts and other sites have had some bad publicity recently with that issue.
For all I know, before at some of these Poker sites, you will know whom you are up against. I don't know what is the idea of removing real screen names and changed it to player1, 2, etc...
Bodog makes changes that take away from the competitiveness and health of the poker economy simply because it benefits them (the less fish lose money to regs at the poker tables, the more they lose it to Bodog in the sportsbook or casino).When you hear about a website making changes to help the fish, always be skeptical. It's often either a misguided attempt at increasing profitability ("if 10 people come here and 7 of them make us a ton of money and 3 only make us very little, those 3 must be bad guys" when in reality the 3 drive the other 7 to the site) or it is just a better sounding reason for what is at the heart of many of these changes: Sites that run casinos, sportsbooks AND poker, realizing that casinos and sportsbooks make them a lot more money from fish action than having the fish playing at the poker tables, so they try to find ways to keep the fish from losing money in poker in order to keep them in the books/casino.Casinos have had a massive negative impact on the game of poker over the years. Just look at the USA right now. They are fighting over regulation, saying we need things like "massive protections for safety of people" and all these other fear based things.Meanwhile, you can legally wager on fantasy sports and video games here in the USA. There are websites (buzzdraft, draftday, among many others for fantasy, sites like virgingaming for video games) that offer this legally. Why is that? Because the casinos don't have a monopoly on fantasy sports or video games, nor a massive built in interest on them.Poker rooms being featured wherever the casinos will stick them in their properties for years has had a terrible impact on the views and freedom of internet poker. Even with poker regulation, the taxes, regulations and hurdles for online poker are likely to eclipse anything that you see in the domains that I just mentioned.(And to the earlier question, no I havne't played on Bodog in awhile, but have heard traffic in heads up sngs there and in general has been lighter in recent months, whether that is accurate or not I am not positive, it's just what I've heard from a few players there).
I play on pokerstars because there is lots of very best players in the world, and I want to crush their spirits and send them home on their bicycle. Variance works against me though. :D
I suspect every non US player will pretty much say the same thing as you too, PokerStars! Biggest field, best structure, lowest rake, least amount of BS/red tape from support. Especially considering how the 2nd and 3rd largest sites either rake too much at most stakes players play (Party) or have some weird structures, combined with a few other inferior points (Ipoker).In the USA, this is a more interesting question for heads up sng players. Bodog appears to be a decent place to make some profit, but they only offer up to $100 level heads up sngs, they have no rakeback and there is a lot of bs and hoopla surrounding their little crusade against sharks (Hint: They just want the profit from the fish in the sportsbook and casino, so they try to avoid their fish losing it all to regulars in poker, where Bodog gets a much smaller profit return on average. That's literally the hoopla in a nutshell, don't get caught up in it, just play and win and be done with it).Merge of course has a claim to being the best heads up sng place in the US still as well. But it really depends on where you play. Places like Lock seem to operate in a less than stellar way (Casino bonus that you have to wager 40x to play through, effectively making it worth less than half of the "advertised" rakeback bonus they equate it to, cashout maxes of $5k a month or so, effectively opening up an underground player market where cashouts require you to give up 10-15% of your profit, disappearing cashout methods, the least open skin about segregating funds, girah scandal promises that have not been fulfilled, etc.).Carbon, I personally find them to operate more ethically, but back when we featured them here, we ended up switching to black chip because we had some complaints about Carbon support, and I experienced the same thing on our end of things.RPM was a skin I actually liked in the past, but having seen RPMSeth's justification for several shady actions on 2p2, I will never give that man a penny of my business nor recommend any business partners to do the same.Hero poker is great, their CEO is informative, open and honest. He's the model for how to run your online poker business. Unfortunately they do not service US players (they are on the Merge network though).And Black Chip, we feature them for a reason. The best deals for players + excellent customer service makes this a winning combination.There are other skins like Sportsbook/PlayersOnly, but given that they recently removed heads up sngs over $100, again, a Bodog like reaction to their fish losing money at the poker tables and not the casino/sportsbook, it's not a place I would choose to play at on Merge, especially with options like Black Chip.I don't know a ton about skins like Nordica or Overbet, they are smaller and with sites like Black Chip or Carbon already offering the network maximum deals and Black Chip having excellent support, it doesn't strike me as likely that the smaller skins are worth exploring too much.I've heard Cake is improving, but have not yet looked into it in detail. I got rid of our Cake signup offer on rakeback.husng.com because I wasn't a fan of how they operate.Everleaf is the other US facing network that is somewhat relevant. They are smaller. It wasn't advertised right away, but their recently $1 rake max thing was only applicable to cash games in US dollars, not SNG games. I spoke to somebody about doing something for sngs, they told me it was a great idea and they would get back to me, etc. But nothing there yet.
Thanks for the answer in detail. Have you played recently at bodog? You don`t see who you play against anymore. Your opponent is just named "Player 2" or "Player 1". You can`t make notes or use player stats.
Great, informative answer Ry. Today is my first day on the site and I play pokerstars but have been very lazy in my poker for years and basically just never bothered learning. Stars is good for me as I have never had a problem with cashouts and other sites have had some bad publicity recently with that issue.
For all I know, before at some of these Poker sites, you will know whom you are up against. I don't know what is the idea of removing real screen names and changed it to player1, 2, etc...
Love it
Bodog makes changes that take away from the competitiveness and health of the poker economy simply because it benefits them (the less fish lose money to regs at the poker tables, the more they lose it to Bodog in the sportsbook or casino).When you hear about a website making changes to help the fish, always be skeptical. It's often either a misguided attempt at increasing profitability ("if 10 people come here and 7 of them make us a ton of money and 3 only make us very little, those 3 must be bad guys" when in reality the 3 drive the other 7 to the site) or it is just a better sounding reason for what is at the heart of many of these changes: Sites that run casinos, sportsbooks AND poker, realizing that casinos and sportsbooks make them a lot more money from fish action than having the fish playing at the poker tables, so they try to find ways to keep the fish from losing money in poker in order to keep them in the books/casino.Casinos have had a massive negative impact on the game of poker over the years. Just look at the USA right now. They are fighting over regulation, saying we need things like "massive protections for safety of people" and all these other fear based things.Meanwhile, you can legally wager on fantasy sports and video games here in the USA. There are websites (buzzdraft, draftday, among many others for fantasy, sites like virgingaming for video games) that offer this legally. Why is that? Because the casinos don't have a monopoly on fantasy sports or video games, nor a massive built in interest on them.Poker rooms being featured wherever the casinos will stick them in their properties for years has had a terrible impact on the views and freedom of internet poker. Even with poker regulation, the taxes, regulations and hurdles for online poker are likely to eclipse anything that you see in the domains that I just mentioned.(And to the earlier question, no I havne't played on Bodog in awhile, but have heard traffic in heads up sngs there and in general has been lighter in recent months, whether that is accurate or not I am not positive, it's just what I've heard from a few players there).