A Guide to the Best of Internet Poker
What is the best online poker site on the Internet?
Whether you are new to online poker or you are looking for a new online poker room to try, you will find what you need right here. With so many online poker rooms to choose from, how do you know which one is right for you? You could start by downloading each of the rooms and playing the free tables to get a feel for the site before you decide which ones to settle on. Hopefully the guide below will make the choice easier. We have reviewed many of the online poker sites and have come up with the Buddy's list of the best poker sites on the Internet. To get an idea which online poker room is best for you, download each of the sites listed below then test drive them on the free tables before choosing one or two.
What if some of the top poker pros got together and opened an online poker room? What if these pros were the famous ones like, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Jennifer Harman, Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Clonie Gowen, Andy Bloch, Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, and Allen Cunningham just to name a few. What if you could pull up a seat at a table with one of these pros? And what if all that had nothing to do with why you should try playing at this poker room? Then you'd have Full Tilt Poker. (Don't worry, if you don't have any desire to lose your bankroll to these pros, their tables are clearly marked.)
If you played at Full Tilt in the early days you may have been turned off by the first person viewpoint and the cheesy animated avatars. Today Full Tilt offers both the first person view and the more common overhead view, your choice. By the way, if you like those cheesy avatars and the first person viewpoint, it is called the "classic" table layout.
Here at the Buddy we were skeptical in the early days of Full Tilt. The general concern was that the Tilt would try to use its celebrity owners as a way to get customers and would let the quality of the room take a back seat. It did not happen. Full Tilt Poker is a very high quality online poker room, and it would stand on its own without the celebrity owners. In fact, the Buddy's choice to select Full Tilt for this list had nothing to do with the pro owners, and everything to do with the high quality of the room.
Online poker is not a new thing anymore. For many years there have been sites where you could play real poker for real money, but in the early 2000's, with all the tournament coverage on TV and the tremendous increase in poker popularity, many new sites started popping up in an attempt to take advantage of the poker craze. One of those was Absolute Poker, which quickly became the "rising star" of online poker with over 12,000 players online at peak hours in its first year. With plenty of action, superb table layout, great customer support, fast cashouts, and the best promotional offerings (including reload bonuses) Absolute is one of the best online poker rooms around.
Absolute features a full menu of games and limits including 6 player max tables, great micro limit games and no limit games. From $25/$50 all the way down to .02/.04 games, Absolute Poker has the action you're looking for. Many of these cash game tables feature a bad beat jackpot which routinely gets into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This poker room is a great place for tournament action, including Single Table, Multi Table and one of the very few online poker sites to offer Private tournaments to its real money players. The sit n go no limit Holdem fun tourneys are extremely popular, along with 40 daily freeroll tournaments. This is Buddy's favorite poker room on the Internet.
Bodog founder Calvin Ayre is one smart dude. Several years ago he had one of the best online sportsbooks around. But that wasn't good enough, so he expanded it into Bodog Entertainment which is one of the world's fastest growing media and digital entertainment giants, featuring: online gaming; an international record label, Bodog Music; a million-dollar band search competition, Bodog Battle of the Bands; a publishing division (Bodog Nation, Bodog Beat); and an international television production division (BodogTV), which has produced reality television series, such as BodogFight, Calvin Ayre Wild Card Poker and Bodog Salutes the Troop. He was featured on the cover of Forbes magazine's best-selling "Billionaires" issue. In December 2004, Bodog.com was named the 2004 US Market Hot Shot by eGaming Review. Oh yes, Bodog is no rookie in the digital entertainment business, it was founded in way back in 1994!
So why all the hype about Bodog Entertainment and the founder? This is just to give you an idea that Bodog Poker is a backed by the reputation of one of digital entertainment's big shots. So what? What about the poker room itself? Here a the Buddy, we feel Bodog Poker is one of the best poker rooms online and deserves its rightful place on this list. The lobby and table layout is slick. The ring game and tournament action is good, and you should find plenty of fish to fry!
What is a Bodog anyway?