Late post for Monday–it’s been pretty brutal the past few days.
Today’s post is about Poker, specifically Online poker. Online poker is becoming more and more popular and rightfully so, more and more websites appear to try and cash in on it. But it is sometimes difficult to seperate the good ones from the bad, which ones hassle US players, and which ones are the “best” to play at.
One way to help your decision on which one to start at is to look at what sites give you the best signup bonus. Many good poker sites will match your first deposit (usually 100%), up to a certain amount (usually around $500). Because it is so easy to find sites that match 100% and up to $500 on the first deposit, I would seriously hesitate signing up for anything less, a lot of sites even offer more money than that.
Another thing that you need to consider that a lot of people don’t is rakeback. The way online and physical casinos make their money from poker is by taking a small percentage of each pot for the house. This is called the rake. By signing up through certain affiliates you can maximize the money you make by getting a certain percentage of your contribution to that casino rake paid back to you.
How do you do this, you ask? Well, I’m going to send you to another website I know of, run by a fellow Something Awful goon, www.ultimatepokerbankroll.com I have no personal affiliation to this site, but it helped me a lot when I started playing cash games myself for the first time. This site has guides for starting out with $100, or even starting with $0 as an initial deposit or investment. It reviews almost every poker site in detail and gives you very specific and clear rundowns of what their deposit bonus(es) are, and what your rakeback percentage will be if you sign up with them.
My personal favorite sites right now are Cake Poker, and Full Tilt Poker. Both offer you the chance to play for free both for play money, and in free cash tournaments daily. Also the interface is easy to use. But don’t just take my word for it, go check out UPB and decide for yourself.
Cards in the air, good luck.
