Rags to Riches: My Quest to Poker Glory

I get a lot of questions regarding my opinions of the strength of players at the various online poker rooms. I've have played in many so I will put a few thoughts together for those who are interested.

Poker Stars:
I have logged hundreds of thousands of hands on Stars. This is the site that I started on and have been playing pretty consistantly on since 2002. I think that this is where the most experienced online players live. The site has been around for the longest time so it tends to have better players. Don't get me wrong, the majority of players can be beat and there is definately money to be made, but overall the competition here is the strongest on the web in my opinion.

Style to use to beat the site - you can use standard moves on Stars. People will fold to a continuation bet, recognize when they are being priced out of a draw etc....Pretty much vanilla poker at its finest, but even vanilla poker can be profitable. sLAA is the best style for Stars (slightly Loose Agressive Agressive)

Party Poker:
I have played around 5k hands here and believe that this site has the weakest competition. Never in my life have I seen people willing to put so much money into a pot with a draw or an overpair. Party Poker has the reputation as a site notorious for bad beats. This is because people will pay just about anything to draw to their hands. As a solid player this is exactly what you want because statistically, people will miss their draws more than they make them, and when they are calling bets that should be pricing them out of the draws, you are +EV.

Style to use to beat the site - because people are willing to put so much into pots on a draw just be patient, and wait for monsters. Play all PP's and hope to flop a set. Play small suited connectors (against multiple people, in LP, and for as cheap a flop as possible) and hope to flop a monster (meaning a straight or a flush, pairs with SC's are worthless, toss them). When you hit the flops with the above mentioned hands bet 3/4 of the pot on each street. People will call you down but keep betting. Occaisionally you will be outdrawn and it will hurt but do not worry about it. You will be on the good side of the chips the majority of the time.

Ultimate Bet: Don't play here. It's as simple as that. The software is slow, disconnections are rampant, you are lucky if you can log in, the interface sucks and worst of all when you finally do get into the game it's a fucking rockgarden. You get no action with your monsters. If you are a LAG (Loose Agressive) player I guess it would be heaven for you if you can stand the disconnections, but I am not, so I hate it. Also the bonus structure takes forever to clear.

Style to use to beat the site - LAG or not playing there.

Absolute Poker: I played about 1k hands here. It isn't bad. Dealing the hands seems to be a bit slow but other than that the UI isn't too bad and the competition seems pretty strong. I'd stay away simply because there is more money to be made elsewhere. Also the selection of games here is pretty weak. Not many tables.

Full Tilt Poker: I am still popping my cherry on this site but so far I really like it. There are tons of tables, lots of players and the competition seems to be between Party and Stars. Just the right mixture of Donkies and Fish. This site is going to be my main site for the forseeable future because I have $500+ in bonus money to clear AND a RakeBack program (where I receive a percentage of the rake back into my account at the end of the month).


I plan on trying out BoDog and Pacific poker in the future. As soon as I have a good idea of a few more sites I will post another set of reviews.

Hope this helps someone.

Summary in order or profitability:
1. Party Poker (if you have the patience to play ABC poker)
2. FTP
3. Stars
4. Absolute
5. UB

-d.arthur