Party Poker

Party Poker is clearly the leader in the field when it comes to the number of players, both for ring games and tournament traffic. There is no doubt that it is the largest poker site in the world, in part due to their aggressive marketing. The evidence suggests that they have up to 15,000 real money 'ring-game' players at peak hours and well over 50,000 players when you include tournament traffic. This means that you can always find the game you are looking for and, as the tournaments have a lot more players than most sites, there are usually much larger prize pools available.

You can find most of your favourites on Party Poker, including Texas holdem, Omaha and seven-card-stud in both high and hi-lo formats. However, they do not offer certain games such as heads-up matches and draw poker. Also, if we are to be really picky, there is no pot limit version in any of the seven-card-stud games or the Omaha high game. Sit n Go tournaments offer good variety with levels from $5 up to $200. Stakes offered in the holdem ring game section are from $0.5-$1 up to $100-$200 in limit holdem and from $0.10-$0.25 up to $10-$20 for no limit/pot limit holdem.

The software for Party Poker is above average and the main lobby is easy to navigate and find regular cash game table or tournaments. Good features include a Hide Full Tables option so you can choose to see just the tables that have available spots and a player notes function, so you can write notes on the players you face. You can also sort the list by the size of the average pot, which is very important in your table selection strategy as it helps you select as loose or tight a table as you prefer. The poker tables include male and female avatars which are pretty garish. We have heard these are very popular with some players though, so we wont accuse them of trying to be creative. However, we imagine people get tired of the regular congratulations graphic that appears when you win a pot! There are three action buttons during play, which are fold, check/call, and bet/raise buttons. The buttons change depending on the action and we don't like how the check and call buttons share the same placement. It is possible to call a bet when you meant to check if you're not concentrating. Then again, that's probably your fault because as Erik Seidel says, the number one rule in this game, is to pay attention.

When using Party Poker we didnt have any major issues so we havent had to use their support very often, and of course the best kind of support is when you don't need any. You can contact their customer service people by telephone or email although when we interviewed long-time players we learned that they has disabled their live online chat feature, so they stand accused of cutting corners here! The 24/7-telephone support does often respond in under a minute, which is quite impressive - although email, response times are often longer than the advertised 24 hours. Depositing into and withdrawing from Party is very quick, simple and secure via Visa/Mastercard/UK debit cards (Switch/Maestro/Solo)/ NETeller/FirePay and Western Union, so you have plenty of options, unless you only have an Electron card!

The rake runs as high as 10% in $0.50/$1 and $1/$2 games, as 50c is raked when the pot reaches $5. This holds true also for the tournaments, where good value is only provided at the higher stakes. There is a 20% fee in $5 games ($1) compared to a 9% fee in $100 games ($9).