Online Poker Reviews: Pacific Poker (9/10)

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Overview

Pacific is a major poker site. It somehow attracts the worst poker players on the internet. Maybe it is the ugly software that does it?

US players are not currently accepted.

Competition (10/10)

They have some sort of bait that attracts the best fish. Maybe it is the green and gold they use for a color scheme?

For over two years they have had the best online games, consistently. If you are looking for bad players, this is the site.

Connection Speed and Reliability (7/10)

Pacific has had some disconnection problems in the past. In addition reconnections seem less than automatic with you often needing to log out and back onto the software.

Recently we haven't been experiencing any problems, so we have upgraded Pacific's score. It seems pretty slick at the moment and we'll upgrade this score even further after a few more months of smooth play.

Graphics and Functionality – (5/10)

Man, could this software be uglier, more cumbersome and less intuitive? They must spend all that rake money on…hmmm…it must all go to the bottom line. Players keep expecting a major upgrade that never comes. In the long-run this site may be doomed, but the fish-factor keeps people playing for now.

The chat is crummy and the note-taking is particularly annoying and troublesome—you hit enter in the note window and sometimes you end up making a play you didn’t intend !

Support (7/10)

Signing up was easy. Cashing out is a bit slow, but never a problem.

In terms of technical problems, they will try to please you with polite replies and throwing some refunds at you. We don't find them particularly clever or prompt, however.

A problem one of us experienced with a new laptop was met with form letters, despite specific queries. While the technical response was detailed and was easy to follow, it was a shotgun approach to solving problems, mainly leaving it up to the end-user to figure it out.

Sign-Up Bonus (6/10)

You can receive a 25% sign-up bonus, up to $100 on your first deposit.

Use this link to lock-in your bonus

Also, you can win a healthy share of $300,000+ in BIG money tournaments every weekend- you can do it all the way up from a FREEroll (without making a deposit)!

New players also get a freeroll(s) without making a deposit.

Games and Rules – (7.5/10)

Pacific has all types of the popular Holdem. It also has Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi-lo, 7-Card Stud, and even 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo.

Except for Holdem, you might not have a huge number of tables to choose from in your range of limits, and none at off-times. The holdem game selection is incredible!

Gameplay speed is excellent with the new fast and turbo tables.

Tournaments— we love playing at Pacific. They have a good array of small limit tournaments in Limit, Pot Limit and No Limit Holdem. Some have guaranteed prize pools in which Pacific picks up any shortfall (and we’ve seen them pick up at least one hundred thousand in extra prize money in our time there).

The structure of tournaments is generally a bit rushed, but reasonable in the case of the most major tournaments. In addition all are freezeouts, which is our preference.

The new speed tournaments aren’t to our taste, but are great for the action junkies!

There is a large number of sit-and-go tournaments as well.

You add in the bad players and this is the place to get your tournament poker fix.

Pacific has good practice play tables, as well.

Overall 9 (out of 10/ not an average)

The place where the smart people play cash games. It's also the best place to play tournament poker, in our opinion.

If you are willing to put up with mediocre software so you can have some easy wins…visit Pacific Poker. It will be interesting to see if they develop better software, or if the site slowly slides away, with the fish ending up in a new pond.