Overview

PokerRoom's strength is its clean, mature software that runs right within a web browser (or an even better version runs through a download) and its excellent support. Games are also extremely fast.

US players are not currently accepted

Competition (8/10)

PokerRoom.com has pretty soft competition. Even when the summary stats make a table look tough and tight, you arrive and find out that the player's post-flop play is atrocious.

At every limit, the players are probably looser/worse than people playing at half that limit at some more "famous sites."

Even the high-limit games seem pretty loose at this site!

Connection Speed and Reliability (10/10)

PokerRoom has never suffered from the connection and reliability problems that plague many of their original competitors .

The technical crew at this site have always been second-to-none.

Graphics and Functionality – (7/10)

OK--Three cheers.

"The big breasted woman is gone!"

A graphics upgrade changed all the pseudo-3D players ...for the better! The player icons now look quite good.

For a new player, it can be a bit overwhelming and confusing to enter the three dimensional environment, but after a bit of experience you find out where everything is located and it all runs smoothly.

The buttons and the lobby are all in more-or-less intuitive positions and work in the way one would expect from a mature software package.

Our primary complaint (a big one!) is that the poker table doesn't come to the front when it is your turn to act. This is true of the web browser and the downloadable software. You just get a beep and have to figure out which table it is coming from.

Overall, this site is pretty slick, however. The game speed is very fast.

Sign-Up Bonus (9/10)

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

You are required to play a reasonable number of raked hands within sixty days to earn the bonus. It goes pretty quickly unless you are playing a single 25 cent table or lower.

Use this link to lock-in your bonus

Games and Rules – (7/10)

As you might expect, PokerRoom.com has all the types of holdem you would expect--limit, pot limit, no limit and tournaments.

It also has Omaha, 7-Card Stud, and 5 Card Draw.

Most players are playing Holdem and games at most limits are available twenty-four hours per day.

Tournaments— There are a large number of tournaments running at any one time, most within the $5 to $30 buy-in range. Many are freezeouts, which are our preference.

For the action junkies they also have "all-in fests" -- tourneys where the blinds go up every three minutes.

We have no specific complaints about the blind structures, but we do wish some online site would offer some serious longer tournaments where skill is highly rewarded.

Finally, they have private tournaments which is a lot of fun for a bunch of friends. You can set them up exactly as you like, with an easy interface.

There are also Team tournaments, although we haven't tried those out yet. Cool idea.

Support (10/10)

Because we've never had any problems or reason to contact support, we asked a few stupid questions via email.

The emails were responded to promptly, politely and on topic.

Overall 9 (out of 10/ not an average)

In the beginning, this site was a bit of a niche player, largely grabbing the MacIntosh market due to its all-platform compatability.

Right now, they are a large, mature site that is aggressively focused on building itself into a poker giant.

A proven site that has avoided any growing pains in software or support, this is a site well worth your playing time.