2009      Jun 4

There are many different methods that people use when evaluating an online poker website. Depending on the tastes they have, different priorities will come up. However, there are still some good general rules that can be used by people that are beginners or intermediates when it comes to the online poker industry. Some of those general rules are discussed below.

The first rule that you want to keep in mind is that software is king. This is not to say that you need your online poker site to have a perfect and beautiful software package however, but rather it is to say that you need your online poker site to have a software package that works. There is no point in frequenting an online poker site that is great in all other areas but has a software package that has basic functionality issues. Those sites are to be avoided like the plague. When you are considering a website, download their software package, look through it and play some of the free games. If it works and is bearable to look at, you are good to go potentially with that online poker website.

The second rule of thumb that is good to employ when dealing with online poker websites is that the online poker websites will differ greatly in their bonus offerings. This means that website with a $500 bonus is not necessarily better than a website with a $100 bonus. Keep in mind the amount of money you can afford to deposit, the limit that a deposit of that kind allows you to play at and the amount of time that you have available to devote to playing online poker. If you are a part-time online poker player that just does this as a hobby and rarely plays above $1/$2, the $500 bonus may never be one that you see while the $100 can be cleared in a month and allow you to save some of your own money for use elsewhere in your life. Understanding which bonus is best for you at a given time is part of being a good online poker reviewer.

Finally, one last thing worth mentioning about online poker websites is that the vast majority of them have multiple forms of customer service. For this reason, the argument about a specific amount of methods available for service is no longer good enough to justify a good support section. Instead, an online poker website only has good support if that support is prompt and accurate, so make sure you look at those factors as well when you are deciding about how good the support staff is at a particular online poker website. Now that you know something about putting a particular mark on a particular website, put your knowledge to good use.

Visit our website and take a look at some reviews. Our Absolute Poker Review will use many of the elements discussed above to evaluate Absolute Poker.

2009      Jun 3

Online casinos and poker rooms have been around for a long time and while both of them have established differences that are very easy to notice, the truth of the matter is that online casinos and poker sites are not as different as one might think. When you take a look at the tournaments that they both offer as an example, some of the similarities between the two types of online gambling are downright eerie.

For starters, the online casino tournament actually removes the house from the reckoning altogether. You are no longer playing against the house in the online tournament in practical terms because you are in direct competition with other people that are playing against the house as well. Since you are all at the exact same statistical disadvantage against the house, the tournament effectively removes that element from play. Your only goal now is to beat the other players when all the chips have fallen. Elimination blackjack is perhaps the best known online casino tournament because of its television exposure, but the fact of the matter is that tournaments like that exist for all of the house online casino activities. Since online poker tournaments never have players competing against the house, this is one similarity that is hard to ignore.

Another point that is worth making about these two tournament types is that online casino tournaments have a strategic element to them. There was some strategy involved in some single player casino games, but these points just served to lower the house edge. There was no way that a long-term winning streak could be obtained. Some argue that this is true with online casino tournaments as well, but the truth is far from clear. Since you are playing against other players, the strategic element does come to the front again. Many believe that playing against others by definition means that there is a way to win money in the long term, citing game theory about things like board games as an example. Many board games have large luck elements to them, but they are still winnable consistently over the long term because of the strategic elements they also contain. Since online casino tournaments are winnable in the long run, they also have this in common with online poker tournaments. It is possible to earn a living playing both provided you are good enough and play for enough money at a time.

There are other ways in which these tournaments are similar, but the above two are the major ones. The main point to take from these is that tournaments, by virtue of matching player against player, make the games fair.

If you are interested in learning more about your local casino and Poker Tournament options, feel free to visit our website where all of the different poker and Casino Review options will be made available to you for free.

2009      Jun 3

In the beginning, there were only the normal signup bonuses. These bonuses were relatively easy to understand and because of that it was very easy to compare them across websites. With newer deals like the poker rakeback however, things are a bit harder to understand because the deals are not plain like bonuses. With a bonus, it will say something like 100% up to $100 and you know right away what the maximum potential is. A 35% rakeback is something that does not tell you that much, because most of the good information is stuck into the terms and conditions.

A rakeback, just like a bonus, has some terms and conditions that come along with it. Every single rakeback deal has a method of payment in the terms and conditions that specifies exactly how you will get the money that you earn through the rakeback deal. With most of them, it will be a payment into your real money poker account that happens either weekly or monthly. With others however, it might be a direct payment to your registered payment method or it might even just be credit that you can then use at tournaments to attempt to parlay those credits into actual cash. The point is that different sites will do different things, so checking the terms and conditions is very important before accepting any poker rakeback deal.

One of the tricky things about the poker rakeback deal is that you only get the actual percentage when the deal is being advertised. With an online poker bonus, 100% up to $100 is actually very informative because it tells you how much of your deposit will count towards the bonus and it tells you what the maximum bonus is. A rakeback of 35% just tells you 35% of rake is what is being used as the payment figure, but it does not tell you if there are any minimum or maximum stipulations. It also does not tell you how that rake is calculated.

Generally, rakeback is calculated according to a figure known as contributed rake. The contributed rake that you generate is rake that is specifically taken from your contributions to the pot. This means that if you are in a hand and cards are dealt, you do not get credit for any of the rake unless it was taken because of your contribution to the pot. There are still some sites that divide the rake evenly per hand per player with cards in the hand, but most have stopped doing that as that method of accounting tends to lead to ultra-tight games by the rakeback players. It is prevalent enough however to still be something that you should keep an eye out for.

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2009      May 27

Generally speaking, it is possible to divide rakeback deals into three separate categories based on their numerical return amounts. The categories, for lack of a better system of relative definition, are bad, good and great. In order to illustrate these categories further, a brief write up is included on each one below.

The bad category of rakeback is one that you generally want to avoid. Any rakeback that is in the single digits would quality as being a definite poor rakeback and any deal that is in the 10% to 15% range is debatable as being bad. The main reason for this is that rakeback deals require you to play a large percentage of your poker at that website and while you are doing this, you are foregoing bonus money that is available elsewhere. If you have already taken the choicest bonuses available and are looking into rakeback as your main source of income aside from actual online poker winnings, then 10% to 15% is fine. If you still have some good signup bonuses left to collect, missing those on account of a rakeback in this range would not be optimal.

The good category of rakeback is one that you usually want to snatch as soon as you hear about it, because the deal is excellent. Any rakeback in the 15% to 20% category is arguably a good rakeback deal, keeping in mind the same characteristics that were used to define what made 10% to 15% a bad rakeback deal. Essentially, any rakeback deal between 10% and 20% is one that you need to weigh against the bonuses from other poker websites that you still have to collect. Any rakeback in between 20% and 30% is a good one and should usually be snatched up as soon as possible.

Finally, there is the great category of rakeback. This category represents the cream of the crop as far as rakeback is concerned and you should basically always lock a deal like this in when you see it. Any rakeback in excess of 30% would fall into this category. Even if you have no intensions of playing at that site regularly, make sure you lock the deal in so that you can refer to it and use it whenever you want. If there is a minimum play requirement to keep the rakeback active, make sure you play at least that and then the rest of your poker playing during the month is free time.

Generally, this is how rakeback deals are divided if you want to base it on the actual percentage payment happening. There are other ways to look at rakeback deals though, so this is just a starting guide at best.

If you are interested in learning more about good rake back deals, you can certainly start with the PKR Rake Back that is currently available; visit our website for more details on the PKR Rakeback.

2009      May 27

Rakeback deals are around all the time and have been for a long enough time now to be considered a staple of the online poker industry. They basically involve a portion of your generated rake being paid back to you as a way of getting people to join the website through promotional marketing. Ever since they were first introduced a few years ago, rakeback deals have been very popular amongst the vast majority of online poker players.

In spite of this however, there still seems to be some confusion over exactly how the logistics of the rakeback work. This is understandable, since there are some online poker websites that do it differently from what is considered the norm. In order to understand this difference, below is an explanation of the norm as well as discussions of the most common deviations from the norm that you will see in the online poker community.

In terms of the norm, rakeback deals are paid out on a regular basis to your online poker real money account. This basis could be one week, two weeks or a month, but the point is that the money is deposited directly into your real money online poker account with that poker site. This is calm, clean and efficient and since almost every single online poker software package now can give you a direct accounting of each real money transaction done into and out of the account, keeping track of the money you get from rakeback becomes very easy to do.

The main problem with this way of doing things however is that not every online poker site that has a rakeback deal will do things like this. Some of the online poker sites in question prefer looking at your payment processor and using that to pay you rakeback separately. Other online poker sites would prefer to give you the money in credit or point totals which you could then use across the website from which you get the rakeback deal. Still, there are other websites that make the rakeback a bonus and force you to play in order to clear it. This last one is getting less and less frequent with each passing month, but it is still one to be aware of.

So, what does this mean for the average player that just wants a decent rakeback deal? Not much, if you make sure that the rakeback offer you go with is one that comes from a website that follows the rakeback norm. However, even if you get stuck with one of the others, the money you get is the same. You just need to be a bit more creative about how you get the money out of your poker account and into your bank account.

Now that you know how Rakeback payments are made, it is time to put your knowledge to good use and visit our website for a listing of the best Poker rakeback deals around.

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