You may be nervous when you first time set up to play online, and may have a ton of questions running through your mind. Is sharing my bank account information safe? Am I getting a fair deal? Or more generally, how can I trust these people?
The poker site you pick is where the magic happens. The joys and tears. The fretting and calculating. The cursing and jubilation. The lucky draws and the bad beats. So how do you find a place worthy of all this emotion?
Poker sites make plenty of money by doing their normal business without the need to cheat you. All quality poker site wants to do is make its game run smoothly and keep you playing. No site can afford bad word of mouth.
Full Tilt Poker
Full Tilt Poker opened for business in July 2004 and with an aggressive marketing campaign has gradually grown to be one of the leading online poker rooms. At Full Tilt, you will find a number of the great pros coming to play regularly, using their real names and posting their portraits as avatars. You can sit down with Phil Ivey if you want to. And, thousands of amateur players also flock to this remarkable site to enjoy many of the great games being offered. A great plus is the unpaired variety of game.
Bonus: $600
Visit Full Tilt Poker
UltimateBet
Another online game room, called Ultimate Bet, is home to players like Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth, Dave Ulliot and Antonio Esfandiaria. The poker room offers an incredible sign up bonus with a nice loyalty system. There are a number of tournaments and qualifiers, not to mention the great promotions.
The softness of the competition can be a bit tight, more for the medium to high stakes games, but the higher number of players in the big stakes games more than makes up for it. Overall, Ultimate Bet offers everything you could need if you are looking for some good action, even at the higher stakes games, along with a generous sign up bonus.
Bonus: $1100
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Poker Stars
Poker Stars opened for play money beta testing September 12th 2001 and began offering real money games in December 2001. As the leading tournament online poker room it has produced players who won their way to become the 2003 (Chris Moneymaker) and 2004 (Greg Raymer) World Series of Poker Main Event Champions. There are very few sites that can make similar claims of having so many WSOP champions playing for them. In fact, there are even fewer sites that can compete with PokerStars for offering the player a genuine poker experience.
Bonus: $600
Visit Poker Stars
Titan Poker
Poker room opened in 2005, Titan Poker is part of the rapidly expanding iPoker network of internet poker rooms that use Playtech software. There can be up to approximately 5,000 cash game and 25,000 tournament players found at the Titan Poker tables during peak hours. As part of the iPoker network you can find yourself playing against players from other affiliated sites such as Noble Poker.
Bonus: $500
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Party Poker
Party Poker opened in 2001 and is credited by many as playing a large role in the creation of the online poker boom with its aggressive marketing. Party Poker is currently listed on the London Stock Exchange (PRTY – PartyGaming PLC). Once the largest online poker room with a reported 5 million users, Party Poker has been overtaken by Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. However there are still 10,000 cash players and 60,000 tournament players during the busiest times. Due to the number of players from all over the globe a game can generally be found quickly no matter the time of day.
Bonus: $500
Visit Party Poker