This article will help you make the jump from playing at home to playing online less daunting. If you have any questions which are not addressed here please let us know in the comments.
Depositing
Poker companies offer a variety of methods to deposit to your account. We personally recommend credit cards or bank transfers as deposits and withdrawals are very quick and it is one of the most robust online payment systems. However, it is important to find a method that suits you and your needs. You will find a list of the most common depositing options below.
It’s worth noting that a lot of poker companies will charge for certain payment methods and may also offer special bonuses for depositing using their preferred payment method.
Finding the Right Poker Site
Here is what we consider to be the most important factors when choosing which poker software to download:
Quality of Support – Most of the larger poker companies have great customer support however that is not to say smaller sites can’t compete. If you are curious about the support a specific poker company offers please ask in the comments.
How good is their bonus? – Nearly all poker companies offer sign-up and deposit bonuses to entice you to play at their site. Remember to read the bonus terms of any site you download. It’s sometimes hard to quantify how good a given site’s bonus is, however the general consensus is the easier the bonus is to clear the better it is. A 1000% bonus is not so great if it takes 2 months of playing there to clear it.
Do their games suit you? – It’s important to find a poker site which has games and limits to suit the games you want to play. Some sites lowest limit games are 1 pounds whilst others are 1 cent. Remember, you can download any poker sites software without depositing so you can see if the site suits you. This also allows you to check how busy the tables are. You don’t want to deposit money at a site where you have to wait ages for tournaments to fill up.
Integrity – More and more poker companies are springing up every month. The choice for players is getting better though we still strongly recommend playing at poker sites that look after their members. Be it through bonuses, customer care or responding to collusion issues.
Who We Recommend
PokerStars – Home of many WSOP main event champions, PokerStars has gained a reputation for being one of the best poker sites on the web. Support is great, there are loads of games to choose from and the majority of the time the site has over 100,000 players on. Recommended.
Party Poker – They launched at the start of online poker with a bang boasting one of the best poker software on the net which was way ahead of a lot of sites at the time. Since then it has continued to grow and more recently it has seen the number of players increase a lot. We have been having games with them for years and can recommend them from our own experience there.
Carbon Poker – Carbon is one of our favourite sites. Their software has many great features including tagging players using color codes and adding notes to players. Their software is the best ‘mac friendly’ poker site out there and its even possible to play online without downloading anything. For new players, their 100% sign up bonus and freerolls for new players should be enough to please most.
Gain an Advantage Over Other Players!
There are dozens of poker applications available which can be used to track your stats, improve your game and give you odds whilst actually playing online. Our personal favourite is PokerTracker. Poker Tracker is a Windows-based computer program that allows you to analyze your online Texas Hold’Em play. Poker Tracker stores and summarizes hand history data that can be downloaded from your poker site. Currently sold for £55, you can find it for £40.