The Importance Of Playing At Party Poker
Your Choice Of Poker Site Is The Most Important Decision In Poker
All poker sites are not created equally. In fact there is a huge difference between them, and your choice of poker site is by far the most important decision you will make in your poker career. Poker sites offer several features, which can be separated by the nice to have and the need to have. Some players can be fooled into thinking that some of the nice to have features are need to have, and neglect some of the need to have, to their detriment. So I’m going to go over all of these features and comment on what we need here for each one, and what is nice to have, and also look at what Party Poker offers you in the particular category.
Ease Of Competition
I’ve spoken quite a bit about the importance of ease of competition elsewhere in this site, and it’s no accident that I do mention it pretty frequently. There is absolutely nothing more important. Without ease of competition, a site is not worth playing at, period. This has nothing to do with how good a player you are by the way. Even if you’re the world’s best player, and so good in fact that all poker players bow down to you and erect statutes of your likeness, unless you are an idiot, you’d much rather play against the weakest competition you can find.
I’ve coached a lot of players over the years and the first thing I always do is make sure they are playing at an easy site to win money at. Just getting them to switch to Party Poker has in itself turned a lot of players around from perennial losers to perennial winners. If they are already winning, then they win a lot more. If they are still losing, then they lose a lot less for now, then get better and start winning. This isn’t brain surgery here. However, with some players, I wonder if they need it, being devoted to poker sites where they are doomed to fail. Maybe they like pain. I know you don’t.
So the ease of the competition is by far and away the best feature of Party Poker, and even with all the great other things that this poker site has going for it, it’s bigger than all the rest combined. In the end, we need to look at things in terms of how they contribute to our bottom line, meaning our results. Poker is kept score with money. How you do here isn’t a small matter. It’s the only thing in fact that really matters.
Player Traffic
If a poker site has little or no traffic, well that’s no good to you, regardless of whatever else they have going for them. They might have a decent amount of traffic but very little at the games or stakes you like to play, which isn’t any good to you either. So you do need enough, although there is such a thing as too much traffic as well.
For instance at Poker Stars there are so many players there that they have super long waiting lists for the good tables, and you can spend forever waiting for one. Plus the level of competition there is by far the highest anywhere, and tons of players is one thing, but tons of good players is another. Sites with a lot of good players are to be avoided, and this is made even worse if it’s tens of thousands of good players playing at once.
Party Poker on the other hand has both a lot of traffic and the right kind of player traffic, which is ideal. In fact it how has the second most player traffic in the world, second only to Poker Stars. So the games and tables there are of top notch in terms of quality as well as quantity. No other poker site offers this delicious combination to the extent that Party Poker does.
Deposit And Withdrawal Options
I’ve put this category well up the list because it’s definitely a need. If there’s no convenient way to get money in and out of a poker site, then you’re certainly not going to want to play there, and you may not even be able to. There generally is a way that you can deposit into pretty much any poker site, although it may not be convenient to do so with a lot of them, due to their limited options. There are some though that some people may not even be able to find an option they can use, which certainly isn’t a good thing.
The real sore spot here with a lot of places though is their limited withdrawal options. Some sites don’t even tell you what the options are, and players who are less inquisitive may end up having money at a place with literally no way to get it out. I always check this out thoroughly before I ever try out a poker room, and in some cases I had to email their support numerous times before I finally figured out that they had nothing to my liking in this critical area.
Some places do have options for everyone but this often comes down to receiving a check in the mail. I do not want to wait a month or two for a check and then have my bank hold it for a month or more while it clears because it’s in some foreign currency. I’d stay well clear of checks in the mail if I were you. Getting one couriered to you for a big fee doesn’t help either, as these are notoriously difficult to cash and you’ve spent $40 or more just to have to wait a long time to spend the money.
Party Poker not only offers the widest assortment of options for both deposits and withdrawals, they also make things very easy for you, and all you need to do is pick your country of residence from the drop down menu and they tell you everything you need to know. Party Poker gets 5 stars here where a lot of poker sites do not deserve even 1 star.
Poker Bonuses And Rewards
Pretty much every poker site will offer you a welcome bonus, and they are all pretty similar in fact, although Party’s does stand out a little from the rest. However, it’s one thing to get paid to try out a poker site, but what I want to know is what they are going to do for me after this trial period is over. In other words, how are they going to reward me for staying there? Well the answer for most poker sites is that they will do a little for you but nothing compared to Party Poker’s loyalty program, which is by far the most generous in the business.
To be truthful, Party Poker had just a run of the mill rewards program for years, as their site had so much going for it that players would just stay and play anyway. So they really didn’t need to step up and be the clear leader here in how they reward their players, but they did anyway. This is how committed they have now become to making sure that their poker site is clearly the best in everything, and getting paid generous rewards just for playing there is certainly nice.
Software, Support, and Trustworthiness
I’ve combined these three areas as they all relate to one issue, which is a site’s concern for its players. Sites that care about its players build robust software programs which are easy on the eye and also very user friendly. Their software doesn’t shuffle the cards in a way that has thousands of players crying foul due to what at least appears to be some sketchy dealing and way too many bad beats. They go all out to prevent cheating, instead of having it run rampant and even have it hacked as has been the case with some poker sites, or have people working there cheat and play against you seeing your cards, as has been the case with some others.
When you have a question, they provide you with easy access to their support team, 24/7, and are very helpful and knowledgeable, instead of having to shoot emails back and forth and deal with people less than competent.
Perhaps most importantly, their operation is completely above board, and their company is publicly owned, meaning that every part of their operation is transparent, instead of being run by a few shady characters out of some back room who grab your money and run when it suits them, or even be accused of a running a Ponzi Scheme as has been the case as well. Maybe you lose your entire bankroll, or maybe the U.S. government seizes it and who knows if you’ll ever get it back. The list of dirty deeds in the online poker business is almost too long to mention.
Party Poker is in fact the ideal operation that I’ve been speaking of, and the more shady ones, well they used to be known as pretty reputable at one time, but that all came crashing down. There’s no question that having your money with a completely secure company like Party Poker, where it’s even safer than at the bank, instead of maybe having it held by criminals, is a huge advantage, and those who did not pay attention enough to this are surely very sorry now.
In The End, Party Poker Reigns Supreme In All Areas
When you look at each of these important areas, there isn’t even a single poker site that can challenge Party Poker’s title as the best of the best. When you add it all up though, the question of where you should be playing online poker becomes an extremely easy choice. You either want to play at the best site or you want to settle for a lot less. There’s no reason to cheat yourself here. If you don’t have an account at Party Poker yet, there’s absolutely no reason in the world to put trying them out off any longer.
