By Claudia Colantonio
November 28, 2008: When it comes time to put your money where your
knowledge is, you have to be sure you are in the right place. There are
around 538 sites that offer online poker rooms. Of these 538 sites,
there may be a couple that suits your needs, or there may be only one.
But how do you determine one from the other? I would say it was simple,
but I would be telling tall tales. It takes research and understanding
of the poker lingo that is associated with most room-reviewing sites.
You have to know what they are talking about. You have to know about
what sites are available for your language and geographical location.
You have to know what type of competition you are going to find on each
prospective site.
You can learn from my mistakes, and go right to
the premier source for online poker, www.casinocity.com. Not only is
this site able to sift through the poker rooms by your location and
language, it is able to break down your search by payment methods,
gaming software, site owners and what jurisdiction from which the site
originates. After you enter the criteria for the search, you can then
add the ‘sort by: Sites with Bonuses First’ option, which gets you on
the track that heads towards maximizing your revenue. Allow me to
explain why all of this is so important, even if you are looking at
information on another site.
Customizer → Monetisation → in_articleOnce you identify where you can
play, the next thing you do is eliminate all of the sites that do not
offer ‘rakeback’. Without collecting at least 27% of your Monthly Gross
Revenue (MGR) back from the site, through an affiliate site, you can
almost 100% guarantee that this site is not the most lucrative. You
will notice that there are very gorgeous looking bonuses offered for
‘First Time Depositors’, but make sure you find out how you get your
bankroll on that money. Virtually no one gives it away for free, and
some sites will even deduct it from your MGR, thus eating away at the
goal of maximizing your revenue. Remove these from your list and keep
searching. The next thing you want to look at before you commit to a
site is if they offer ‘Reload Bonus Codes’, and if they do, how often
and to whom? Sometimes sites will not offer any bonus after the initial
deposit, which allows them to be removed from the list, and the search
to continue. Also, make sure if there are reload bonus’, that everyone
is eligible for them….read the fine print, always!!
This brings us to loyalty programs. Who has one? If you are
looking at a site and notice it is without a loyalty program, scratch
it from the list. Then look into the remaining sites that do. Look
carefully. What do these programs offer? Do they offer just tournaments
and the capabilities to shop in their online store, or can you turn
their points in for cold, hard cash? How fast are these ‘points’
earned, and at what levels do you excel into the next status position?
In other words, how long and hard are you going to have to work to get
into the top tier level and enjoy the real benefits associated with it?
You do not want to end up at a site where the best status does nothing
more for you then get you a bath robe or a key chain that has the
sites’ logo on it.
Now that your list is getting nice and narrow,
you can start getting a little picky; after all we are looking for the
perfect site. Out of the remaining contenders, who has the most
traffic? You want to make sure that the perfect site has competition.
On that note, research, out of the remainders, who has the worst
competition? What site offers the softest completion in your game, be
it Limit or No-Limit? Once this is thinned down to a small selection of
sites, allow the determining factor to be the customer support. Who is
going to take care of you like the potential high-roller that you are?
In that answer is your perfect poker site! Now go get ’em!