Options for Australian Poker Players

Looking for a great Australian poker site? Try playing online poker at au.888.com.  This website is a sister site to 888 Pacific Poker and is particularly made for Australians. The site features a large pool of the best Australian poker players.

Au.888.com mainly offers Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hi/Lo poker games and tournaments. They also offer a great texas holdem strategy guide.

They also hosts Sit & Go tournaments, which are mini poker tournaments for up to 50 players or so. Just sit down at a table and wait for the tournament to fill up. The tournament starts when all the tables are full.

You can also play single table sit & gos with only 9 or 10 players, which is a lot more like a home game. There are lots of tables available with different buy-in amounts for high rollers and modest bettors.

Au.888.com offers two ways to play online: you can either download their software and play poker using their program or you play instantly online using the flash version of their software.

Reasons to play at au.888.com:

888 has long been a leading online poker website, winning awards for Casino of the Year for 2007 and 2008.

Players get access to seven $500 USD first depositors freerolls.

Au.888.com offers a 100% poker bonus worth up to $400 USD. You receive 25% of the bonus right away!

A deposit of $50 into their account gains that player entry to the $1000 first depositor freeroll.

Win a seat to the 2010 Aussie Millions Poker Championship through one of the many satellite tournaments.

Bodog Now Accepting Canadian Customers

The online poker room, Bodog, has announced that they are now accepting Canadian customers.  While the site, which was founded in 1994, has been largely popular and one of the largest online poker website, the site did not accept Canadian players because of businesses in Canada that would not be protected from governmental intrusions.  The Canadian government has recently changed this stance, allowing Canadians at a new site bodog.ca.

This site will be incorporated with Bodog Europe and will allow Canadians to play in online poker tournaments.  Bodog Europe is headed up by Keith O’Donnell.  He said, “Canadian players will be able to access a Canada-specific product suite from www.bodog.ca starting in the Fall of this year. I aggressively renegotiated the Bodog Europe brand license agreement to acquire the rights to the Canadian market earlier this year and I would expect the Canadian market – extremely technologically literate, sports lovers, and a very significant poker base – to be a huge success story in 2009 and 2010.”

Canadian Bodog players will also be able to place bets on the website’s sports book and casino, which feautres a myriad of games to choose from.  As a promotion, Bodog is doubling Poker Points for players who earn at least 2,000 points in the month of September.  Afterwards, Bodog will deposit the bonus points into the player’s account.

This comes during a busy month for Bodog.  They have already launched a new online poker network – Bodognetwork.com.  Also, they are celebrating their 15th anniversary with a $15,000 Freeroll tournament.

- Update, Monday, September 21

Bodog’s 15 Days of Poker begins today, which is capped off with a $15,000 Freeroll tournament on October 15, 2009.

Poker Room- Having Fun and Security

With the online gambling sector growing every year since its introduction on the Internet, there has also been a corresponding improvement in the technology used to run online casinos. Poker rooms are arguably the most popular place for players to go when at an online casino. This is because there is a lot of fun to be had there are also some money that can be won. The challenge for most poker room players will be to find a casino that is reputable and where it is safe to play at and also enjoy the game.

The traffic in a poker room will have an effect on your ability to play since there are only so many tables available. It will also affect the level of fun you may have. Too much traffic at a site means that the games may all be taken and you will have to wait or go to a site that you really do not want to play at.

The overall atmosphere of a poker room online must be appealing to the users as this is part of what makes it fun for any player or would be player. Many players are in art looking for poker rooms that will allows them to play a variety of poker games from standard to the many variations. To add to the appreciation and full enjoyment it is advisable that the rules of each game be readily available and easily understood. Also the jackpots and the potential game winnings should be of such that it makes the game more interesting and fun.

The easy of play is important to players and this will largely depend on the software being used. Movements should be instant or as quick as possible since players do not want the game to be slower as it needs to be.

One of the main factors that will determine whether or not a payer has fun in a poker room is how secure the site is. Players want to be able to play online without having to worry about their personal information being stolen and used for fraudulent purposes. At many online casinos the payment methods accepted include the use of credit and debit cards. Fraud having to do with these kinds of card is on the rise so players must feel that the site is totally secure. Most poker room sites will use a encryption coded software to help with site security.

It is best when a casino is very appealing to every player who visits their site to play poker. Not only does the sites have to be well designed it also has to be easy to use and secure. Players are generally advised to be aware of the different feature being offered and the level of security the site has.

Million Dollar Guaranteed Poker Tournament on September 13th at SunPoker.com

Right now, SunPoker.com players can gain entry via satellite to the first $1 Million tournament scheduled on September 13, 2009.

The second $1 Million is on October 11th. The buy-in into the big event is $500+35, but of course SunPoker will be running hundreds of satellites for players to win their seats to the tournament. In fact, players can win a seat to the big game for as little as .44 cents with satellites running every day. Click here for the full schedule of satellites

You can also click the banner below for more information.

Poker Destinations

Poker is without doubt one of the most famous card games in the world, played over kitchen tables, in clubs, casinos and even over virtual tables in online poker rooms. While some other card games, such as casino war, are based on chance, in poker it is skill that often decides who will end raking in the chips. And when skills are at stake, it’s a short way to a tournament.

Nowadays many players choose to play from the comfort of their own homes, visiting one of the online poker rooms. However for many players sitting by a real poker table seems more prestigious, allowing to truly mark your presence in the poker world and perhaps meet face to face with some of the best players there are. Not to mention that prize pools in major tournaments often reach truly astonishing sums. Therefore many choose to travel to often distant places to feel the unique atmosphere and put their skills and luck to the test in hope for fame and big money.

Prize pools benefit very much from buy-ins paid by players when they sign up to a tournament. But paying buy-in to a major poker tournament is often a big expense for an average budget. Because of that tournament organizers offer less wealthy poker players to qualify at a lower cost through satellite tournaments. Apart from that many online poker rooms and casinos offer special tournaments where a skilled player can win a package including not only a seat in one of the events, but also travel, stay in a hotel and some pocket money to enjoy your time in one of the famous casino resorts.

And if by any chance poker action and big money were not tempting enough, the destinations certainly are. The World Series of Poker, the most important tournament in the poker world takes place in Las Vegas, the ultimate destination for all casino fans. But other tournaments do not lag much behind. Poker Tour series organized by PokerStars on various continents invite players to casinos in Monte Carlo, Moscow, Sydney, San José in Costa Rica or an exotic casino resort in Macau. This way even if you are not the one to play at a final table, you can still indulge in the unique casino atmosphere in some of the most exciting places in the world.

Pacific Poker Review

Pacific Poker is the poker portal of one of the most well known online gaming companies in the world – 888 Holdings. If you are at all interesting in online gambling, you will have heard the name; this is an extremely large, well respected company that trades on the stock exchange.

What that means for you as a player is that playing at Pacific Poker is going to be a safe, enjoyable, and thoroughly professional experience. One hears things from time to time about the alleged shadiness of certain sites – this is not one of them. All of the above help Pacific Poker to be one of the best online poker sites.

Let’s take a closer look.

Installing the Software

Upon visiting the Pacific Poker website, you’ll be greeted with a little popup offering you the chance to download their software. It’s around 300k in size, it really doesn’t take that long at all. Once you launch it, it fetches the rest of data it needs off the Pacific Poker servers. From start to finish, the procedure took about 6 minutes.

Of course, the installed app is for Windows based computers only. If you’re on a Mac – or simply away from your regular computer – there is an “instant play” version of the poker client that will run in any flash enabled browser. This means you can effectively play anywhere, any time, provided you have access to the Internet – which offers great flexibility.

Playing

From my experience, I’d say that Pacific Poker is built for speed. The graphics aren’t as lush as, perhaps, some of the 3D poker clients available out there today, but then you didn’t come here to look at pretty pictures. You came here to play. And what Pacific Poker offers is relentless action.

To take the client for a spin, played a few heads-up games with some willing participants. Games begin as soon as the requisite number of players have signed on for poker tournaments or sit-and-gos, and I didn’t have to wait more than 30 seconds for the action to kick off.

This site is fast. If anything, I found myself kind of wishing that I had more time to act. Granted, the length of decision time you have varies from game to game, but you need to be clear headed if you’re going to play online texas holdem.

Games

Pacific Poker offers 5 basic types of poker play: Texas Hold’em, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Stud, and 7 Stud Hi/Lo. This selection covers most of the popular combative styles of multi-player poker available today.

Within each section you’ll find Ring Games, Sit and Goes, Tournaments and Jackpot games. With Texas Hold’em, there’s also a Quick Seat feature that I really like – you just punch in the type of game you’re looking for and it registers you for the next game of that type. It gets you where you want to be quickly.

Banking

888 Holdings is a huge company, and do business with just about everybody. Consequently the list of deposit and withdrawal options is just about the most comprehensive I have seen anywhere. Credit cards, debit cards, 15 different kinds of bank transfer, 11 different e-Wallets (miraculously, including PayPal) … there’s definitely at least one here that you can use.