Define worth to play !!

For traffic stars and FT are nice, rewards others are better.
For me poker is waste of time since 2007, played alot in the golden years but that time is over.

500$/ month is for a few a living for others nothing.

Agree, but I'm always looking to change that.
Oh hai, kitty

Cruel but funny Haha

lol.

www.pokerscout.com

www.pokerscout.com

In a past life I meet an online bully, from Belgium, who spoke English in similarly. While poor, he speaks English far better than I speak any other language. ("Una mas cervesa." and "Donde es bano." are among the more important phrases.) One of the insults this guy issued was "You are a garage that lacks motivation." Funny as hell despite losing some sting in the translation.

All that aside, this guy is kind of wacked. The chief complaint with Stars is no rake back. The chief complaint for full tilt is poor customer support. While there might be other minor issues too, both seem above board on controlling cheating and dealing a fair game. IMHO those are the only two real issues, everything else is minor.

Failing some major news, if I would leave FT it would be to the arms of stars.

if you want some support, goodle "prostitutes in vegas."

full tilt sends you money when you cash out, and its safe (no superusers).

AP and UB were never rigged.

I currently have accounts on PS and FT and decided to open a 3rd and eventually 4th account. I've searched around the forums and have narrowed it down to a few potential sites.

I'm thinking it's between Bodog, Carbon/Aced, AP(aware of the scandel) or Cake/Power/PlayersOnly.......So obviously I haven't narrowed enough and need some thoughts on these sites.

Some general info. American, play 10-25NL. RB is attainable on all of them so that's a non issue. Just looking for a general overview of the software and personal experiences if you have played on any of these. PT3 compatibility would be nice but I've come to terms with the idea of not having it.

Thanks for any replies

Bodog + cake don't allow hud, but AP does. Traffic will be about the same across all sites. Another thing you might want to look at is min. withdrawl. On cake for example min is $500 not sure about the other sites.

I won't give you my bias opinion but here is what I came up with:
FTP and Stars should be your primary sites

Bodog sucks, no traffic...CS can't read english or send the correct automated response to your inquiries.

Cake not for me, traffic's low(in my opinion) cashouts via check take forever (3+weeks) and min.is $500

Cereus: Shady? Cashouts are awesome, esp. westurn union. Traffic is higher then Cake and Bodogs combined....

Hey guys, I just made a few calculations for the different US-based sites out there. I hope players find this helpful in some way and this thread can generate some discussion about the best bargains in online US poker.

If you have some idea of better situations than what I've created here, or want to correct my calculations, feel free to do so.

Pokerstars:
The rakeback for PS has been posted in different charts recently on 2+2 and you can find it on sites as well. I tend to use a baseline of about 300k VPP since that's my volume.

Stars has BotPlanets, MTT leaderboard, reloads, and weekly/quarterly VIP tournaments that add a lot of value to the base 37-41% rb.

Stars is a great site (probably the best) for high volume because it doesn't suffer diminishing returns like the below sites do.
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FTP:
I calculated the result from just achieving the minimum iron, gold, or silver man status each month. This is without any bonuses.

Iron: 5075 pts/month (203 pts x 25)
29 dollars in rake a day (SNG/MTT) gets you 203 pts/day.
725 dollars of rake/month (25x29)

8700 total rake for the year (725x12)

You get back:
2349 (27% rb)
1200 (two year end bonuses for Iron is 12x100)
1990 medals (worth .1875 c each max so 373.125)
60900 ftp (5075x12, worth 213.15 at 3.5/1000)

You also get 12 months of free stox poker, 12x 30k iron man freerolls (worth about $50bi each so 600) and 12x 5k rakeback affiliate freerolls (about $20bi so 240).

Pure cash Ironman rakeback assuming you just rake the minimum a year: 47.5%
additional bonuses (freerolls, stox at 10/month): 58.5%

I won't write out for Gold/Silver but according to my calcs you get and more if you calculate stox and freerolls. Ironman is very, very difficult to maintain but it's rb should jump even more if you keep it for longer than a year.

Gold: 45.8%
Silver: 43.7%

I realize it may be a bit unrealistic to just use the minimum rake generated by FTP (your rakeback lowers if you play more than the absolute minimum). But I calculate it that way because I'm first focusing on Stars and looking at the other sites for the absolute minimum investment possible.

The other sites is where it gets really fun. Let me know if I miscalculated any of these.
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Doyle's Room: I am targetting generating enough rake to place on the RB affiliate's rake race leaderboard. You currently need to generate about 390 rake (based on past 3 months) total to get a 100 dollar bonus.

So......

390 total rake (about 390 15+1 tournaments):

130 (33% rb)
100 (rakeback affiliate bonus)
80 (bonus dollars, Doyle's always has reloads and sign up bonuses. 3.5 ffp/1 dollar)

310/390= 80% rb.

You can find an analysis of Doyle's Room here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...-shill-669667/

Note it's hard to get your money off the site without paying exorbitant fees.
***********************************

Absolute/Cereus: I am targeting getting enough points to convert 25 dollars worth of Absolute points each month. I did these calcs very quickly so maybe they are off.

3571 absolute points are required for 25 dollars.
At a 3x multiplier (you need it to convert the points), assume that's 1190 FAME points.

That's equal to

357.1 dollars in rake.

107.13 (30% rakeback)
25 (point conversion)
59.5 (bonus dollars at 20 fame points per dollar, ABS always has reloads)

=53.66% rb per month
*****************************************

Conclusion: Doyle's Room on the Cake network seems to offer a ridiculous rakeback % for low limit grinders who can put out $390 of total rake a month. I just wanted to ask you readers for your own assessment of different sites that are most +ev for US players and any errors in my calculations. I did not account for MGR being hit by bonuses.

I have an account on both fulltilt and stars but was just curious what people thought about the other us sites as far as the competition and security mostly, or anything else that they feel is relevant

The US is accepting sites now? That's big news! I personally think we should choose all of them. Why give the whole US market to a monopoly?

If i can tell you one site you should definitely not play on it would be PartyPoker

Hey guys,

My younger brother has finally started getting a little bankroll together online and is now looking into if he should be trying any other sites other than Pokerstars to get deep into the micro stakes world. He has played a few months at .01/.02 NL and has finally started beating those games for now.

I realize that having played SSNL for such a long time now, that some people might be a little wary of posting about sites that they think might be soft, but let's keep in mind that it IS micro stakes and I'm sure most sites are soft no matter how you look at it at the lowest possible stakes.

That being said, I'm looking more into the information of what sites have to offer micro stakes players that will allow them to work their way up quicker and not get screwed by the rake like sites that don't offer rakeback (Pokerstars). I understand Pokerstars VPP program very well, but realize it's very weighted towards higher volume players like myself, not for ultra micro stakes players who put in a few 100k hands a year.

Any info or discussion on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

At NL2 - NL10 Full tilt rakes 0.01$ for every 0.15$ in the pot whereas pokerstars rakes 0.01$ for every 0.20$ in the pot. This is something to take into consideration, even though pokerstars doesn't offer rakeback, the fact that the rake % is smaller + their VPP program probably makes pokerstars superior to full tilt when you're playing NL10 and lower.

Thanks for the reply, but like I said, keep in mind, my brother is fairly unlikely to get in nearly the volume that I do in a given year to be able to truly take advantage of Pokerstars VPP program and become a "rakeback pro", like some of us. If this is the case, is a site that offers rakeback the clear cut choice to choosing a micro stakes site then? I don't really have any experience at the smallest possible stakes since I started on Party Poker nearly 5 years ago and was playing $25 NL from the start lol.

What are the best and biggest sites for US players other than stars and full tilt?

UB very shady
CARBON
BODOG
CAKE

In no particular order except most shadyest at top.probley a few more iam forgeting.

dont play on UB

what about sportsbook poker? they seem to be at the top of all the internet "reviews"

http://pokerscout.com/

That link will give you a rundown of the cash game traffic.

Overall ranking of the U.S. sites/networks after the Big 2:

#6 Cereus (UB, Absolute)
#10 Cake (Cake Poker, Doyle's Room, PowerPoker, PlayersOnly, and more)
#15 Bodog
#17 Everleaf/UPN (Everleaf is lower on the list, but it just merged with UPN, so once the average stats catch up, it will be about 17th)
#20 Merge (Carbon Poker, Aced, RPM, and more)

As lots of people will say, play at Cereus at your own risk. It has a bad history. Some people won't touch it with a 10-foot pole, some have had perfectly good experiences there.

There's nothing wrong with them, but I imagine many of these "reviews" you're seeing are far from unbiased if Sportsbook is at the top. They're just another Cake skin.

Don't mistake an affiliate that gives reviews of sites it offers for an unbiased source of information.