Choosing a site – how sites differ

Popularity. This factor is more important than you might think. The more people that play at a poker site, the greater the choice of games. At the largest sites, you can connect any time day or night and find hundreds of tables to choose from. Also, a site with a large player base can afford to spread a lot of different kinds of poker games, including less popular games that might be your own favorite. A smaller site can't do this because it would drain players from the other games, possibly causing another game to "break" (that's when all the players leave a table) because it has too few players. Another advantage of playing at a popular site is you can be assured that they are making a lot of money and will be operating far into the future. At a small site that is just getting by, you never know. Finally, a large player base means large turnout for tournaments, which means large prize pools. That's important if you want to win big in a multi-table tournament.

Ring game vs. tournament traffic. Some sites specialize in tournaments and others in ring games (that is, regular non-tournament single-table poker games). Depending on your own tastes, you'll want to choose a site that is tailored to your interests.

Game variety. Some of the biggest sites don't have a wide variety of games, even though they have a large enough player base to support it. For example, some sites do not have multi-table tournaments. Others do not have no-limit holdem ring games. But every site has limit holdem ring games. Check the site's web pages for listings of which games are offered.

Game selection and profitability. Although we mentioned this in the section on popularity, it's worth calling out separately. One of the most important skills of a winning player is the ability to find the most profitable game. But even the best player will do poorly if all the games are bad. Some sites tend to attract stronger players than others. Even within a site, some games will be much better than others. If profit is one of your motives, you want to play at a site where the other players are less skillful than average, and also where the site gives you the tools to distinguish a good game from a bad one. We'll talk about that more later.

Client software experience. The different poker clients vary widely in the graphics, lobby organization and overall ease of use. But since they all do the job, this is mostly a matter of personal taste. In later sections we'll point out how some of the clients provide special tools (such as the ability to keep notes about the other players) that can help give you an edge over opponents who don't know how to use them.

Customer service. Some sites are famous for taking care of player problems quickly. Others are just as famous for caring less about you than your cell phone company does. If you're not playing for real money, this isn't something to worry about.

Loyalty program. Every site has promotions aimed at retaining their customers, but some are more generous than others. Some sites hold freeroll tournaments, some have high hand jackpots, and others give you Frequent Player Points (like airline miles) that you can redeem for merchandise or tournament entries. Many of the promotions are available to play money players as well, in the hope that those players will some day decide to play for real money.

Financial reputation. This is a key factor if you are planning to play for real money. The last way you want to spend your time is worrying about whether your money is safe with the poker site. However, if you are only going to play for play money, then you don't care about this, since they won't have any of your money. In general, today's largest sites also have the best reputations.

Now that you have all that in mind, see our Poker Site Comparison to help you decide which site you want to try first.