Pacific Poker

Read why we think Pacific Poker is one of the best Australian poker sites to join, easy to play and easy to join

Pacific Poker

Name	Pacific Poker
Estimated online players: texas hold’em 7pm Est real money	3000
Ease of download and installation	9/10
Advertisements + popups	6/10
Special offers/promotions	9/10
Ease of Gameplay	8/10
adware	none
Security	9/10
Games Offered	Hold’em, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi/Lo. 7stud, 7stud Hi/Lo
Game options	7.5/10
Graphics	5/10
OVERALL RATING	7.5/10
Download Now	Pacific Poker

Ok guys if your like me and play regular poker with your mates, and want to try your skills online, but not quite sure where to go or what to do? Here’s a site to help you get started.

First off, poker can be quite fun to play online, and yes there are more skillful players who can constantly win money. I’m not saying you are one of them, but certainly with a lot of patience and skill, you can earn money playing online. Most players are erratic and will lose their money quickly. Lets hope your not the latter.

So where do you go from here? Below are the top 5 sites we have picked out for you. In general all are playable from Australia. All are professional and can be trusted, it’s up to you to decide which one best suits you. We will endeavour to review each one so your decision can be a bit easier.
Signing up to this site is as easy as it gets. Just simply click on one of their links, and download the program. It’s pretty automatic for Mac and PC users. First you download a program that will compete the rest of the file transfer and installation for you. All up, download and installation time can be completed in under 5 minutes with a standard DSL line.

Now registering is just as easy. All fields are mandatory so you will have to give up all your details. Name, address, DoB etc. IT DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO PUT IN YOUR CREDIT CARD DETAILS. Once completed your ready to play. You can chose to enter your Credit card details when you are ready to play with real money. The other nuisance here is that your password has to be 8 characters long, not 7, not 9 but a compulsory 8.

Go To Pacific Poker

Being a gambling site, you may notice your email registration be filtered to your junk mail folder. Make sure you save the emails if you wish to use real money. However, most emails from this site are promotional and can be quickly sent to the trash.

To start off, it’s worthwhile playing in the ‘practice’ room. The game play is pretty standard. The graphics are nothing fancy, quite ordinary to be honest. They do give you an option of change views eg. card view only or birds eye view of the table. The time limit for each bet is 30 seconds so you won’t have to wait long periods for idle players. There is also a pretty cool feature where you can replay the exact sequence of how the last game unfolded. This is quite handy if you want to study the way your opponent is playing after seeing his hand.

Gameplay is pretty intuitive, you can pick up how everything works after about 20-30 minutes of playing. There are plenty of tables to chose from, so there shouldn’t be a problem finding a table in your betting range.

The game is not that intrusive on your computer so you can almost do other things while playing like checking your email. There are however annoying popups that come up quite often. These aren’t harmful, they’re just advertising features of the gaming site, nevertheless, it is a minor nuisance you can do without.

At time of writing there are great promotional offers too. 25% of $100. That is, if you deposit $US100, you will automatically get $125 to play (up to a max $400). That is you can get $100 free after depositing $400. That’s a pretty good incentive to start playing!

Cashing out is pretty much similar to all the other sites. More details can be found <HERE>.

So there you have it. Pacific poker is good all round, There is nothing besides the promotion that makes it stand out from the rest.

We rate it a solid 7.5/10

Download Pacific Poker

Go To Pacific Poker

Poker Stars

PokerStars

Name	PokerStars
Estimated online players: texas hold’em 7pm Est real money	15000
Ease of download and installation	8/10
Advertisements + popups	7/10
Special offers/promotions	5/10
Ease of Gameplay	8/10
adware	none
Security	9/10
Games Offered	Hold’em, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi/Lo. 7stud, 7stud Hi/Lo
Game options	9.5/10
Graphics	7/10
OVERALL RATING	8.5/10
Download Now	PokerStars

Clicking on the below link will take you to PokerStars.com. There is also a PokerStars.net site too, they will let you download the same software. The installation file was 8mb, so that took about 1-2 mins to download on a regular dsl connection. Installation was hassle free. They will install an icon on your desktop so all you need to do is click in it next time and it’ll take you straight to the game rooms.

The signup process took a little longer than others, once again they would ask for all your personal details: name, address, emails etc. With PokerStars they allow you to pick an avatar or image icon so other players can have a pictorial representation of you. The registration process is a tad longer than other sites, you will need to use security verification codes etc. Once again YOU DO NOT NEED TO ENTER A CREDIT CARD NUMBER TO PLAY.

I was expecting a lot from this site and it did live up to expectations. I wouldn’t say this site is best for beginners. Navigation was tougher than other sites, so you will need to spend a bit more time on it before you feel comfortable. There were a lot of options to chose from and at first it can be quite daunting. For example I saw a ‘play money’ option and mistook it for ‘play with real money’ only to find out that it meant fake money. The other thing that took a while to figure out was how to get money into play. For PokerStars you have to click on a dealer tray and exchange money. Sure this makes sense after you figure it out, but for beginners it can be just another step that can complicate your experience.

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Ok so once you get the setup all wrapped up it was time to play. The game play is pretty flawless. There are ample options and settings you can chose to heighten your experience. You can download new graphic skins to change the look of the game if you feel that the default look is too bland. You can change the sounds, the dealer noises and animation features. You can have statistics of how you play sent to your email, quite handy if you want to develop your game. One feature i liked was the fast pace game. So if you hate waiting for standard 30 seconds for each player to make their bet, you can play in one of these games. Its like speed chess, it adds a different element of excitement to the game.

All these options makes me feel this is the site to return to when I’m more experienced. There are popup ads that you will have to deal with, these are harmless, they just usually remind you of upcoming tournaments. You can turn these off if you wish. However, there is an annoying news banner up the top of the software, this you cannot turn off.

The Cashier is pretty straight forward. Please visit our
page to find out more. At time of writing you will get Sign-up Bonus of 100% up to $50. So they will give you US$50 if you deposit US$50 (AU$78). The incentive to sign up is not as good as other sites, it’s actually one of the worse.

Overall, PokerStars will provide you with a comprehensive poker experience with plenty of options to customise the game to your liking. There are always plenty of players to compete with. If your the type to get serious about your poker then PokerStars is for you. However if this is your first time online, then expect to be face with more decisions than your competing poker sites.

We rate this a comprehensive 8.5/10

Download PokerStars

Click Here Play PokerStars.com

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