Less-popular online poker sites may be less popular for a reason

For the last month or so, I've been playing between one and five sit-'n'-go single-table tournaments online daily, some at the big sites (Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker, Bodog, and Ultimate Bet; Absolute Poker is never getting another dollar from me after their shameful handling of and public lying about the massive security breach), and some at the lesser-known sites. This post is about the latter.

I won't discuss the problems of funding accounts in this post; for my travails in that regard, see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/funding-online-poker-accounts-is-still.html, including its several addenda, edited in as I tried various options on several sites.

For all of these sites, you can pretty much assume that an ongoing problem is finding enough of the action you want when you want it. For example, with Carbon Poker, I was once the first to sign up for a single-table tournament about midnight, then started a load of dishes to be washed, prepared to abort that task when it was time to play. (Poker or wash dishes? Poker or wash dishes? Dang, that's a really difficult choice, isn't it?) I kept checking, but managed to wash the whole load before there was even a second player signed up. I gave up, went to Poker Stars, and was in a similar game two minutes later.

Lucky Ace Poker

Not much to say about this one, because they won't take money from U.S. players.

Doyle's Room

I would love to love this site, but I can't. They won't take my money. Card Player magazine just had a cover story: "Doyle's Room Is Back." That's what prompted me to sign up again. But when I tried to make a deposit, I found out that they are using what's called the "11-state ban," meaning that they won't accept real-money players that live in any of the 11 states that have some sort of statutory prohibition against online gambling. Ironically, that includes Nevada. Yep, I can legally hire a prostitute here, but the legislature wants to protect me from the evils and dangers of online poker.

See here for an updated list of online poker sites and e-wallet services that will or will not accept U.S. players, including which employ the 11-state ban: http://www.compatiblepoker.com/usa.php

How stupid is this UIGEA? It's so unclear as to its actual effect that some sites feel that in order to comply with it they had to withdraw from the U.S. market completely, others feel that they can accept players from 39 states only, and others feel free to continue welcoming Americans wherever they may live. Thanks a lot, Bill Frist, you sniveling, pandering, power-mongering asshole, for making that all clear for everybody.

Players Only

I was at first annoyed that I couldn't pick the screen name "Rakewell," because some interloper had already taken it, so I had to settle for "Rakewell1." It eventually dawned on me that the thief was me; I had signed up for Cake Poker (of which Players Only is a skin, meaning that they share the same software and player rosters) several months back, though I only played a few freerolls, then gave up on it.

The good:

Among the worst players I've ever encountered online (and given that I'm pretty bad myself, that's really saying something).

The bad:

You can't resize the windows. Didn't the rest of the online poker world (except, inexplicably, for Bodog) conquer this little hurdle years ago?

You can't pick your own seat. At the big sites, tournament seats are assigned randomly, but they will, either by default or at your request, rotate the table so that your view is natural, as if the table is laid out in front of you. Not with Players Only. You're stuck where they stick you.

The only move you can choose in advance of your turn is fold or check. For example, if I'm on the button, I can't click in advance to indicate that I will call the amount of the big blind. That's just stupid.

There are several features for which I was unable to rapidly find information. One option is "auto focus window." I still have no idea what this does. Another is "gold card." By coincidence, I saw in Card Player magazine this week a little sidebar on how this works, but before seeing that I looked through the Players Only site trying to figure it out, and came up empty. I even did a Google search of their web site, and couldn't find it. What's the point in having what is apparently a bonus feature if your customers can't learn how the dang thing works?

The tournament lobby is agonizingly slow to update. It lags about two hands behind what is actually happening in the game. Completely inexcusable.

The graphics show an actual dealer in the box, unlike any other site I can remember seeing (except maybe Party Poker did that; it's been so long since I played there I can't recall for sure). It's confusing at first, because she looks like an extra player, except without a stack of chips in front of her.

When you click on the "Cashier" button, it takes you to a web site with your default browser, rather than just a different window within the Players Only site. I don't see why this is necessary. It's annoying.

If you bet, and your single opponent folds, you are presented with the option to show or not show your cards while the icon for your opponent's cards is still there in front of him on the table. In other words, until you figure out that they just do this every time, it sure looks as though he hasn't folded. This is just insane. That cards icon should vanish the instant he folds.

If a player is sitting out, the graphics don't show his remaining stack size. In a single-table tournament, this is crucial, because if there are four players left, three to get paid, you absolutely have to know how many rounds a player who has left the game (for whatever reason) will survive before being blinded off. The worst thing is to go out on the bubble when somebody who isn't even playing anymore makes it into the money.

You can choose from many different avatars, though not upload a custom one. For reasons that I cannot decipher, about half the time it shows me as the one I selected, and the other half it makes me into a Unabomber-like hooded figure. That's a weird glitch in their software.

Carbon Poker

This is a skin of Poker.com.

The good:

A nice touch that I've never seen anywhere else is that you can choose to show opponents just one of your hole cards instead of both, if you like, by clicking on one or both when the option is presented at the end of a hand.

They show the pot size in my preferred way, which is, e.g., "100 + 30," meaning that there was 100 in the pot at the beginning of this round of betting, plus another 30 put out by players so far, but not yet gathered into the pot. Some sites show just the former; others show just the total. I like having it clearly demarcated into two parts like this.

The blinds start unusually low for SNGs: 5 and 10, rather than the more common 10/20, even though they use the standard number of starting chips (1500).

The bad:

First, I have to disclose my idiosyncratic preference: I'd like to never have to touch the mouse when I'm playing. I wish there were keyboard shortcuts for everything. I also never, ever use the slide bar to select a bet size, except for on sites where that's the only way to move all-in. When I want to raise, I wish to be able to just type in the amount of the bet I want to make and hit "enter." The closest I can come to that ideal is on Full Tilt, with the "highlight bet amount" option turned on. With every other site, I have to first click in the bet-size box before typing in the amount, which is just irritating to me. I see no good reason to require that. Anyway, on Carbon Poker, it's even worse, in that I have to first click on the bet-size box, then type in the amount, then click on another box, rather than just hitting "enter." Grrrrrrrrrr.

The little tabs to choose pre-selected bet sizes are unclear. For example, if the current bet is 20, and you click on the button marked "x2," it will enter a bet of 60, rather than 40. As another example, if the bet you're facing is 50, one of the tabs that pops up for you will say "Raise 100." Well, does that mean raise to 100 or by 100? The only way to find out is to try it. It turns out that the answer is to 100. What, they couldn't find room for the word "to" there?

To make matters worse, they do it the opposite way for the betting options you can select before it's your turn. In that situation, if the bet you're going to be facing is 50, one option presented will be "raise 50," which means raise by 50. It's maddening inconsistency.

I find it hard to tell at a glance whose turn it is; the graphics just don't provide enough contrast or highlighting. I think the slickest of the current batch is how Bodog does this, with what appears to be an overhead spotlight moving from one player to the next. I find it the easiest to follow, visually.

The tournament lobby page only updates when you click on it. I like having the tourney lobby off to one side of the tourney table, so that both are visible at once. That's pretty pointless when I have to waste time and energy clicking on it in order to be able to see current standings. (This is less important with single-table tournaments--but it's still plenty stupid.) Before the game starts, the tournament lobby (which shows who has signed up) is so slow to update that one second it shows three people enrolled, and the next you're whisked off to the tournament, with a full table ready to start.

They congratulate you no matter how you did. That is, if you're out on the first hand of a single-table tournament, they will flash you a little note, "Congratulations, you finished 10th in tournament room ____________." Yeah, thanks a lot.

There is a strange glitch. When you try to enter your "preferred seating" choice, the dialog box that pops up is labeled "reere eating." Go figure. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not really into reere eating.

I've complained before about the idiotic "rabbit hunting" option. See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/rabbit-hunting.html.

You can change various settings in the option box at the table, but nothing warns you that these won’t stick. To change the default settings, you have to access a different set of options from the main lobby. Even with the default settings, I wasn't able to get it to remember my preferred seating from one session to the next. If it's possible to make it do that, I don't know what I'm missing. It shouldn't be that tricky to figure out.

I followed the instructions for uploading a custom avatar, and nothing happened. It didn't show up, but I also didn't get any error message explaning what was wrong. How annoying is that?


Bugsy's Club

I used to play on Bugsy's Club quite a bit. But then they seemed to quit taking U.S. customers for a while. It was just last week that I was browsing through the list of sites open to Americans (noted above) and noticed it listed. I don't know when they re-opened their doors to us. Surprisingly, even though I had to download the software again, the site remembered me before I had even entered any personal data (apparently having left some trace of its former installation in my computer).

The good:

Sorry, I couldn't find anything positive and noteworthy.

The bad:

You can't resize the tables.

It won't show the amount of a bet unless you move the mouse over the little image of the chips. This is one of the most annoying and inexplicable flaws in any online poker software.

It takes only one click to go all-in. On most sites, you have to do two things--for example, move the slider all the way to the right, then click on "bet." Despite my complaints above about having to use the mouse at all, I think this is a good safety precaution, to make sure that you don't risk all of your chips on an accidental misclick. Bugsy's Club is the only place I know of where one errant mouse click instantly has you all-in and screaming at the computer, "NO, THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT TO DO!!!"

This is another site that requires me to type in a bet or raise amount, then go to the mouse to click on a button, rather than hit "enter." I hate that. It's completely backwards that for ordinary bets and raises, I have to take two separate actions, but only one to move all-in!

The site's sound effects I find irritating. The noise to indicate that a player checks doesn't sound like a rap on wood or a table, as most places use. Instead, it sounds like a static click on a telephone line. The "it's your turn" signal is a grating, high-pitched noise, like an alarm clock or a smoke detector. Ugh.

It's very slow putting out the community cards, especially the flop. Deal one card. Wait. Deal another card. Wait. Deal the third card. Completely pointless.

The blind structure for SNGs is faster than usual, starting at 25/50 instead of the standard 10/20 (the exception among the big sites being Full Tilt's 15/30), though still using the common 1500 chips.

If you want to put in a raise, you have to do some mental math. For example, if the big blind (and current bet) is 200, and I want to raise to 700, what I have to enter in the bet/raise box is 500, i.e., the additional amount by which to raise, rather than the total bet amount. No other online site does it this way, at least that I can remember offhand. This is too annoying for words.

Conclusion

I'll probably continue to dabble at these sites now and again, since I have money in them and the competition tends to be softer than what I find at the big sites for similar stakes. But I won't like the experience much.

Full Tilt and Poker Stars, and, to a lesser extent, Bodog and Ultimate Bet, just have a really great look and feel to them. Playing with them a while you get a definite sense that their features have been worked and reworked, honed and refined and polished to the greatest degree that their software engineers can manage. Nearly everything has been thought of and incorporated and worked out.

In contrast, as you can see from my long list of gripes about the less-popular sites, they're rough-hewn, clunky, illogical, poorly thought out, often leaving me scratching my head and wondering why some particular detail is the way it is, or why I can't do something that seems to me obvious that one might want to do.

Maybe they'll improve over time, but for now my basic assessment of them is, "Meh."