Two more online sites, one good, one not so much

I tried two more online poker sites tonight. Actually, they're both ones that I've used in the past, but it was a couple of years ago. I thought I'd see how they have changed.

First up was Poker Host. This got started a few years back, with a decent corral of name-brand pros hawking it, but never developed a player base, and faltered. I think it got bought out by somebody else. According to this usually reliable site, http://www.compatiblepoker.com/usa.php, it's now part of Microgaming Network. It certainly has a completely different look and feel from what I remember.

Microgaming is on the 11-state ban, so I presumably wouldn't be able to play here for real money--if I used my real address. But it's easy enough to lie. I fed them my old Minnesota address. This might be a problem when I want to cash out, but we'll see. It might also be a problem if I were using a checking account or regular credit card to fund my account, because they might try to match addresses. But I used an anonymous Visa gift card, and it worked fine.

So far I've just played one sit-and-go, so experience is limited. The observant reader will notice that I am in the chip lead, having conveniently chosen to do the screen shot immediately after being on the good side of a KK vs. QQ all-in contest. It's didn't last. I fell victim to FPS (fancy play syndrome), a common affliction of chip leaders. Out in 7th place. Oh well.

What's most striking about this site so far is the speed. I've never seen an online game go by so fast. It was actually hard to keep up with what was happening, though I assume that will get easier as I get used to the visual and audible signals and the action buttons. There are no razz games on the menu, sadly, and no non-hold'em games appeared to be in progress.



The second site is True Poker. I dabbled with this briefly a couple of years ago, and it was so awful I couldn't stand it. I saw an ad for it again recently, and thought they must have improved the situation. Nope. Looks exactly the same as I remember it. It is by far the slowest online poker you will ever play. It's hard to tell how much of this is attributable to the players and how much to the software, but it's like molasses in winter. They try to have very cool animation, but I think it's just silly and pointless. There are very few players there, so waiting for a game is as painful as waiting during the game. I see absolutely nothing about this site to recommend for anybody, for any reason.