Where to play online?

As mentioned at the end of the last post, VegasRex announced today that he will be leaving town. As a consequence, he said that he's going to start exploring the previously uncharted territory of online gaming. I have no idea what the online world holds for games other than poker (though there's obviously a lot to choose from), but I do have a decent amount of experience with and opinions about the online poker realm.

Here's what Rex wrote about the prospect:

There will be one challenge for me as it pertains to online gaming.

I do not own a Windows PC.

I have access to one, but I've not personally used Windows for my own day-to-day purposes for some time. For the most part, I only use Unix-based operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. Since Windows 7 has been getting rave reviews for the past 9 months, and since Mac Snow Leopard was perhaps the most ridiculous OS "upgrade" ever, I'm not going to do the cliche'd "Windows sucks" thing, but I do prefer the "Unix way" to the "Windows way".

Because of this, I may have to buy a copy of the dreaded OS or see if various programs run under Wine or some kind of emulator. My assumption is that there aren't a lot of Mac/Linux friendly online rooms, but I may be wrong.

Here's a useful page that lists Mac-friendly online poker rooms, with the ones open to U.S. depositors helpfully flagged with the red, white, and blue: http://www.flopturnriver.com/Mac-Poker.php

Let's go through these one by one--or almost.

We can consider Full Tilt and PokerStars together, because as far as I am concerned they are pretty much equivalent and interchangeable. Whether I play on one or the other is almost completely arbitrary--a function of where a private tournament is being hosted, or where my current bankroll is bigger, or where the next razz game will be starting up. In terms of being able to find a game of the type and size that you want at the time that you want to play, in terms of security, in terms of ease and reliability of getting money in or out of your account, there is very, very little difference between the two. With FTP you can sign up through an affiliate and get rakeback, but Stars effectively equals that with its frequent-player points system. Flip a coin, pick which one you like the display and controls on better, you really can't go wrong. In fact, for the sake of flexibility, you just oughtta have both of them loaded and ready to go.

But, frankly, I use both sites mostly for (1) just fun (e.g., bloggers' tournaments, where I know a fair number of the other players), and (2) when I want to play a game other than hold'em. It's virtually impossible to find anything other than hold'em and Omaha anyplace else. If you want to learn other games or want to play them seriously because you think you have an edge over the opposition, you really have to play at FTP and Stars; there just isn't any other choice available.

Next up we have UltimateBet and Absolute Poker, which are now just two slightly different versions of the same site. I think that the utterly shameful way that the company has, even up to the present, dealt with its two cheating scandals (not to mention all the other security and software glitches that seem to crop up with some regularity) is reason enough to want to see them go out of business due to players turning their backs. I haven't played on AP in more than four years. When the UB scandal first broke, I decided to abandon the site, but they made it such a pain to take my last $60 or so out that I eventually gave up. (I'm not alone in this experience--which all by itself should be sufficient reason to be leery of the site.) So I pop back in once in a while and play a $5 or $10 tournament. I'm down to less than $10 now, I think. I won't absolutely swear that I'll never put another dollar in, because something unforeseen could happen that would induce me to do so, but right now I don't anticipate giving them any more of my money, and I'd be happy if everybody else shunned them, too. Good riddance to an ugly blight on the world of poker.

"Luvin Poker" is another one listed by the FlopTurnRiver page. I'm not sure why they singled this one out. It's just one of many skins of the Everleaf network. Victory Poker is probably the best known of them, though they're all quite new. I opened an account there a month or so ago, but I have not yet tried playing there, nor have I deposited any money, so I can't report on the experience. This network is a very small player in the online poker market, and it will be lucky if it survives. I wouldn't want to keep an amount on account there that would hurt to lose, due to the worry that they'll go belly-up with no forewarning. They don't have a dedicated Mac version, but you can use their "instant play" version, which I assume is Flash-based, playing inside a web browser.

Finally there's Bodog. I gotta tell you, if what you're looking for is bad players, Bodog and the Cake network (I use Doyle's Room for the latter, but you could pick any of them and it would be the same) are today like Party Poker was back before it withdrew from the U.S.--just unbelievably fishy. I guess I'd toss the Merge network in with them (Carbon Poker and many others), though I don't especially like their user interface, so I sign on less often there. But neither Cake nor Merge has yet released either a Mac-dedicated version or a platform-neutral web-based version.

I like the actual game interface on Bodog, but its main lobby, tournament lobby, and hand history reviewing pieces are pure garbage--difficult and unintuitive to use. That's ancillary, though. Customer service is crappy, but I don't have any serious worries about the site's basic integrity. It's much smaller than FTP or Stars, but there are still plenty of low buy-in tournaments going on all the time.

FTP and Stars are so good in their execution of nearly everything, and in the overwhelming torrent of games available, that you'd think there would be no reason to even consider an also-ran site like Bodog. But here's the bottom line from my experience: FTP and Stars are slow leaks for me, in that I'm a long-term loser playing them. Some unquantifiable part of that is because a large percentage of my play on them is games other than hold'em, where I'm more a recreational/learning player than a serious one. But even in NLHE tournaments (I haven't tried NLHE cash games online, at least not more than dipping my toe in them) I struggle to break even. Tournaments aren't my best thing, nor is online poker generally, so even though I'm not facing pros at the stakes I buy in for, it's not a money-making proposition for me.

But Bodog is something else entirely. It is not difficult to cash in tournaments there. If there are even three players at a table who seem to know what they are doing, it's a surprise and a small miracle. Just don't bluff. Repeat: DO NOT BLUFF. You will be surrounded by calling stations, so wait for made hands and value-bet them. That's it. That's the whole secret. If I were going to try to make it as a low-stakes online grinder, I would use Bodog and one of the Cake sites as my primary hangouts.

So there's my best advice about where to play if you're using a Mac in the United States.