Party Poker Review

Party Poker Summary
Party Poker has the largest traffic of all the poker rooms. You can find weak competition to play against and earn great prizes for just playing for free.  Loose games can be found all the way up to the $15/$30 limit.  Statistics are not Party Poker's forte.  With a large network of other poker sites, Party Poker brings in numerous amounts of players at peak hours.  You can always find the game you want anytime of the day.  Party Poker was averaging in January 2005: 15500-17500 ring game players at peak hours, 21000-24000 tournament players at peak hours.

Party Poker Software and Graphics
Party poker's graphics get old after awhile, but the software itself has come a long way.  Numerous problems and many disconnections has made Party Poker add more bandwidth and server's.  This allow players to play up to three tables at any given time.  Information about individual games, Pot amounts, and flops seen is a little weak.  It appears they are trying to protect the fish.  We expect another upgrade soon, hopefully adding more characters and such.  You may not have to see the guy in the pink shirt give you any more bad beats.

Party Poker Ring Game Traffic
No one can compete with Party Poker's ring game traffic.  With the enormous crowds joining the tables throughout the day, and peak levels reaching above 22,000 player's there is no question that Party Poker owns a lot of the market.

Party Poker Tournament traffic
No one can compete with Party Poker's tournament traffic either. The highest in the world.  Plenty of no-limit, Omaha, and Seven card tournaments are offered every day.  Turbo events have become very popular lately, due to it's reduced time frame.  Poker tournaments can be completed in hours versus days.

Party Poker Variety
Decent.  With the amount of traffic they receive Party Poker hosts games of; Holdem, Omaha and Seven-Card-Stud in both High and Hi-Lo, and a few others.  You won't be able to find draw poker games, heads up games, nor will you find 7-2 draw.

Party Poker Player Rake
Party Poker's rake is fairly weak  as it highly hurts the low limit games. Higher limit games actually have a comparably low rake. The rake runs as high as 10% in $0.50/$1 and $1/$2 games, as 50 cent is raked when the pot reaches $5. This holds true also for the tournaments, where good value only is provided at the higher stakes. 20% fee in $5 games and 8% fee in $100 games.

Party Poker Competition
Party Poker has the most amount of beginner's of all the poker sites, due to their quanity of turnover.  This leads to a lot of fish ready to be picked up quickly.  You can find really loose games all over the place, even up to the $15/$30 level.

Party Poker Bonus Codes

Either 20% bonus match up to $100 or $25 flat bonus. You need to play 500 raked hands within 31 days to get the $100 (equals 5 raked pots per bonus dollar). There are always free rolls you can register for that don't cost anything.

Party Poker Promotions
The leader in promotions.  Offering large tournaments has been their bread and butter.  The Party Poker Million 2005 just finished with a prize pool worth 7.5 million dollars.  Frequent player points are earned giving you options on cool gifts and prizes.

Party Poker Customer Support
24/7 support has been good to us over the years.  Response time can be weak since you may be competing with 1000's of other player's. Telephone support is can be a little demanding.  This could be a hit or miss situation.  Overall the support is average to a little above.  You may want to ask your fellow poker player's for advice first.

Financial security
Number One.  The chart is clean.  No reported issues.

Deposit & withdrawal options
Deposit options: MasterCard, VISA, FirePay, NETeller, Western Union, Citadel (US only), eChecks (by iGM-Pay) bank draft, money order, fps-epassport, cashier's check, check. Cash out options: NETeller, check, eChecks (by iGM-Pay), wire transfer.