The Anatomy of Online Poker Reviews
Almost all websites dedicated to poker have their listings and reviews of the top ten online poker rooms. Have you ever wondered how these online poker reviews are created? And who decides which deserves to be included in the list?
The selection process starts with the searching through hundreds of websites that are dedicated to the online poker rooms. Sometimes surveys are used to tally up the votes and choose which of the online poker rooms qualify to be in the prestigious top ten.
Online poker reviews uses a criteria to pick out the strong online poker rooms from the bland ones. Pokerlisting.com, an independent poker information website makes their online poker reviews by rating each important quality of an online poker room and them sums it to get their rooms total score.
Here is how they choose Party Poker as their number one online poker room:
1. Ring traffic game – This is the amount of player traffic the poker rooms receives a day. The online poker reviews the peak hours of the site and compares it with other poker rooms.
2. Game Variety – An online poker room must be able to provide its users with new and exciting games so as not to bore them. The online poker reviews how many games a poker room offers, what their most popular game is and it also exposes their weakness.
3. Soft Competition – This is the loose games or those with fewer restrictions. It is the ability of the poker room to let adjust their fixed limit suitable for beginner and professional gamblers. The online poker reviews how adaptable they are to such changes.
4. Loyalty Bonus – The online poker reviews the different bonuses each online poker room provides its customers. This is also where referral schemes and rewards program are evaluated.
5. Support – From telephone support to access on the Internet and the help site for users, online poker rooms are evaluated on how effective these support systems are by online poker reviews.
6. Deposit and Withdrawal Options – The online poker reviews a site based on speed of the pay out, the number of recognized credit cards and the multi-currency factor of bets.
7. Software and Graphics – Much like RPG gaming sites, the aesthetic value of the online poker rooms are evaluated. The online poker reviews the available software for download at the poker room’s site and also takes into account the practicality of the graphics. High resolution isn’t always good if the users have to wait for minutes before the graphics load up.
8. Tournament traffic – The same as ring game traffic, the online poker reviews how many compete each tournament, what are the peak hours and where do most participants come from.
9. Rake – The online poker reviews how high a raked hand is for each of the type of games – high limit, fixed limit and low limit. If all three have thigh percentages of raked hands, the better the score.
10. Sign-up Bonus – To entice new users, the better the available sign-up bonus, the higher the online poker reviews are.
11. Promotions – Usually, a player is promoted depending on his earnings and skill level. The online poker reviews all the promotions of the poker room in all mediums to get new players.
12. Financial security – The sites that have less problems with the their clients online account and are able to keep the system safe from hackers is taken into consideration by online poker reviews.
After tallying their results, the top ten online poker rooms are revealed.
As we have seen it is not an easy task that online poker reviews do annually. Most importantly, the online poker reviews should not be biased so as the reader of these lists, make sure that the hosting website is not affiliated with any of the online poker room mentioned by the online poker reviews.
PokerListing.com is a site that can provide the best information about online poker reviews. Unbiased and very thorough, all of those on their top ten lists definitely deserve their ranks. And as we have dissected the factors they considered important in an online poker room, the end winners are users like us.