The Best Site to Play at

This is my first blog and jsut a few thoughts on the best sites around.

When I first started playing, I would only ever play at Victor Chandler/ Golden Palace. After a while I gave a couple of other sites a go, notably ladbrokes and pokerstars. PS didn't accept switch which was a bit of a problem for me so as soon as I won a decent amount there i requested a cheque, emptied my balance and left. Ladbrokes just disgusted me in terms of how it looked. It made me physically sick.

So i stuck with VC and learnt how to play at the early levels there. I still think this is a pretty good site to play on, barring disconnection problems which for now seem to have abated(breath held) The graphics agree with me, the betting system is one of the best around in my opinion, screw slidey bars. The standard of play is fairly poor although it has improved dramatically since i first started there. The main problem that I have with it are the short level lengths and the proliferation of rebuys. Rebuy tourneys are obviously good value with lots of people rebuying incessantly, but i just don't enjoy them as much as freezeouts. It's for these two reasons I mainly started looking elsewhere.

Bet365 appealed to me as they have a wide range of freezeouts, some excellent value and above all 12 min levels are the norm. I would prefer 15 -20 min levels but 12 is a massive improvement on 8 mins. They have 25$ freezeouts for 7.5K grtd. This would need 300 runners to reach the grtd amount but rarely gets above 200-220. so 2-2.5K added on, great value.

Another aspect of the site that appeals to me is that you get to play flops!! At VC very often i find tournaments are a case of having to call with small to large preflop edges and hope these hold up. This is down to the abundance of people willing to push allin with any pair or a couple of broadway cards. Sometimes rag aces will do. Now in a way this makes poker a fairly easy game. You simply call when you have the best of it and it all works out in the long run. I like the process of garnering information via the flop and action though. This is part of poker and at bet365 people seem to have a higher regard for their stack and you get less reckless abandon, more intelligent and for me stimulating play.

OK, now for Corals.

Corals is quite simply the easiest poker i have played on the net. The standard is SHOCKINGLY bad so much so that it makes the 1$ tourneys on VC look like the final table of the WSOP.
I like to play 7 stud /8 cash tables up to 3/6(the highest ive played at so far), Omaha/8 limit, omaha PL(uber loose), the 30 and 50$ multitable S nGs and some NL cash.

The Multitables are quite good as they have a 10 min clock. This isn't massively long and u only get 1K starting chips but once u adjust to the 1K, the 10 mins is fine for a 2/3 table SnG and it never really feels like a crap shoot. The standard Sngs are 10 HAND levels which is a bit odd and does make it a crapshoot toward the end, esp at 30 and below where you get a mere 800 chips.

I've even won some at FL holdem here and i have very little idea how to play this. If you want to make a profit online i highly reccomend corals/party. Before you play here grow a thick skin though as you will doubtless see lots of abuse, often quite comical.

Last word is on paradise. I like the site, good graphics and range of tourneys. I'm not a fan of the way antes are introduced into the later hands of the big tourneys as this does seem to degenerate into an allin-fest but overall they offer some good omaha and NL freezeout and rebuy tourneys.

Another plus is a game called crazy pineapple which is a variant of holdem in which u get dealt three cards and must discard one on the flop. This is an interesting game leading to some good tactical decisions. Anyway that's enough for now, Ill be posting more stuff soon.

Good luck people.