Choosing a Poker Site

You have to be able to make good decisions at the tables in
order to win while playing poker. When it comes to playing
online there’s one decision that you have to make away from the
tables and it’s just as important as any decision you’ll make
while actually playing the game. Your decision on which site
you’re going to play at isn’t something you want to get wrong,
as it will greatly affect your overall experience.

Poker sites aren’t in short supply, so it’s not particularly
difficult to find somewhere to play. However, you don’t want to
just play at any old site. You want to play at one of the very
best sites and you want to make sure that you choose a site
that’s suitable for your needs. This is a little more difficult,
as the sheer number of options available means making this
decision can be quite challenging.

In this part of our poker guide we’re going to make things as
easy as we can for you and we’ll offer you all the necessary
information and advice that you could possibly need to choose a
poker site. We also have additional recommendations for you,
along with some tips on how to make the right choice.

An Easy Option: Our Recommended Poker Sites

Some people aren’t interested in putting any time or effort
into choosing a poker site. They just want to get started as
soon as possible, without having to research the various options
available to them. This is completely understandable; there are
a wide variety of places to choose from and it can take a long
time to check them all out to determine which one is the best
for you. The problem with not spending this time is that it
often results in people playing at sites that aren’t very good.

Thankfully we have a solution for those who want to play at a
top site but don’t want to spend too much time finding one. We
have compiled rankings of the best poker sites currently
available, in a number of different categories, so that all you
have to do is to choose a place to play at from our selective
list of recommendations.

To put it simply, we’ve done the work so you don’t have to.
The gambling-giant.org team is constantly carrying out research
and testing on a wide range of all different types of gambling
sites, precisely so that we can rank them and make
recommendations accordingly. We only ever recommend places that
we know can be trusted and that we’re confident will offer a
positive all-around experience.

If you’re looking for a poker site and want to get started as
soon as possible, checking out our recommendations is your
easiest option.

Stay Safe: Only Use Reputable Sites

The single most important thing you need to remember when
choosing which poker site to use is, in our opinion, making
absolutely sure that you choose a reputable and trustworthy
site. You don’t have to worry about this if you sign up at one
of our recommended sites, as all of our recommendations are
perfectly safe to use. However, if you’re picking one on your
own, then it should be at the forefront of your mind.

Most well-known sites can be trusted and are reputable to
some extent, but there are a few that can’t demonstrate the
levels of integrity and transparency that we’re comfortable
with. You really want to avoid these, as there’s a good chance
they’ll end up disappointing you in some way or another. In an
absolutely worst case scenario your funds might even be at risk,
so it’s simply not a risk worth taking.

The good news is that you don’t have to go to any great
effort to determine if a poker site can be considered reputable
and trustworthy. There are just a few key points that you need
to check, and most of these can be checked with relative ease.
The following list details the criteria that we ourselves look
at when deciding whether or not a poker site meets our
standards.

• Licensed & Regulated
• Software Tested for Fairness
• Audited by a Third Party
• Secure Financial Transactions
• Reasonable Cashout Timescales
• Positive Reputation

If you find a site that you’d like to try and you’re not
completely sure that they meet the above criteria, you can
always take a look at our rankings and see if we recommend that
site. If we don’t, and you have any doubts about whether or not
it’s a trustworthy place to play, you should probably take the
cautious approach and look for another option. It’s always
better to be safe than sorry, especially when it comes to
picking a site.

Poker Site Software: Another Important Consideration

In addition to making sure that you play at a site that’s
reputable and trustworthy, you also ideally want to play
somewhere that uses good software. This is because the quality
of the software will have arguably the biggest impact on how
much you enjoy playing. Top quality software helps to make
playing online poker easy and fun, while poor quality software
can completely ruin the whole experience.

The difficulty here is that you can’t really form an opinion
on the quality of the software used by a poker site without
actually using it for yourself. A lot of places let you play for
free, so you can test the software without having to deposit if
you want to, but you have to be prepared to spend a substantial
amount of time if you want to go down this route and compare all
the different options available.

This highlights another advantage of simply choosing one of
our recommendations. We’re familiar with a wide range of
poker sites and the software that they use and we always check
to see if they made any changes or updates to their system, so
we are certainly qualified to evaluate and compare them all. The
quality of the software is a significant factor in our rankings
and we look closely at the following details.

• User Friendly
• Stable & Secure
• Attractive Graphics
• Customizable Options
• Useful Features
• Functional Lobby

It’s Personal: Find YOUR Right Site

When it comes to choosing a poker site, or any type of
gambling site for that matter, it’s a good idea to take a moment
and think about what’s important to you. We have yet to discover
a site that’s absolutely perfect for everyone and this is simply
because not everyone shares the same values. The right site for
someone else may not be the right site for you.

For example, if you like playing in big field tournaments
then there’s little point in joining a site that has a limited
numbers of players. Likewise, it makes little sense to join a
site that doesn’t offer Omaha Hi/Lo if that’s your preferred
game. You really do need to make sure that you join a site
that’s suitable for you so that you can get the most out of your
online playing experience.

This is the main reason why we rank the top sites in a
variety of categories. It’s the only way we have a chance of
achieving our goal of helping our readers find the right sites
to use. We even rank sites by region, as we are fully aware that
the best option for those living in one part of the world may
not be the best option for someone living somewhere else.

The following list includes some of the more popular
categories we provide rankings for.

Research Made Simple: Read Reviews

There’s one very simple way to carry out your own research to
determine which poker site you should join, and that’s to read
reviews written by experts and/or other players. The internet is
full of such reviews, and many of them feature literally
everything you could possibly want to know. You can easily find
information on all of the following, and more too.

• Sign Up Bonuses
• Rewards and VIP Schemes
• Quality of Software
• Standard of Opposition
• Number of Active Players
• Types of Game Available
• Range of Stakes Available
• Tournament Schedules

We provide our own high quality reviews at gambling-giant.org.
These are a great place to start if you want to know more about
a specific site or if you just want to read about what sites are
offered on the internet.