Comparing Online Poker Sites

Online poker is still alive and well. While many sites have stopped taking on U.S. poker players there are still plenty of online poker opportunity on the World Wide Web. In this article we compare two sites on different aspects of online play. Poker Stars and Full Tit Poker.

Poker Stars

Poker Stars is the largest online site, with over 100,000 players at any particular time. As I write this article there are currently 131,000 playing either tournaments or cash games. If your just getting started with online poker, Poker Stars has free rolls almost every hour. The games rotate between Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha, Razz, Stud, Bedugi, and HORSE. They all can accommodate up 12,000 people. These are first round satellites. The top 64, 72, 88, or 99 finishers (depending on the game) move on to round two tournaments held on the weekends and have a $2,000 prize pool.

Poker Stars has a wide array of scheduled tournaments starting at just ten cents all the way up to $200 buy-in. The top 10% normally make the money. Occasionally the site offers a 20% payout tournament that pays double the amount of players. The big regularly scheduled tournament on the site is called "Sunday Millions." The site offers a number of small buy in satellites to this tournament, which has a buy-in of $215 and once a month, a $500 buy-in. Sunday Millions has a guaranteed prize pool of $1.5 Million. The winner walks away with approximately $170,000.

The sit and go schedule on Poker Stars is especially impressive, with limits ranging from $1.00 all the way up to $5,000. The sit and go fields range from heads up (one on one) to 180 players.

Cash games at Poker Stars are also quite extensive, starting at.01-.02 blinds to an amazing $1,000/$2,000 game. Cash games are offered in just about poker game you want to play

including HORSE and Deuce to Seven Lowball.

Full Tilt Poker

Full Tilt is where I spend most of my online poker playing. Full Tilt has about 60,000 players at any particular time. The biggest attraction at Full Tilt is the approachability of the Full Tilt Pros. Full Tilt offers poker forums and live chats with various poker pros where you can ask pros strategy questions in real time. You will see pros like Allen Cunningham, Mike Matusow, David Pham, or Erick Lindgren playing tournaments and cash games. The very unique feature of Full Tilt Poker is a bounty on any pro in any tournament of 30 players or more. If you knock a pro out of any tournament you receive a bounty of the tournament buy-in up to $200.

You can literally find any poker game you want at Full Tilt in tournaments or cash game. Imagine playing a Razz cash game. You can find it at Full Tilt.

Full Tilt's free roll schedule are about one every two hours. The field size is dramatically lower than Poker Stars with a limit of 2700 people, but only 27 players make the money. These free rolls are not satellites, they are real money tournaments with a $100 prize pool. The games rotate between No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha, Razz and HORSE.

The Tournament schedule at Full Tilt is quite vast. You can find a $3.00, 90 player, bounty sit and go tournament. The range of buy-ins range from $2.00 up to $1,000. The payouts are always the top 10% of the field. Full Tilt offers a number of "daily double" tournaments. They are two consecutively running tournaments with identical buy-ins. (the buy-ins are $5.00, $10.00, and $60.00 at various times of the day) If you cash in both tournaments you win extra money from extra jackpot prize pool. If you are able to win both tournaments you win the entire jackpot.

Full Tilt has a Sunday feature tournament, "The $750,000 guarantee." Anywhere from 20 to 50 poker professionals will play in the tourney each Sunday. Satellites from as little as 50 FTP Player Points can get you into this feature tournament.

Full Tilt has an extensive list of sit and go tournaments ranging in buy-in from $1.00 to an astonishing $5,000. The fields range from heads up (one on one) to 90 players. Sit and go games include Hold 'Em, Omaha, Razz, Stud, HOSE and HORSE. One unique sit and go that is exclusive to Full Tilt are their "Matrix"sit and go tournaments. In these tournaments you play four, one table sit and go tournaments at the same time against the same eight opponents. The tournament pays out based on survival and knock out points.

The best poker bonus can be found at PokerIncomeGuide.com. If you are looking for a great poker community, check out TheRoundersRoom.com, a poker forum for rounders.