This is the worst site I've ever played. I played it a long time ago. (Jan isn't a long time ago, but it seems like it is.) I don't remember how long I played it, but I didn't have any idea about how bad this site is. Experience is a wonderful thing.

First, the software is very, very slow. Take notes on someone, and how do you know you've got notes on them? There's no indicator. You can only play one SNG at a time. One. Period. How dumb is that. It takes a few seconds to turn over cards when all in, but the Show Cards lasts for maybe a quarter-second.

When you get down to heads up in an SNG, the software goes haywire. How do you make a goddamn bet? You are forced to use the slider to raise. It puts in a minimum raise in the bet box, but it won't work. You have to slide it to change the bet. You can't type in the bet, that won't work. And then, the chat appears in the box. Huh? Yeah. It's very strange.

Finally, while it has nothing to do with the software, the players are impossible. A 3x BB raise called and an all in called with Q4. You gotta be kidding. It's constant. You can't put anybody on any kind of a hand. While that would appear to be a good thing, it's not when you are facing 6 or 7 of these yoyos, who appear to be taking turns calling stupid bets. One or two, it's cha-ching time. 5 of them, and you lose your ass.

Plus, at 7 p.m. EDT last night, not a single $50NL 10 man table. Not a single one.

I hate this site.

CJ

...But the snacks are free!

You forgot one of my pet peeves: the disappearing tables in the lobby. If you play ring games you'll notice that the table(s) you are playing will sometimes be absent from the table list so you can't check VPIP or avg. pot size anymore.

They need a software upgrade badly.

Didn't run into to that one. Ouch.

The only plus--someday this might be the only room that allows smoking.

CJ

How is paradise for clearing a bonus? Say if you only play low limit ring (.25/.50 or .50/1.00) and low NL ($10 or $25) ring games?

I am thinking of going to Paradise next in my bonus quest.

I cleared the initial bonus at Paradise about a month ago. It was the worst site I've played on so far, in just about every way. I cleared it playing $25NL, and I did make a tiny bit of money in addition to clearing the bonus. And the bonus didn't clear super-slowly -- not like UB or anything. But it wasn't much fun. No plans to go back.

I gave up. I played several SNGs yesterday trying to get back over my initial deposit. Lost and lost and lost, and gave it up. Our brains are very good at seeing patterns, often where there is none. I kept seeing the same thing over and over. River cards keeping guys in the game. It would be different if occasionally a suckout would happen on the flop or turn, but it was almost every single time on the river. Happens so often it gets scary. I'm not saying it's rigged or that Paradise's random generator is flawed. I'm just saying it's freaky.

Finally, I just ran away, screaming into the night. Paradise is a horror show. All around.

CJ--down $65 and happy to leave it

Paradise is dreadful, I agree.

Their customer support is actualy quite good - probably because there's about 120 customer service operatives sat there thinking "erm, where's all the customers, guys?".

Last time I played there the games were also fairly poor.

Won't be adding it to my new PC.

When I started online, the big 3 were paradise, party and UB. Paradise will be dead in the next year or two (as an effective poker site) without some sort of change to their business practice, and UB has gone very flat. Free market economics, baby - and online, it works beautifully. Adam Smith would be creaming himself if he'd lived to see online poker at work, it's a perfect economic system.

Anybody also noticed how pacific, which was a "big player" 2 years back, has died on its arse? Quite right too, from what I hear, a laughably bad site.

There's still room for a site that does everything right. I am pretty amazed, given communities like this, that EVERY site online still has MAJOR problems in terms of software quality. Crazy stuff.

Free market economics, baby - and online, it works beautifully.

I can't understand why this means UB isn't as or more sucessful than Stars.

Most folks agree that UB's software is just about the best and fastest on the net.

Stars has just about worst bonus release rate for sub $200 NL table players (significantly slower than UB) and has only basic PT support (no datamining). Are they just an MTT/SnG site as they give cash players very little reason to play there?

The network that seems to be coming on rapidly to me is Prima -some sites there have started giving out good reload bonuses/rakeback and with PT datamining online it's moved from a network I nevr really played to one of my favorites. Stars and Paradise (and to some extent even Party) have moved in the other direction for me..

Where are the players going if most sites has fewer players?

I started playing on january at party and I remember it never had more than 65K players. A few months later there were more than 70K but never more than that. Now they split the "party Network" and there is only 20K players in the new Party Poker and it´s saturday, bonus week and peak time. I guess that is the most we´lll see there.