Expectationally
It has become apparent to me that my highest priority when signing up for a new site is “prevalence of CardsChat
freerolls”. When I joined CC three or four months ago, I was already registered at PokerStars,
party poker, and Full Tilt (defunct in
canada for over a year). I am now also playing at 888, Sports Betting, Bet Online, and America’s Card Room – all because of CC FR’s. I consider Black Chip Poker to be a virtual duplicate of ACR – so I won’t be signing up there.
In a general sense, after playing at all these sites, I have recognized a number of advantages and disadvantages. But to answer the primary question of
: “what (do) you look for when searching for a poker site to play at. What is important to you and what matters the most?“, the answer is simply CC Freerolls.
This has led me to consider Intertops and Titan as well. Intertops only has one CC FR per week, so I’m sure I’ll sign up eventually, but there’s no rush. Titan requires a deposit and seems to go down a lot in the middle of the monthly tourney, so I’m not so sure about that one.
Experientially
Once I have played at a site, I gain an appreciation/hatred of their various features. Software interface is my primary criterion for enjoyment of play. I would list software features in the following order:
Overall Functionality- no lagging, glitching, crashing – if this becomes a factor, I would leave the site
Replay – very important to me – ACR replay might well as not exist, it is so useless. PP replay is just workable enough that sometimes I can fool myself into thinking it’s worth a try – mistake.
Overall “Look” – Can I customize the table so that I can easily see and understand the cards, whose action it is, what the bets/pot(s) are, etc. I never seem to know when it’s my action on ACR.
Chat – not very important, but when it doesn’t work (hello PP black chat box of death) it’s really annoying.
Multiple Site Interaction – I often find myself multi-tabling tourneys on multiple sites. SB and BOL do not play well with others. If either of these sites is open with any other site, one or more lose sound. Sometimes (rarely) SB or BOL lose sound and PS, PP, 888, or ACR is/are OK, but 95% of the time SB or BOL have sound, and every other site is silent. This leads to missing action when alerts are off and one site simply dominates the other and the “weaker” one doesn’t pop to the fore.
Because of the nature of my micro grinding Freeroll ways (5Dimes Nick would call me "Freeroll Scum"), I’m not overly concerned with ease of deposit, ease of withdrawal, Player to Player transfers, and the like. Apparently I can deposit to 888 via
paypal – that is amazing. I can deposit/withdraw from PP at my local cardroom (Playground Poker Club) – also fantastic. If I was judging a site on ease of deposit/withdrawal, I would search for a site that allows easy withdrawal without the use of cryptocurrencies, and the impossible dream of an account to which I can deposit, play, and withdraw in USD with no transfer or conversion fees. Even in the old pre-Black Friday days, my FT account was in US dollars and withdrawals were put in my CAD account (after conversion at a crappy rate) despite the fact that I had a USD account at the same bank. Nowadays when I wish to deposit via Playground, I have to give them CAD which PP then converts (crappy rate again) to USD – if I’m holding USD, Playground will convert to CAD (crappy rate), deposit, and then PP will convert back to USD (crappy rate). I get crapped on twice!
