Asian-Friendly Online Poker Rooms?

I mostly play at Full Tilt, but they are not very Asian-friendly. What I mean by this is that they have regional freerolls for almost everywhere EXCEPT Asia. They have an African regional freeroll for crying out loud, but no Asian one.

I'm wondering if there are any other cardschat forumers located in Asia that have software recommendations? I saw that PokerStars has an Asia-Pacific tournament thing happening this month -- perhaps I might have to check them out?

I'm also from Asia, and I play at Full Tilt, Poker Stars, and Bodog. If you are looking for specific regional tourney I can't much help, but my thought is freeroll or tourney like that is not much worth it, I mean the comparison between time we spent and rewards we got are not too good unless you are a tourney specialist.

Hey Mr. Monkey.

I'm based out of Shanghai and have played at pretty much every poker room you could imagine over the past 7+ years.

Pokerstars runs the APPT tournament series every year, so if you're looking to play live events, they're an excellent choice.

Feel free to contact me with what types of promotions you're looking for and I'll help you find them.

I agree that on a pure $/hr basis, freerolls and the like aren't worth the time. However, I am challenging myself to start a bankroll from nothing for a few reasons -- one of which is I like the idea of starting from zero.

Do Poker Stars or Bodog have tournament time schedules that fit Asian players? What I mean is, almost all the Full Tilt tournies are based around North American time zones -- a few based on European time zones. Not many are catered to players in Asia.

Hi McCabe -- thanks for the offer! I'll probably PM sometime to ask things when they come up. I guess I'm just wondering if any software has tourney schedules and things like that that run on an Asian clock so I don't have to keep waking up at 3:00am on Monday morning to play in a tourney.

Pokerstars is the biggest online poker room in the world, with decent volume pretty much 24/7.

That said, none of their major tournaments play out during Asia hours, but they still do their best to cater to every market, although their traffic peaks during the European and US evenings.

Try to find some skins on major networks that cater more directly to the Australian and Asian market, or local forums, since they focus on running promotions for their player base.

Any suggestions on skins to look for? Is Pacific Poker any good?

Question for Mr monkey

I always wondered why the Texas holdem craze never took off in Japan

Do they advertise there?

Thoughts?

I'm not entirely sure -- I think the main thing is there's just never been an established card-playing culture here. The most popular form of gambling by far is pachinko, which is legal due to the actual money being transferred off premises. In the home game / social setting, Mahjong is also much more popular than any sort of card games that involve betting.

Dafa Poker on the iPoker network focusses on the Chinese market.

Pacific in general is good, as it does a lot of work in the east using the 888 brand, though I haven't played there in about 5+ years. My friends that still play there think it's pretty soft, but I don't believe there are any skins which focus solely on Asia.

As to the Hold'em in Japan thing, I lived there for 2 years, have traveled the poker circuit here in Asia quite a bit, and can say there is a small, underground movement towards Hold'em, but it is quite small and almost entirely situated in Tokyo. Because of the gambling restrictions in Japan, tournaments can't give cash prizes.

There are a few poker sites that focus on the Japanese market however, but they are few and far between.