Room suggestions

After years of playing for fun with friends I've decided to take the plunge into the online space. I've been reading for months on the forums and it seems there are many opinions of which rooms are the best.

Preferably easy sites. My thoughts, and I may be wrong, are that the FT and PS are flooded with big shots and veterans. Where can I go to

Where can a beginner go to get some confidence and build a bank roll. Any help would be great! Thanks in Advance.

I don't know if 'bigshots & veterans' is totally accurate but for sure you'll find tougher fields (in the micros anyways).
It depends on what you plan on playing & what you're looking for in a site. If you're desiring to start out at lower stakes.. ie. $1-$5 sng's, and playing one or two tables at a time,.. something like Bodog might be good (really soft tables on there, ALOT of weak players). Personally I really dislike the software there & the amount of games running in the lobby doesn't suit my needs either (hence the question, "It depends on what you're looking for in a poker site & what you plan on playing"

Titan poker also has play I'd consider weaker than the big two - pokerstars & fulltilt. I hear the merge sites have weak play in the micros too. Same thing with Doyles/Cake but maybe not quite as weak as merge sites.
Personally I don't like any of them (even though I play on a bunch of them, lol).

Just stay away from the fly-by-night sites that offer huge bonuses to reel you in. They merge/fold/disappear fast and you may lose your cash. I play at PS and FT and by no means are they full of veterans and bigshots,as Orifice said.

If you want soft cash games, you can try the entraction network. I play on BlackSea Poker in that network, happy with it. Reasonable amount of players, 8-10K at peak times daily. Lots of nitty regs but lots of fish too! And the nitty regs are weak as well

If you are looking for SNG's or lots of MTT's then they don't have that many. MTT's are ok I guess but or SNG's it takes a while to start the medium buy-ins ($5 or $10) so forget about multitabling those.

PM me if you want to know more.

I started in Everest and this room was cool for learning poker. They have freerolls like bankroll builder and this free is available for everybody.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Question: I notice a lot of talk about rakeback on affiliate sites. How important is that in choosing a room. Cake Networks offers 33% but some others like Minted Poker offer 40%. Do any of you base your room decisions on this?

I would recommend BroadwayTables.

For a few reasons...

1 - They are new, like you
2 - Part of Cake Network so you get that nice 33% rakeback
3 - You can do small sng's to learn on
4 - Good promo's

In the end though there are a million sites to choose from and you will get a million different opinions.

Good Luck!

I'm getting 50% right now, just started getting that heard someone saying he was getting 60% but that's just insane...possible I guess if you get a lucky deal somehow.

You ask how much it matters? Well last 3 months playing 20NL (€0.10/€0.20 blinds) I raked I guess about €1,000 of which I was getting 30% - €300 back every month. Now I'm expecting to get €500 back.

I guess it matters doesn't it?

If you go with broadwaytables let me know...my ID is 6pacshakur

I get 27% on one of the sites I play at & zero on the rest. It doesn't really bug me. If I were playing large volume of cash tables, then sure it would but the amount of games I play (MTT & SNG) we're not really talking about alot of money here (sure it helps in the longrun but for myself it's not super significant).
Take as an example, let's say I were to play $200 worth of Tournament buyins in a week, I'd be paying $20 in tourney fees & getting roughly $5 back in rakeback on the week (prob less than that as there always seems to be a bunch of deductions due to the tourneys I play... ie. money-added prizepools & guaranteed prizepool tourneys).

When I first signed up on some of the sites, I wish I'd chosen signup deals where you get large freeroll entries (ie. Titan Poker thru the Cardschat link, you get an invite to a monthly $1,000 freeroll.... this works well for me as I've cashed for more than $300 in them, having played ~8 of them). Other stuff out there >> free poker software (PT3), or poker books, etc.

For someone who predominantly plays ring (cash tables) then rakeback is essential in my opinion. For tourney play... meh... it's nice I guess but no big deal imo unless you're playing HUGE volume or High buyins.

As far as what sites to go with & reasons given by others above... sure if you want to find a somewhat fishy site (ie. the ipoker network sites are kinda fishy) and you can 'tolerate' the software & lack of player traffic volume, then go for it (I'm not into sitting and waiting 5mins.+ for a sng to start...or to find that some actually never fill up period (ie. like 45man sngs on some sites). I'd much prefer going onto a site where you can enter 180man sng's & have a new one start up every 10mins. so I can multi-table them... or to wait 30secs. for a 9plyr. sng to start up.

I prefer going with the tried & true, well established sites as I've heard stories of players getting ripped off by sites going under, etc. These days there's oodles of sites I've never before heard of & for me I'm not into depositing $'s onto them. I've tried a bunch of sites though (all well-known sites) and still keep coming back to Fulltilt. (it's the best imo)

I really appreciate your logic and the advice provided on this thread... I agree with all the advice given herein. Hope to see you on the felts, Wally