MiltonFriedman
05-17-2007, 11:15 AM
US players should look critically at the present and future of online poker, barring a hail mary legislative outcome:
Benefits of size: game selection, bigger tournaments, bigger promotion prizing.
a. game selection .... are you really looking for soft games or simply convenience in multi-tabling ? (Smaller sites have some incredibly soft games, albeit only one or two table at a time. If you want to multi-table, you need to be on more than one such site concurrently. It is work, but it can be done.)
b. bigger tournaments .... this one is a given big plus for size, whehter you define it in terms of overall prize pools or availability of large fields and low cost of entry.
c. Size alsi inarguably supports bigger marketing giveaway pools, whether as freerolls or simply prizing, such as drawings or Pro for a Year type rewards
Drawbacks of size: money flow difficulties for deposits and especially cashouts(PS is an exception).
Money flow: Surprisingly, the larger a US facing site, the greater the difficulty of getting money in or out ... Stars is the exception, as they are very nimble. FTP or Absolute are the cases in point. Bluntly put, why play at a site that cannot get you your cashouts ?
(I did not write this as a puff piece for Stars, I do not even play there. But if you are comparing CURRENT performance when it counts, i.e. getting you paid, is there any argument ?)
Finally, rakeback deals at smaller US facing sites are readily available.
Benefits of size: game selection, bigger tournaments, bigger promotion prizing.
a. game selection .... are you really looking for soft games or simply convenience in multi-tabling ? (Smaller sites have some incredibly soft games, albeit only one or two table at a time. If you want to multi-table, you need to be on more than one such site concurrently. It is work, but it can be done.)
b. bigger tournaments .... this one is a given big plus for size, whehter you define it in terms of overall prize pools or availability of large fields and low cost of entry.
c. Size alsi inarguably supports bigger marketing giveaway pools, whether as freerolls or simply prizing, such as drawings or Pro for a Year type rewards
Drawbacks of size: money flow difficulties for deposits and especially cashouts(PS is an exception).
Money flow: Surprisingly, the larger a US facing site, the greater the difficulty of getting money in or out ... Stars is the exception, as they are very nimble. FTP or Absolute are the cases in point. Bluntly put, why play at a site that cannot get you your cashouts ?
(I did not write this as a puff piece for Stars, I do not even play there. But if you are comparing CURRENT performance when it counts, i.e. getting you paid, is there any argument ?)
Finally, rakeback deals at smaller US facing sites are readily available.