General Skill Levels at Different Sites

[DontPlayScared]

I was wondering what everyone's impressions were about the skill levels at different on-line sites. The consensus seems to be that Party has the weakest fields. I find the $30 tables at Party are actually easier than $10 because the players at that level are more predictable.

What do you guys find to be the most profitable site?

[Bluff Daddy]

I'd Like to know this too. I play 10sng's on party but I wonder how the skill level is on other sites. I hear pokerstars its pretty good. Also how profitable/easy are 5 pesron sng's?

[Jurollo]

I think the general perception that poker stars is "harder" is just wrong now. Stars has grown so much that it can be just a fishy as party, but party simply has a few more fish in a little larger pond. The sites aren't too much different to me and money can be made at both.

[Bluff Daddy]

Thanks. Ive only played at party but ive heard other sites (paradise, pacific) have more options for sng's? are these worth checking out because of this

[StickyWicket]

I play primarily at UB, Paradise and Pacific (newest). Here are my thoughts, as I've "laddered" at every site while I assess the pool of players I'm stepping into.

UB: $5/$10 sng's - you'll come across the occasional solid player, but these players, for the most part are easy to grow your bankroll through. I'm finding the $20's a bit more challenging, but beatable, and I'm on the brink of moving up to $30's again here after a 7 SNG run of losses taking me out of the $30's for about 1 week. My best advice is to take meticulous notes on all the player you play with. The lower-level SNG players on UB multi-table alot, and you'll run across them lots. The notes will be invaluable to you as you play with them as you're progressing through the ranks.

Paradise: lower limits, easy to beat. They have some fun multi-tables that have helped me grow my skills at PLO as well. Decent players from what I've found, and my ROI here is about 30%. I don't play here much...a last resort.

Pacific: I'll say it again---fish pond. If you can actually stay connected through your entire SNG and play a solid game, you're in the money. They have 5 handed SNG's that pay 3 places (you lose $1 for 3rd...). It's not a great ROI, so as soon as I play enough to get my bonus released, I'm out of there. This is the only site where I spend more time emailing for refunds due to disconnects than I actually to playing in tourneys. I have DSL for chrissake! Crazy. They do have some wild formats for SNG's tho, like PLH "Stack Attack" (5 min rounds, $4k in starting chips, 5 handed...) and 20 person tourneys...the odds for the money aren't great though. A 20 person SNG pays 5 places, where a 5 handed pays 3...not great odds for ROI if you ask me. Awful lot of work to lose $1 for 5th!

JMHO

[Milky]

I'll add some input on Pacific since I played there for a few months before moving to Party.

Pacific attracted me because of the low buy-in (and low cash-out min) to the site ($20 min as opposed to $50 on Party). I can't vouch for the fishiness of the 6 handed games but the 10 handed $5.50 games were plenty fishy for me. Also, the blinds increase every 15 hands as opposed to every 10 hands on Party (starting stacks are the same) so luck isn't AS BIG of an issue.

I'd defintely recommend Pacific to anyone that wants to start small and work their way up. As for network issues... I think I've only had one disconnect on their site in the few months I was playing there, but I could be the minority. I hear a lot of complaints about their stability.

Oh, and the actual software has a couple bugs. One of them is where your name covers one of your hole cards so you can't see it (only fixed by restarting the software AFAIK). This only happens if you're sitting on the left side of the table (I believe). Another happened to me where an opponent went all in ahead of me with something like $769 and when I re-raised all in (AKs) it said invalid bet amount and timed me out of the hand, causing me to fold.

Those are the only two issues I've had though, and they didn't really sour my experience w/the site.