PokerRoom Opinions, please

Having dumped Party (long, sad story of lousy software, terrible support, plus outright lies & broken promises from their "Support" folks [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] ), I'm looking about for an alternative.

BTW, I'm using a P4/1.7, 1Gb RAM, plenty of spare HD capacity, ATI Radeon 9200 card; OS is W2k SP4, fully up to date; ISP is Sympatico, and I use a D-Link DI-704 router with the latest firmware. I also, when playing, run PT, auto-updating every 2 minutes, with the External GT window and PA HUD running.

At present, I'm playing $1/$2 ring games - tournaments are not of interest at this time, and I don't really care about bonuses, which, to me, are just that - bonuses, but, on the margin between alternative sites, I'd then consider ease of payout.

My chosen site should be (relatively) EasyToWin, with stable software, and, of course, compatible with PT, all of which appear to apply to PokerRoom. I'm not necessarily "married" to the idea of PokerRoom, and would welcome alternative site suggestions, excluding UB (too tough for my style).

What I can't seem to be able to find are:
1. could I "observe" several PokerRoom tables at once, for a period, until I build up an new PT db for PokerRoom only?
2. opinions from 2+2 users who play at this site (I can get lots from all sorts of other folks, but I trust you guys more than the shillers & spammers with which the Net is replete ).
TIA for any and all opinions,
Jimmy

[Benholio]

[ QUOTE ]

What I can't seem to be able to find are:
1. could I "observe" several PokerRoom tables at once, for a period, until I build up an new PT db for PokerRoom only?


[/ QUOTE ]

You cannot datamine observed hands at PokerRoom.

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2. opinions from 2+2 users who play at this site (I can get lots from all sorts of other folks, but I trust you guys more than the shillers & spammers with which the Net is replete ).
TIA for any and all opinions,
Jimmy

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't play limit, so I can't really comment on the game selection, but you should definitely take a sample of a few hundred hands and check and see how much rake you are paying before continuing. Pokerroom recently changed their rake structure, and some of the low limit games had big increases in rake.

[timprov]

Stars, or possibly a Prima room, will be much better options.

[MaxPowerPoker]

[ QUOTE ]
Having dumped Party (long, sad story of lousy software, terrible support, plus outright lies & broken promises from their "Support" folks [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] ), I'm looking about for an alternative.

BTW, I'm using a P4/1.7, 1Gb RAM, plenty of spare HD capacity, ATI Radeon 9200 card; OS is W2k SP4, fully up to date; ISP is Sympatico, and I use a D-Link DI-704 router with the latest firmware. I also, when playing, run PT, auto-updating every 2 minutes, with the External GT window and PA HUD running.

At present, I'm playing $1/$2 ring games - tournaments are not of interest at this time, and I don't really care about bonuses, which, to me, are just that - bonuses, but, on the margin between alternative sites, I'd then consider ease of payout.

My chosen site should be (relatively) EasyToWin, with stable software, and, of course, compatible with PT, all of which appear to apply to PokerRoom. I'm not necessarily "married" to the idea of PokerRoom, and would welcome alternative site suggestions, excluding UB (too tough for my style).

What I can't seem to be able to find are:
1. could I "observe" several PokerRoom tables at once, for a period, until I build up an new PT db for PokerRoom only?
2. opinions from 2+2 users who play at this site (I can get lots from all sorts of other folks, but I trust you guys more than the shillers & spammers with which the Net is replete ).
TIA for any and all opinions,
Jimmy

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny that there is a thread to "Boycott Pokerroom" on the same page as this one asking what we think about it. The rake structure bites. Find somewhere else to play. My $0.02.

[Patchmaster]

You're passing up a lot of cash if you ignore bonuses. It's your time and your money, but...

The recent rake structure change at Poker Room has made the small stakes games some of the most expensive in the industry. Not quite B&M levels, but much higher than other places online. I used to play at Poker Room a lot. After the rake change, I finished clearing my reload bonus and bolted for greener pastures. If you're looking to play low end NL or $5/$10 and up, the rake is okay. In the middle it sucks royally.

Plus, with your machine I think you'd have a tough time multi-tabling at PR. Their software has lots of nice features, but it's horribly inefficient for multi-tabling. I have a dual 2.8GHz Xeon machine with 1GB RAM and the software chews up so much CPU time it sometimes doesn't redraw the cards properly. I've watched as my hand disappeared just before it was my action. I had to scroll back through the history window to see what cards I had. Very bad.

You can only play one table, but you might want to give Pacific a try. The $1/$2 players there are terrible. With the third party Hand Grabber software ($10) Pacific is PT-compatible.

You could also try one or more of the Cryptos. The $1/$2 there tends to be a bit of a rock garden due to all the bonus chasers, but it's beatable. Most of the Cryptos also have monthly bonuses that do not require an additional deposit. William Hill is probably the one to start with. The one big drawback for US players is that the Cryptos primarily market to Europe, so prime time here is the middle of the night there and it can get tough to find a full ring table.

[dibbs]

Their rake is not so good anymore.

I actually would have kept playing there if the software didn't crash every half an hour. Not too many had this problem though.

[lighterjobs]

give party another chance.

their rakeback is too good to give up if you are playing $1/$2.