888 Poker Review 2018

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888poker is a brand belonging to The 888 Group and is licensed by the Government of Gibraltar. The online poker room gives top priority to fair play, owing to which it has its RNG results and monthly payout percentages reviewed every month by internationally acclaimed auditors and publishes the reports on its website.

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Don’t forget to use 888poker Bonus Code to receive your sign up bonus

For me, excellent two poker rooms, but 888 poker is a lot of turbo tournaments and they do not focus on the game but you can play and tournaments are fast and do not take much time, and in. 888Poker Review Bonus, Traffic and Software. 888poker has an excellent reputation in the poker industry and that for a good reason. Due to their fantastic poker client and software, great tournament and cash game traffic, and their focus on recreational players, which makes up for very soft games, it is no wonder this is one of the largest poker sites in the world. Forget 888 poker for life. Forget 888 poker for life I have been playing poker for over 45 years, going to LV twice a year and play live poker in poker room not against casino. Enjoy every game loose or win. I know it is real poker no FIXED SOFTWARE. On line poker is SCAM. Most using ipoker software and connected to each other. 888 Poker experienced great success in the early days of online poker, especially among US players, but it was one of the rooms hit hardest by the UIGEA. The 888 site has been recently relaunched.

For live dealers, 888 offers three card poker, texas hold’em, american roulette, blackjack, and baccarat. 888casino Bonuses and Promotions 888’s sign up bonus is $20 for free, just for signing up, no deposit required. 888 also offers 120% match up to $500 on your first deposit.

Since 888poker bears the seal and certificate of eCOGRA, the industry watchdog, players can rest assured that it adheres to the strictest industry standards and provides a 100 percent safe and secure online poker gaming environment.

888poker Welcome Bonus

Sign up now for 888poker through the links above at the top, make a deposit and DOUBLE your money! Your very first deposit at 888Poker will get rewarded with a 100% bonus that can go up to $400 (T&C’s apply) use promo code: WELCOME100. This bonus is easy to clear and it’s simply perfect for beginner players that are just starting out in the world of online poker with the help of the bankroll boost that they will get.

888poker welcomes newly registered real money players with a $400 welcome bonus (T&C’s apply), a $100k First Depositors’ Challenge, and a First Depositors’ Freeroll.

888poker offers new players a warm welcome bonus of 100 percent up to $400 (T&C’s apply)on their initial deposits plus an invitation to the $100k First Depositors’ Challenge played on Fridays at 20:00 GMT. The top 10 players win a seat to the Sunday Challenge, which is played at 20:35 GMT.

New players are also invited to participate in the First Depositors’ Freeroll with a prize pool of $4,500. This freeroll comprises seven daily $500 depositors’ freerolls plus a seat to the $1000 Depositors’ Freeroll.

And in case you think that this is not enough for you, we have good news: There’s more! In addition to the kick start that you get with the welcome bonus, you can also get another welcome package (T&C’s apply)that includes the following:

  • Free entry into the $100,000 First Depositors’ Challenge
  • $1,000 Depositors’ Freeroll
  • Seven $500 First Depositors’ Freerolls

Games, Tournaments, and Live Events

Here are the list with all the poker variations that you can play at this poker room: Texas Hold’em (the No Limit Fixed Limit versions), Omaha, Omaha Hi or Lo, 7Card Stud / 7 Card Stud Hi or Lo. As you can probably notice the draw and mixed games are missing. But we hope that in the future they will add some more games.

In case you are looking for some action outside the Texas Hold’em games you are not going to find it. Since the traffic at the other games is very limited or is simply missing. However there is still a good amount of games and tournaments available.

There is no dearth of ring games and tournaments based on popular poker variants such as Seven Card Stud, Texas Hold’em, Omaha Hi, Seven Card Stud Hi -Lo and Omaha Hi/Lo at 888poker in the download as well as Flash formats. Besides, new players will never feel lost at 888poker because it provides ample assistance in the form of poker tutorials and poker tips.

888poker runs attractive tournaments, which challenge players to win shares in premium racers, tickets to live sports events, branded merchandise, luxury hotel packages, and much more.

One of the highlights of 888poker is the Daily Challenge Series with a monthly guaranteed prize pool of $1 million. 888poker also runs Double or Nothing tournaments, a series of Sit N Go tournaments, which challenge players to either double their cash or get nothing.

888poker is also a great online poker venue to qualify for prestigious live poker events such as the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the 888poker Super Stack.

How to Deposit – Deposit methods

Only registered members of 888poker can deposit funds into their online poker accounts. Poker players are first required to register a real money account, after which they must login using their password and usernames, visit the Cashier section, and hit the Deposit button. They will be transported to a fresh page, which displays the various payment methods they can use. Banking at 888poker is safe and secure because it employs sophisticated encryption and security technology to protect players’ financial information and money.

Players can use methods such as Visa credit and debit cards, Bank Transfer, MasterCard, CashUp, Moneta, ClickandBuy, Skrill (Moneybookers), Chinese Debit Cards, Laser Debit Cards, Commerzbank, eNets, Deutsche Bank, Neteller, EntroPay Virtual Visa Card, Netpay, Ewire, PostePay and Kalibra, Pay&PLay, PayBox, WebMoney, POP, Qiwi VISA Virtual, and PayPal, to fund their accounts.

How to Withdraw

As far as possible, the online poker room withdraws funds through the same method players used to make deposits. However, the online poker room requires authorization and documentation to process withdrawal requests.

Players are not allowed to withdraw bonuses till they have satisfied the wagering requirements.

888poker Rewards

888poker Rewards is one of the best loyalty programs in the industry, challenging players to play real money poker, collect points, and exchange them for attractive rewards. 888poker Rewards is synonymous with larger bonuses and cash backs and gifts.

Whenever players participate in cash games and tournaments at 888poker, they will be rewarded simultaneously with Status Points and Reward Points as well as invitations to exclusive weekly tournaments and freerolls.

While Status Points determine players’ status in the rewards program, the Reward Points can be exchanged for iPads, vacation packages, or cold hard cash.

The 888poker rewards program comprises 10 statuses, and the number of Status Points earned per month determines players’ status for that month. If players achieve the VIP Status, they will retain that status for the next 12 months.

Customer Care

888poker takes good care of its customers and has one of the best customer support systems in the industry. The online poker room’s well-trained and friendly customer care representatives are accessible 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and 365 days per year, offering support in 11 languages through email, phone, and live chat.

Online Tournaments

There is a nice variety of online poker tournaments available at 888poker. The buy in for the tournaments start from as little as $1 and can go up to even a couple of hundreds of dollars. But what really manages to make this poker room special is the soft competition that can be found at the online poker tournaments.

Overall 888poker is considered to be the paradise of the small stakes tournament players, since those are by far the most popular around here. There are only a few large tournaments available that also have some large buy ins. The most important tournament is called the Sunday Challenge and the guaranteed prize is worth $100,000. The buy in for this tournament is $82 + $8 and takes place each and every Sunday.

Sit and Go Tournaments

When choosing an online poker room to play Sit and Go poker tournaments there are different factors that you should take into consideration like: the player traffic, the competition, the fees you have to pay, the variety and types of tournaments that are available and the structure of the SNGs.

888poker has a decent amount of player’s traffic available for the SNG tournaments. The competition is considered to be very soft compared to the industry average. And at the same time there is a good variety of SNG tournaments including: Double or Nothing, Triple Up, Turbo, Super Turbo, Heads Up and many more.

888poker Software

The 888poker software received an update recently and has managed to become one of the best poker clients available right now. Just a few years ago, 888poker used to be probably one of the simplest and ugliest poker rooms out there. But things have improved drastically ever since the Poker 6 version was launched. It is packed with 100 brand new features. It has a 3D lobby and some impressive graphics.

In addition to all that you also get the chance to play at the PokerCam tables where you can actually see your opponents via webcam. This way you get to have an online poker experience that is closer to what is happening at a live poker game.
In case you are using Linux or Mac, you can always take into consideration using the no download instant play version of the software. While you might not get the same functionality as the downloadable version, you still get the chance to find a fast and reliable poker client.

Players Traffic information

888poker took a deep hit back in 2006 when they stopped accepting US players. But you can still find a good amount of poker players, while 888Poker is considered to be situated in the middle segment in terms of traffic.

The online statistics are showing that during the peak hours you get to find around 8000 tournament players and 2000 players at the real money ring game tables. Just like most online poker rooms out there the vast majority of players can be found at the Texas Hold’em games.

Competition

888 Poker Review 2018

While 888poker has a decent amount of players’ traffic, you get to find a very soft competition at the tables. The average viewed flop percentage goes up to 70% even at the middle stakes. And this is definitely a sign that the competition is soft. The reason why 888poker managed to keep a soft competition through all these years is because there is still a good influx of players that are coming from the other gambling related services like the online casino, sportsbook and online bingo. This way tons of casual players can be found at the tables that are just looking to try something new and they are not familiar with strategies nor do they have a good knowledge of the game or experience playing.

888 Poker Review 2018

Rakeback Information

There is currently no rakeback deal available for 888poker and this poker room prohibits to their affiliates to offer rakeback deals. Instead of running rakeback deals you can find a VIP loyalty program that is packed with tons of cash back prizes that can go up to 36% of the rake that you pay, based on the loyalty level that you manage to reach.

Loyalty Program

Start playing poker, collect loyalty points and start receiving some cool rewards. Things are kept very simple at 888poker. The points will get credited automatically to all poker players the moment they sign up for a real money account. These points can be transformed later on into cash back, merchandise from the Online Shop (like branded hoodies, iPads and holiday packages) or can be used to buy tickets to online poker tournaments.

Positive:

  • Software available in multiple languages
  • Tons of new and cool features
  • Poker Cam – see your opponents while playing poker
  • Instant play version available (excellent for Mac and Linux users)
  • Great graphics
  • $400 welcome bonus (T&C’s apply)
  • Rewarding Loyalty Program
  • Listed at the London Stock Exchange company
  • Best option for new poker players
  • Soft competition

Negative:

  • No US players allowed
  • No rakeback deals available currently
  • Relatively low number of players at all the games except for Texas Hold’em
  • No Draw or Mixed games available

Conclusions

One of the only things missing here at 888poker is the draw and mixed games. Except for that everything seems to be perfect. The customer support service is excellent. There are tons of promotions, bonuses, rewards that you can get as a player. The competition at the tables is very soft and keeps on being like that after more than 10 years on the market. Thanks to the recent software update you get to find cool graphics tons of new features and an up to date poker client that has to offer everything that modern day software must offer.

Note:

Valid for 1st deposit only • Bonus equals 100% of player’s first deposit, up to $400 • The bonus will be granted in $10 chunks subject to wagering restrictions of 100 Bonus Points per chunk • To withdraw bonus, player must collect 2.5 Bonus Points for every $1 bonus • Withdrawal restrictions apply • Bonus expires in 90 days • Withdrawal restrictions T&C’s apply

https://www.888poker.com/real-money-poker/deposit/bonus-policy

OUT OF 10

Why would you read yet another review of 888 Poker you ask.

Because this one is different.

While researching 888 Poker, I quickly released there was a lack of a good and honest review.

Most of the reviews I found were written by guys and gals who treated them more like advertising rather than reviews.

If I wanted honest and unbiased reviews/comments I had to turn to the dungeons of online forums, where I would find exciting and frank discussions about 888 Poker.

But, finding all this information scattered around the interwebs was quite time-consuming.

So, I concluded there was a lack of a thorough and honest written review that brought all of that information together.

Poker

But fear not, those dark times are over, and I have now compiled a combined review and case study of 888 Poker, which is brutally honest and aims to let you know everything you need to know about 888 Poker.

At the end of this review, you will find the results from my case study, in which I played 20,699 micro cash games.

What do you think?

Did I make a profit or loss?

To find out, sit down, relax and read on.

Quick Links

How I did this 888 Poker Review

Deposited USD 50 with NETELLER

Played 20,699 micro cash games

Used the poker strategy tough by Jonathan Little

Recorded the hand history with PokerTracker

Played all the game variants

About 888 Poker

Let’s being with getting to know 888 Poker a bit more.

888 Poker, operated by 888 Holdings plc, they opened up their doors in 2002 (back then as Pacific Poker), offering players traditional poker games such as Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and Seven-Card Stud.

888 Holdings plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: 888). So, if you are into stocks as well as poker, investing in 888 is an option for you. But keep in mind that poker only counts for 22% of the total revenue of 888 Holdings Plc. The primary source (60%) of income comes from 888’s casino operations.

We will have reasons to revisit the fact that the majority of the earnings from 888 comes from their casino operations in my section about player quality.

Are they trustworthy?

888 Poker has been reviewed and certified by eCorga under their “Card Shuffling Review.” That means that their Random Number Generator (RNG) has been review and verified by an external party.

I emailed them about this to gain further knowledge and here is a snippet of their reply.

In 2013, 888 Poker won the EGR Operator Awards for best poker operator of the year. The criteria for doing so are summed up in this sentence:

“The poker operator of the year award will be given to the operator that has operated the most successful real-money poker offering over the past year.”

But, they have not won the award since then.

In summary, 888 Poker is a part of a big, publicly listed company, so you should have no worries about it being rigged or that they will suddenly disappear with your money.

Depositing and withdrawing money

Depositing money into your 888 Poker account is very easy.

You have over 40 different ways of doing so, for example, VISA/MasterCard, PayPal, and NETELLER.

888 Poker Review 2018 Download

Not all of them will be available for you though. Depending on which country you live in you will be presented with different options. You will find all the available options for you in the 888 Poker software on the cashier menu.

When depositing money, you will accumulate a positive “Member Transaction Balance” for that specific payment method. This means that whichever deposit option you choose will also be available as a withdrawal option as long as your “Member Transaction Balance” is positive for that option.

More details on this can be found in their withdrawal policy.

In that policy, we find another thing worth highlighting regarding the withdrawal limits and identification requirements.

ID requirements for different withdrawal limits.

As you can see the more, you withdraw per month the more information about your identity you must provide.

What about exchange rates?

There is a lot of heated discussions about the exchange rates set by 888 Poker.

Let’s dive into that and find out what’s going on.

Accordingly, to 888 Poker the exchange rates are set by their bank.

If needed, 888poker will apply an exchange rate to your deposit according to the daily exchange rate used by our bank.

Is this exchange rate good or bad?

There is a lot of discussions about the exchange rates being bad. You will be subject to their exchange rates when you deposit or withdraw in any other currency than the US dollar.

You should, therefore, only deposit and withdraw in US dollars and let other parties, like your local bank, do the exchange by using their rates (which generally are much better for you).

For this to work you must verify that your 888 Poker account default currency is US dollars. When you register your account, it will be set in your country’s currency automatically. So, beware of this and contact their support to make sure your default currency is in US dollars.

For the case study of 888 Poker, I created a new account and deposited 50 US dollars. I did this using my NETELLER account, which default currency is USD. By making my deposit like this, I avoided all the troubles with exchange rates.

The deposit was instant and without any fees.

Keeping your account “dormant”

When (if) you read the terms and conditions for your 888 account you will come across this section:

“Should you fail to use your account for six months your account will be considered a “dormant account.” The six-month period will run from the date of your last login to your account. In the case of a dormant account, the Company will levy a monthly administration fee at a rate of 10% of the balance in the account on the date that it became dormant.”

Hang on a minute!

Will 888 start taking my money if I don’t use my account for six months?

Yes!

When you don’t use your account for six months, they will take out a “monthly administration fee” of 10 % each month until you run out of money or until you log in to your account again.

So, if you plan a nice long vacation and have money in your account, then make sure you login ones every six months or withdraw all your funds before you leave. Also, note that you won’t receive any interest money from 888 Poker.

Bonuses

888 Poker operates with two bonuses for new players.

$88 free with no deposit needed

This bonus sounds too good to be true, right?

Will 888 Poker will hand over $88 for free to your freshly registered account?

The answer is that they might very well do just that.

But it comes under a few conditions.

You won’t receive the full amount at once. What you will receive immediately is $2 in real money and $6 worth in tournament tickets.

The rest will be given out in small increments of $8 depending on how much bonus points you accumulate within the time limit of 90 days to claim this bonus. That means that you will have to generate 10 x 250 = 2 500 bonus point in the first 90 days of registering your account order to receive the full $88 bonus. And $22 of those $88 is real cash; the rest is tournament tickets.

So yes, there are some conditions to this bonus which makes it pretty hard to receive the full $88. But at least you will get $8 entirely for free with no conditions what so ever.

And that is a pretty sweet deal for anyone who wants to start playing poker with real money without depositing.

When I registered my account, I immediately received the $2 real money bonus as well as the six tournaments tickets for $1 each. Unfortunately, I didn’t use all of the tournament tickets before they expired. So be quick!

But, the no deposit bonus is an easy and excellent way to start playing real money poker without making a deposit.

888 poker review 2018 2019

Double your money + free tournament tickets on your first deposit

When you make your first deposit, you are awarded a bonus that will double your money and give you free tournament tickets.

The tournament tickets will be credited to your account immediately upon depositing, and the money bonus will be paid out in $10 increments based on the number of bonus points you generate.

Below is a snippet of the most critical parts of the terms and conditions for this bonus.

I deposited $50 and immediately received eight free tournament tickets as well as five $10 pending bonuses. For each bonus, I can follow the bonus points required to receive the bonus which is a nice and helpful feature.

Here is as a screenshot of the free tournament tickets I received.

Withdrawal rules on bonuses

If you play well and make good bank on your real money bonuses, they may only be withdrawn after you have generated 2.5 bonus points for every $1 received. This means you will have to play quite a lot before you can withdraw it.

Gameplay

888 Poker Review 2018 2019

How is the gaming experience at 888 Poker?

That’s what you will learn in this part of the review.

Design

When you first log in you will be presented with an, in my opinion, excellent layout. You can easily choose from 3 different levels of cash games, sit & go’s and tournaments. This makes it easy for a beginner to start playing in no time.

If you want to be more specific and choose more carefully what type of game you want to play head over to the “All games” you will see everything that is going on.

Here you can make all kinds of selections to find the game or tournament that is right for you.

When you have found the right table for you and you sat down this is what the actual gameplay will look like.

This is a standard table design, and you have the information and options that you would expect. But, if you look to the top left corner, you will your progress towards receiving your next bonus.

Rake

Rake is always something you should consider when choosing your poker site.

But what is rake?

Rake is the primary revenue stream for poker sites. It is a percentage taken from the pot. Benoit Lafontaine has written an excellent explanation of how it is calculated on Quora.com.

What is the rake at 888 Poker?

It is usually 5% but varies depending on what kind of game and limits you play. But you should note that 5% is pretty standard so 888 Poker does not stand out in either direction in this matter.

Traffic and quality of players

If you examine how many active players 888 Poker had on an average the last seven days you will find that 888 Poker is the second most popular poker site, only beaten by PokerStars.

That means that there is usually no shortage of players to compete against.

To determine the quality of the players, we must first determine what a lousy player is. If we can agree that a poker fish usually is a recreational player with limited experience, then the quality of players on 888 Poker is pretty low.

Why?

Because 888 Poker is marketing themselves to new and recreational players. This together with the many reports online that 888 Poker being a “Fishtank”.

Also, as I mentioned in the beginning 888 is mainly a casino which means many casino players will try their luck on the poker tables once in a while.

So, if you believe yourself to be quite the poker player you should start playing on 888 Poker for some easy money.

Platforms

888 Poker offers you to play on a variety of different platforms on either desktop or mobile. With all these options they make it pretty darn impossible not to be able to enjoy a game of poker.

The desktop user has these options:

As a mobile user, you have the options to play on iPhone, Android, iPad, and Web app.

My Case Study

Now, we will look into how easy/hard it is to make money playing poker on 888. Since they get a lot of their revenue from casino players, one would assume a lot of those low skilled poker players are easy targets. Well, if you also believed that I would say you were right.

I played 20,699 cash games at No Limit Hold’em $0.02/0.05, 6 player max. I did this by multi-tabling four tables and this made me average around 300 hands per hour. The strategy I used is the one tough by Jonathan Little in his book “Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Cash Games.“ I am by no means a professional poker player. I am an amateur player, playing mostly for fun and thus that is my benchmark.

I tracked all my games using PokerTracker and turned my initial deposit of $50 into $600

Hands: 20,699 Won: $600

This shows that by using a sound poker strategy, it is possible to make money playing poker on 888.

Support

888 Poker can easily be contacted by online chat, phone or email. Their main help page is a big FAQ which is quite extensive and gives a lot of useful information.

The online chat is only available through the desktop app and here but it requires you to have an account. The same is true to email support which won’t be answered unless your email is registered to an account.

888 Poker Review 2018 Review

A funny thing I noticed is that the chat was unavailable (early in the morning) unless I was just about to deposit more money. Then the cheerful Grace appeared and wanted to have a small talk about my bonuses.

What do other Reviews say about 888 Poker?

Although I did my research before writing this review, you should have a look at what other people has to say about 888 Poker.

Luckily for you, there is no shortage of online reviews for 888 Poker. A simple Google search for “888 poker review” gives you 238,000 results.

888 Poker Review

By analyzing those results, you will find that the reviews can be organized in two different types, user reviews and affiliate reviews.

User reviews

The user reviews are made by everyday people who write comments on public review sites or forums. These reviews are unfortunately for 888 Poker not too pretty.

Poker

The users on TrustPilot give 888 Poker 1.2/5 from 350 reviews.

The main issues reported were:

  • Buggy software
  • Long payment times
  • Bad exchange rates
  • Terrible support
  • Rigged gameplay (see the introduction to find out why you can trust 888 Poker)

Although this seems quite depressing, you should keep in mind that there are a few positive user reviews too.

Reddit has a few threads about 888 Poker which is positive.

Affiliate reviews

These reviews are mainly (not all) written by website owners with the sole purpose to gain affiliate revenue from 888 Pokers affiliate program. This means that the reviews are biased and might not be trustworthy.

But what about this review then? Doesn’t this qualify as one of those?

Well, yes and no. This review is supported by affiliate links, but I have put in a lot of effort and research in making it trustworthy bringing up both good and bad sides of 888 Poker.

I hope you do feel the same after reading it.

Your experience

I am now overly excited to hear about your experience of 888 Poker.

Is it your favorite poker site?

Do you play there regularly?

Does it stink?

Whatever you think of it, write a comment!

OUT OF 10