Sportsbook Poker

Sportsbook.com is a sportsbook, poker room and casino that has been in business since 1997. The poker room opened in 2006 on the Cake Poker network and immediately established itself as a player.

Unlike most poker rooms, Sportsbook Poker is available exclusively to U.S. and Canadian players. The poker room has grown very quickly and offers maybe the loosest and juiciest games available online today. Most of the player base comes through the sportsbook and casino, which makes a large portion of the players beginners and very easy to beat.

The software features nice graphics and functionality as it was developed by a group of poker players looking to "re-invent" the online poker world. Game play is very good and offers basically everything most poker players need, with good table stats, fast action, 10 tables for multi-tabling and great support features.

Game selection is also decent, with all variations of Texas Hold'em plus Omaha and Omaha Hi-Lo. Games are definitely concentrated in No-Limit Hold'em, and especially at the small and middle limits, but at peak hours players can be found at pretty much any limit and game.

Sportsbook Poker offers a decent amount of tournaments with the traffic volume overall in the lower segment of the industry but growing fast. Sportsbook Poker also offers monthly massive-value $100,000 freerolls.

Real-money player statistics as of February 2010 show 1700 ring-game players at peak hours, and 6000 tournament players at peak hours.

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Bonus Code and Promotions (9)

Exclusive $$650.00 first-deposit bonus at 125% match for new players who sign up at Sportsbook Poker through a Pokerlistings link.

Sportsbook Poker bonus code for PokerListings players: Listings

Bonus Payout

Real-money play at Sportsbook Poker earns Frequent Player Points (FPP). Players receive one FPP for every dollar in rake and seven FPPs for every dollar in tournament fees.

Each FPP is worth 6¢ towards your pending bonus. Once you've earned $10, the funds are moved from your pending bonus account into your regular balance. This continues until the pending bonus account reaches $0. Note that the last payout could be less than $10 if the remaining amount in your pending bonus account is less than $10.

Bonus clearing time is 90 days.

Loyalty Program/Promotions

Sportsbook Poker offers a loyalty system based on frequent player points, with "Gold Chips" and "Gold Cards" available. Whenever you play at real-money games or pay tournament fees, you earn Frequent Player Points, which fill in your "Gold Chip Meter."

 Once your meter is full, you get a Gold Chip that is yours to spend in the Players Rewards store on everything from tournament tickets to DVDs and books and more. Once you've earned your first, you'll also earn your next with less FPPs, and so on.

Players earn Gold Cards at real-money ring games when a certain amount of rake is collected.Once you've hit the amount at your table, a Gold Card will be randomly selected from the Vault and displayed at the end of the hand. If the Gold Card matches one of your hole cards you win that Gold Card, even if you folded your cards during the hand.

Once you've won a Gold Card, you have four ways to win with a daily lottery, weekly races, guaranteed cash prizes and a grand prize.

Exclusive Offers for PokerListings players:

Monthly $2,000 freerolls $2k cash freerolls for all new players. Deposit/earn just 200 FPPs to play. Upcoming dates: Feb. 14, Mar. 14, Apr. 11, May 9.

> Sign up through a PokerListings link and receive a $1000 bonus at 125% deposit match

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Tournaments and Freerolls (9)

Tournament buy-ins range from as little as $1 all the way to a few hundred. Tournaments arebusy and fast with a good structure. Daily tournaments usually get around 5-600 players for low stakes and around 200 for high stakes ($50 and above). Weekly tournaments get up to 3,000 players for low stakes and 1,000+ for the major Sunday tournaments.

Daily guaranteed tournaments range from the $1,500 ($1 buy-in plus rebuys) to the $20,000 ($100 buy-in). There are also usually two Pot-Limit Omaha guarantees. The cheaper one guarantees $1,500 ($5 buy-in plus rebuys) while the big one offers $3,000 ($10 buy-in plus rebuys).

Weekly tournaments include a $100,000 guaranteed and a $50,000 guaranteed. Once a month there is a giant $250,000 guaranteed event.

Sportsbook Poker also offers a regular satellites to major live tournaments around the world plus unique events like Kamikaze sit and gos, where everyone is all-in every hand, and Double-ups, where the top five of 10 get double their money.

Sportsbook Poker offers relatively few freerolls on a daily basis, but the ones they do offer are usually massive. Each month a $100,000 guaranteed freeroll is played where the winner takes home $75,000 and the runners-up share $25,000. Online, it doesn't get any better than that.

The overall freeroll series runs for 10 months and awards $1 million in free tournament prizes. Both freeroll and cash qualifiers for the monthly $100,000 finals run daily.

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Software and Graphics (9)

Sportsbook Poker's software runs fast and smooth. You can also see your own playing stats right at the table - like how often you see the flop, your win percentage, etc - making it a great learning site for beginners.

Overall the graphics are nice and clean and make for fast play, often dealing 60-70 hands per hour in full ring games. The avatars are nice looking and life-like. The tables are oval and the felt is blue, with a swanky casino setting with marble floors and heavy red drapes covering the walls.

Multi-table play is easy and smooth and works well with the stats tools available. One nice function is the hand history also saves the player chat, which is useful when trying to "figure out" a player

On the negative side, the note-taking function is a little hard to use and the software offers no mini-view or other multi-table help functionality. Occasionally the software will also freeze, but simply closing the program and opening it back up again seems to solve it.

All sounds and a lot of the graphics can be turned on and off and the amount of chat text a player wants to see can be chosen. Best special featrues are the in-game statistics and the access to hand histories without leaving the table.

For a direct Sportsbook Poker download, click the download link below.

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Soft Competition (9)

Low stakes games are packed with bad players with the games varying from relatively loose to ridiculously loose with a viewed-flop percentages up to 50%-60%.

This translates to very juicy and loose games for the small- to middle-stakes player - maybe the juiciest online.

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Support (9)

Sportsbook Poker offers e-mail, live chat and a 24/7 support phone number. Response time and friendliness is top notch and answers are accurate.

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Deposit Withdrawal Options (9)

NOTE: Sportsbook Poker claims it offers the highest credit card acceptance rate in the industry.

Deposit Options: VISA, MasterCard, Cash Transfer, UseMyWallet, Neteller, MoneyBookers and debit cards.

Withdrawal Options: Wire Transfer, Check/Gift Card, UseMyWallet, Neteller and MoneyBookers.

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