That Fat Bastard: Poker Room Review: Absolute Poker

In my constant struggle to build my Vegas poker stake, I have moved on to other sites. The newest one is...

This software downloaded fine, and I was up and playing within 15 minutes, just like other sites. For the first time, however, I've run into programming issues. Like I've said before, I'm running Windows XP on a pretty new machine. With Absolute poker the interface is not smooth. Sometimes it's bad design, like odd pop-ups interrupting you while you are trying to sign up for a tables, or the waiting list dropping you from every other table once you finally sit down at one. Other times it's actual programming problems. Sometimes tables don't pop up after you've been wait-listed, it just keeps asking if I want to join the game, but refusing to bring up the table when I say yes.

Visually the design has problems, too. If you are like me you like calming, easy to understand tables online. The default table skin they use on Absolute Poker is a little frenetic, which makes it difficult to quickly read the table. This can be easily altered by right clicking on any empty space on the table. I'll be putting a skin up, soon. In theory you can change the picture that you play under, but I haven't gotten that to work yet either.

Balancing out the programming and design problems, however, is a nice bonus structure. Typically they offer 200% on the first $100 deposited. Plus, and I don't know how else to say this, the $1/$2 limit table on this site is the softest game I have ever played. Play a little solid poker and you can own these tables. The site is also offering an little extra bonus incentive at the moment. As of today, they will give a new player 100% match up to $750. Just enter AP750 as your bonus code when you buy in. The match is paid out $10 at a time for 100 raked hands played. Playing two $1/$2 limit tables at a time, 100 raked hands takes about an hour and 15 minutes. I am averaging about $15/hour without the bonus. Not quite worth quitting my day job, but getting there.

Aside from the bonus, there are New Registration and New Deposit freeroll multi-tournaments. The first one seemed odd when it started, with some guy going all in every hand. I know it's a freeroll, but seriously, all-in every hand? Turns out the freerolls tend to have a lot of absenteeism, and Crazy Ivan was just trying to pick up as many blinds as he could before management dropped the absent players. I'm not sure why he was using all-in, when minimum raise would do, but his plan backfired. One other person at the table, aside from myself, had sat down and simply waited until he had decent cards to scoop up Ivan's stack. When management finally dropped the no-shows, the programming reared it's ugly head and left me alone with the sneaky fellow that killed Ivan. I didn't last long.

Fortunately, I learn from experience, and on the New Depositer's multi I was ready. This time I scooped Ivan's stack for a little early head start, and then stole blinds until I finally sat down with real players. I managed to take some guy out with the hammer, which is a first for me, and ended up taking 3rd.

Don't forget to sign up for the New Registration and New Deposit multis. Good Luck!