Poker Room Review: William Hill

Another couple of days have passed in my exploration of the online poker world. Exciting days, to be sure. My Vegas stake is slowly growing, and Club 506 is buzzing, as Shiny has shown his true colors and taken a monster payout from several hundred multi-tournament hopefuls. That's his story, however, and I'll let him tell it in good time. Meanwhile I have tried the play at another of the plethora of poker rooms available on the World Wide Web...

William Hill Poker

The initial download is painless, and I was up and playing within 15 minutes. As I've said before, I'm running on a pretty new machine with Windows XP. The interface for this site is smooth, with no freeze-ups or disconnects through about six hours of play. The tables are pretty easy to read, and there are no annoying pop-ups, so playing more than one table isn't a problem. Oddly enough, the "Yes" and "No" buttons are reversed for most things, with "Yes" on the right instead of the left, which can cause a little confusion. It actually took me a couple of tries to join a table from the waiting list, because I kept clicking on the left hand button when it asked me if I wanted to join without actually reading the button. I'm assuming there is some reason for this, but I didn't actually care enough to find out what it is.

Organization in the Main Lobby pretty much sucks. The website supports betting in British Sterling, Euros, and U.S. Dollars, so when you are sorting through the table list looking for play you need to be careful of the currency of the table you sit down to. I intended to sit at a $1/$2 limit table, but ended up playing for pounds instead. If you are trying to work on your stake, that can be a costly mistake to make, particularly if you catch a bad run of cards. The menu of games is one long list, with no way of filtering out the games you're not interested in. Not well thought out.

Another oddity of William Hill Poker is the bonus they offer. Players earn 25£ for 5 hours of play, renewed every month (about $42). This in itself isn't too bad, although the accounting for the Pay-for-Play Bonus is a little weird. They add the chips to your stack as you leave the table without actually telling you they did it. You can see the transaction if you go to the "Account Statement" section of the cashier, but it's extremely odd to look at. It almost appears as if they give you the bonus and then take it away again. They don't. If you keep track of the amount of your stack as you leave the table you can see that the bonus is added in. The account statement just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, the bonus structure is the basic cause of what I really don't like about William Hill.

The Play.

Here's were the bonus set-up takes an ugly turn. Because time is the only factor, and the number of raked hands doesn't matter, no one plays. A typical $1/$2 limit table (or 1£/2£ table for that matter) involves a bunch of slow players folding into the blinds. You can try aggression if you like, but, since it's limit, the blinds will protect themselves, and frustration will follow. During my first hour, I caught a couple of pocket rockets in late position and watched the rest of the table slowly fold. I raised, the button and small blind mucked, and Big Blind called to protect his investment. I bet through a crappy-ass flop (2s Qd 5c), turn (9h), and river (7h) with confidence born of the knowledge that no set, flush, or straight could cause me problems. Only if this joker had called down a hand like, say... 5 7 off, could I lose money on my perfect pair.

I don't want to talk about it.

William Hill needs an overhaul. Revamp the lobby so players can find their game. Re-structure the bonus so people are awarded for actual play. Install topless dealers. Do something. Otherwise, Mr. Hill, you'll find yourself alone, your supposed friends simply Bonus Whores, hanging out only because you pay them to.