Online Casino Gambling

Bet365 Poker Review

Bet365 Poker is one of the leading titles on Playtech’s iPoker Network. Bet365 has been providing quality real-money online poker action for nearly a decade and for much of that time has been top dog in the U.K. market. This poker room could survive on reputation alone, which is a good thing since the site is looking a little dated lately. Read on to see how Bet365 measures up when it comes to what’s important.

Bet365 Poker Bonuses and Promotions

If you’re a poker novice, then you’ll find Bet365 especially friendly with their big new player bonus and beginners-only cash tables. Not only are new players automatically eligible for the site’s 100% first deposit match bonus worth up to $500, but they also occasionally receive free entry to the site’s $500 freeroll and additional entries to the $1500 casino game freerolls at Bet365 Poker’s sister casino.

While some poker rooms offer double points days or weekend freerolls, Bet365 has their own weekend event known as Rake Free Fridays. When you play cash games on Friday, you’ll receive a bonus on Saturday that’s worth the total amount of tournament fees and table rakes you paid the day before.

Speaking of tournament fees, Bet365 recently introduced a new tournament series known as the Monthly Million. Once a month the site will offer a mega-tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million-plus. The player that comes out on top is guaranteed a cash prize of at least $200,000. You can grind your way to the big event or buy in at the end for $500+$35. This event is in addition to the site’s preexisting weekly $250,000 Guaranteed tournaments.

Like any self-respecting online poker room, Bet365 also offers a loyalty points program they call the “VIP Scheme.” Also, like most other poker rooms, the VIP rewards are merit-based meaning that what you earn is directly related to how much you play. While some poker rooms only exchange these points for prizes and free play, Bet365 steps up and also offers cash back.

Banking

While the deposit options available to individual players will depend upon their home country and currency, Bet365 offers over a dozen reliable funds transfer services in total. All of their depositing services are free, and everything but a check or bank wire is instant. They are also one of the few remaining poker rooms that accepts PayPal, and across the board they’ve secured some of the lowest transfer minimums in the industry.

Bet365 Poker’s withdrawal options are slightly more limited but are nonetheless still free and fast (though not instant by any means). You can cash out a big win via credit card, Neteller, Moneybookers, Paypal, Click2Pay, bank wire, FastBank transfer or check.

Software

The Bet365 site is easy to navigate, as is the lobby though it leaves a little to be desired in design and filter features. Naturally as a member of the iPoker network Bet365 features some of Playtech’s best online poker software, and it shows. The site offers a nice array of both ring game and tournament options and supports the steady flow of traffic without a single glitch. In other words, the software won’t ever wow you, but it won’t drop you either.

Whereas many poker sites focus exclusively on Texas Hold’em, Bet365 Poker offers a satisfying array of games including Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud and Five Card Stud. The turbo tables and tournaments are popular here, which is good news for players that are high on ambition but short on time. A mini-view option makes multi-tabling possible, but the actual game screens are not resizable.

True high rollers won’t be impressed by the room’s top stakes of $100/$200, but the site nevertheless does a good job of offering a nice spread of games and stakes, plus their 5-10 daily freerolls give penny pinchers plenty to look forward to.

Drawbacks? Bet365 Poker’s software platform isn’t Mac accessible, and they offer no flash version of their site to remedy the situation. American players are also out of luck if they’re hoping to play at Bet365. That said, few of the rest of the world’s poker players will be turned away, as the site offers an impressive 16 different languages to accommodate them. They pull good traffic during peak international hours – in excess of 20,000+ on weekend nights – but only 10-20% of the traffic is at the ring game tables, which means that many of the less common games offer weak action at off-peak hours.

Summary

There are certainly faster, flashier and more U.S. player-friendly poker rooms out there, but few other online gambling sites are as reliable as Bet365. If you can do without the bells and whistles then this site performs well in all the areas that count.