PartyPoker

Ask someone who used the web during the early 2000s what advertising was like and they’ll tell you it was invasive, annoying, aggressive, and mostly of an adult nature. That’s true. But if you’re thinking that porn constituted the bulk of those frustrating pop-ups and pop-unders, think again.

Give a webmaster a banner ad and he will pester you for a day. Make him a partypoker affiliate and he’ll annoy you for a lifetime.

Admittedly, it wasn’t partypoker’s fault, but it was still the weapon of choice during the Great Banner and Pop-Up Wars of 2001 to 2006.

It was the biggest poker site on the web during that time, but after parting from the US market in 2006, things calmed down and the affiliates moved on to more graphic weapons.

partypoker is still in operation. I would add “believe it or not”, but I’m five paragraphs into a partypoker review. I’m fairly confident you believe it. Personally, I was also so annoyed by the spam that I never joined this site, despite being a big fan of online poker throughout the last 2 decades.

For the sake of this partypoker review, I finally signed up and sat down for a few sessions.

Welcome Bonuses

The partypoker welcome bonus offers up to £400 and £40 in tournament tickets when you make your first qualifying deposit of at least £10.

The bonus will be released as a pending bonus matched 100% to your deposit. For instance, if you deposit £100, the bonus will offer you an extra £100. To unlock these credits, you must earn loyalty points and steadily chip away at the balance. 

You’ll get 10% of the bonus at a time and have 90 days to clear the amount. Points are earned at a rate of 4x. So, to clear £100, you’d need to wager £400.

As for the £40, it’s released over 6 days in the form of P$.

These terms may sound pretty restrictive, but we’re talking about a poker bonus and not an online casino bonus. Poker sites take a very small commission from each pot or tournament whereas a casino wins whenever you lose. The result is that a poker site encourages you to play and earn your bonus while casinos are a little more relaxed.

Loyalty Offers

partypoker doesn’t have much in the way of reload bonuses or other traditional loyalty offers. But again, it’s a poker site and not a casino, so it’s to be expected.

What you will find, however, is a selection of tournaments, leaderboard promotions, rakeback bonuses, guaranteed tournaments, and more.

Poker Software and Variety

The partypoker software is solid, but it’s not the best I have used. That honour would go to the excellent Pokerstars, which is the web’s biggest poker network for a reason. It doesn’t feel as fluid or intuitive and I also experienced a few connection issues.

I use a Mac, which might be part of the reason. They weren’t major issues though and they didn’t really stop me from enjoying the site.

What is more of an issue is the fairly limited gaming selection when compared to Pokerstars. You won’t find as many games, they are not as regular, and the player numbers aren’t as high either.

As far as the poker variants are concerned, partypoker is home to games of Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and 7 Card Stud, with no-limit and limit variations. Again, it’s not quite on par with Pokerstars, which also has games of 5 Card Draw and Badugi, two personal favourites of mine.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Partypoker accepts all of the following deposit methods:

• Visa
• MasterCard
• Maestro
• PayPal
• Paysafecard
• Skrill
• Neteller
• LuxonPay
• MuchBetter
• PromoCode

There is no fee for any of these payment methods.

On the withdrawal side of things, you may need to wait up to a couple of days to get your funds. They all need to be checked and reviewed, so even if you use PayPal, you could be asked to wait.

It’s a little frustrating. I understand why sites use pending periods, but I struggle to believe they are necessary. If they were, all sites would use them, but as I have noted previously (including in reviews of BetVictor), that’s simply not the case.

Players want to get their funds quickly these days and so it’s frustrating when sites take longer than a few hours to process payments.

Verdict: partypoker Review

It might seem a bit harsh to compare partypoker to Pokerstars, much like comparing every sportsbook to Betfair or bet365. But that’s what it’s going up against. That’s what it has to beat. Poker sites aren’t as generous with their bonuses as casinos and so you won’t find as many players hopping from one site to another just to grab the bonuses.

They tend to stick around. They find a site they like, they play, and they stay. I can imagine why partypoker might be number 1 for a lot of players and I can also see it being top 3 for the majority. But the limited variant selection and game sizes mean Pokerstars will always get the nod from me.

Still, it’s much better than I expected and it managed to dispel the negative opinion I had created after all those years of being spammed with banners and pop-ups.

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