Pokerslam: online poker

Eurobet.com was the first Company to accept bets via the internet in 1996.
In 1999 Eurobet joined forces with Coral, one of the most familiar and respected names on the British sporting scene with over 75 years bookmaking experience, to form Coral Eurobet.
Opening an account on Eurobet will give you access to the poker tables and to a sports betting account, without forgetting an online casino.
Until September 2005, PartyPoker used to share its software with a few other pokerrooms like EmpirePoker and EuroBet. Each of these rooms had their own customers but they used to play on the same ring games, sit'n'goes. Only a few multi table tournaments were specific to any of the rooms. On a ring game table, there could be 7 players from Party, 2 from Empire and 1 from EuroBet without anybody knowing it. Then, Party decided to split with its former associates.
Party having been launched a couple of years before Empire and EuroBet, it has many more players than them. After the split, at peak hours, Party reaches 75,000 players while Empire doesn't exceed 10,000. EuroBet has decided to take a new ally (pokerroom) and so use a new software. This way, EuroBet can guarantee action to its customers at every hour of the day, the number of players online ranging from 5 to 20,000.


Overall score

Traffic


With 5 to 25,000 players online everytime, Eurobet is a room of medium size. Anytime, a great number of tables will be open in HE (for limit as for PL/NL). The other variants have (much) fewer players.
In a few words, if you only play on one table at a time, you will be able to play at any variant. But, if you want to multitable with a enough tables opened to make a good game selection, then you should stick to holdem.

Game variety


All classical games are offered:
=>Texas holdhem: limit, pot limit and no limit. Many fewer PL than NL tables.
=>Omaha: limit, pot limit and no limit. Few players, there is a maximum of 5-6 full tables for a given level of blind. NL tables are the less numerous. Anyway, NL isn't really appropriate to Omaha.
=>Omaha HiLo: limit, pot limit and no limit. Even fewer players than Omaha. Nobody in NL. Don't expect more than 3 active tables for a given level of blinds in limit and pot limit.
=>7 card stud: limit only. A little bit more players than for Omaha but don't expect, if you are used to play on 3-4 tables, to be able to make a good game selection. You will have to seat where you can.
=>Stud HiLo: limit only. That's a no man's land, 1 or 2 active tables, at the lowest stakes. =>5 card draw: limit and pot limit. There's almost nobody on PL tables with a big blind of 1$ and higher. It will be easier to find action if you stick to limit.

Ease of competition


Just after the split with Party, the level of competition got suddendly tougher on Eurobet, the reason being Eurobet managed to attract a lot of active players (competent or professional players) with aggressive promotion.
After the split, these competent players were playing on eurobet's table whereas fishes had thei account on party.
But, since 2006, things changed. Eurobet wisely joined pokerroom's network which enabled them to welcome droves of fresh/unskilled players.
Now tables are easier to beat on Eurobet than on Party. Playing on Eurobet will significantly boost your winrate.

Software


The software, while rather nice looking, has some flaws that will make some experienced players prefer to play on other rooms.
For people on the left and right side of the table, blinds and button are not in front of them, which makes it not very clear when you multitable and so have to give each table a limited attention.
=>No buddy list (a list where you put the screen names of friends and fishes that you want to stalk).
=>Rebuying is a pain: you have to wait to fold your hand and, while the hand is going on, you sit out and click on the cashier button (not available if you sit in). If the hand is over before you rebought and clicked on "sit in" again, you will have to wait for the big blind or pay a penalty to enter the game. Same thing if you want to start/stop automatically posting your blinds. As a consequence, when you are playing heads up, the game will stop a few seconds everytime you want to rebuy. The interface has been devised in contrary of common sense.
=>You can take notes on your opponents. To this feature that all rooms offer, Eurobet adds the possibility to give every player a color mark (for instance green=loose passive etc...).
=>On every table, you can display an extra and bigger chat window and choose the information that each of the 2 windows will display (game information, chat, or both).
=>Search tool: enter the screen name of a player and you will know the tables where he is playing. I've appreciated that noone can hide from the search tool (on Party, some fishes use the "hide from search" feature). But, unlike Party, the search is limited to one player at a time. There's a solution: in the lobby, click on a table, that will display the scren names of the players and, next to their name, two icons will appear if you have taken notes on them and marked them with a color. That way, you will know which table will give you the softer competition.
=>You can set up private tables. You can choose the game (variant, betting struture, blind level) and the type of the table (public: anyone can join, private: people click on the table from the lobby and they wait for your permission).

Support


The hotline is based in the UK and isn't a toll-free number. It operates 24h/24.
Eurobet does offer 24-hour e-mail support. However, players are given two email addresses: one operates between 9:30 am and 6:00 pm UK time (services@eurobet.com), and another address for questions outside of those hours (customerservices@eurobet.com). Answers are quick and Eurobet is really willing to help you (I've been refunded the money I lost when a cheater disconnected on purpose. At this time Eurobet was on the PartyPoker network. Now this kind of cheating has disappeared on Eurobet as all disconnect is treated as a laydown. But I've never obtained such a commercial gesture from Party).
Having played on both rooms, I can say that on Eurobet the customer service is immensely better than on Party (one of the worst).

Bonus


When you create your account, be sure you enter POKSLAM2 as "reference code" when you creat your account to get your bonus.
For every new account, you will have the choice of your first deposit bonus: 50$ (enter bonus code "CLUBS" when you make your first deposit), 100$ ("DIAMONDS"), 250$ ("HEARTS") or 600$ ("SPADES").
The bigger the bonus, the more hands you will have to play during a 30 (50 and 100$ bonuses) or 45 days (250 and 600$) period.
On top of that, you will have a 25$ monthly bonus for playing on Eurobet! Every month, you just have to enter a bonus code that Eurobet will display on its website and after a few hands you will be granted the 25$ (this bonus is really easy to clear).

Rake


The rake is at a standard 5% of the pot and is capped to 1, 2 or 3$ depending of the number of opponents and the level of the blinds.
For PL/NL games, the cap is lower on Eurobet than on Party (Party took advantage of its leading position to increase its rake a couple of times). For instance, on a NLHE 0.25/0.5 table with 7 players, the rake will be 5% of the pot on both rooms but it will be capped to 1$ on Eurobet and 3$ on Party. On small to medium pots (up to 20$ on this table), the rake will almost be the same on Eurobet and Party but, for bigger pots, it will be bigger on Party (for a 60$ pot, 1$ will be raked on Eurobet and 3$ on Party).

Transactions


All classical ways of depositing/cashing out are allowed (credit card, check, bank transfer)
Cash outs to a neteller account only take a few hours, which is really useful when you want to hunt bonuses on various pokerrooms (generally these bonuses are only available a few days).

Suggested use

I STRONGLY recommend to open an account on Eurobet to take advantage of the big deposit bonus, the monthly bonus and the weaker competition (higher winrate).
Make it your main poker room.
When you build your bankroll, you will be able to try a few other rooms to take advantage of the first deposit bonuses that they offer. But then go back to Eurobet to crush the fishes!



A few screenshots:


When you first launch the poker client after you downloaded and installed it, click on "New account" and enter "POKSLAM2" as "reference code" to make sure you get the welcome bonus.

This is your lobby. Here you cand find and choose games, go to the cashier etc..
Note that, the "Pinehurst" table being selected, the list of players is displayed. The 2 icons next to "chain dog" show that you have notes on him and marked him with a color.


On the right of the table, the extra chat window is really useful. On most softwares, the chat window is really too small.


The rake structure on Eurobet.