Easy Poker Sites

The quality of players you are seated against will have a huge effect on the size of your bankroll at the end of an online poker session.  For this reason it is smart to try to play the majority of your poker at poker sites that have the reputation of being “easy” or “soft”.  This article will look at some easy poker sites and also give you a few tips as far as what to look for when it comes to figuring out if a room will be soft prior to signing up and making your first deposit.

Freerolls

One thing that will draw new players (noobies are usually soft) to an online poker room are the freerolls offered by the room.  These freerolls will come in two different forms and each are equally as important for nabbing some fish.

1. Freerolls funded by the poker rooms – These freeroll usually have very large player fields and give out a relatively small amount of money.  It will be hard for fish to build their bankroll up high enough through these type of freerolls alone, but if they play enough and get lucky enough they could have the cash available to blow it all away at the $0.25/$0.50 tables where you could be waiting.

2. Freerolls funded by poker forums/poker communities – These freerolls are usually password protected and have a much higher prize pool to entrants ratio.  It would not be uncommon for a $100 pot to have only 25-50 players entered.  These players will often be slightly better than the freeroll whores that don’t even belong to poker forums in order to enter these lucrative freerolls, but these freerollers will have more money in their bankrolls to lose.

The only problem with freeroller fish is that they can likely only amass a large enough bankroll to play the $0.25/$0.50 stakes maximum or some $10 tournaments.  If you go higher the fish will really weed out, especially the ones that don’t like to deposit.

Deposit Methods

If it is very easy to get money onto the site then the site will usually be softer because more individuals will be able to deposit easily.  Sharks and professionals will have the connections and the know how to get money onto just about any site they like, but fish (aka casual players) may not want to put in the hastle if depositing isn’t extremely easy.  So be on the lookout for poker sites that allow a wide variety of deposit options, such as ukash poker sites, visa poker sites, etc.

Poker Rooms attached to Sportsbooks

Poker sites that have their poker room attached to a prominant sportsbook, that is well recognized in the industry often provide soft poker games.  The sports bettors, who may not play a lot of poker, will play for fun on occassion when there are no solid sports to bet on.  These sports bettors will need their gambling fix and because they already have the poker room funded they will proceed to lose their money (sometimes at high limits).

Soft Poker Sites

Some poker rooms that are known for being soft include Carbon Poker (lots of freerolls), Bovada (sportsbook players), and Juicy Stakes.

Player Base for Various Poker Sites

This post will take a quick look at some of the more popular online poker betting sites and see just how many players are playing cash games or tournaments online at peak hours.  The more players playing at the poker room, the more options you as a player will have for game variety, stake and tournament size.  Poker Scout is a great tool to see how much traffic each online poker room had on any given day.

The biggest three online poker rooms are PokerStars, Bovada and Party Poker, so we will take a look at these three first.

PokerStars

PokerStars averages around 30,400 cash game players online at any given time during the day.  At peak hours the cash game traffic can get up close to 50,000 people online.  On top of these cash game players there are usually around 180,000 tournament players playing in about 8000 PokerStars tournaments at any given time during the day.  PokerStars has continued to increase its player base over the past month and it looks to continue to grow into the future.

Bovada

Bovada, on the other hand, usually has around 30,000 total players online, which includes an average of about 8,000 cash game players and 22,000 tourney players.  Over the last 6 months Bovada has grown by a greater percentage than PokerStars and looks to grab a larger marketshare from PokerStars in the future.  The development of sports betting and 3d casino action by Bovada will likely grab more of PokerStars players over time.

Party Poker

The next biggest online poker room is Party Poker, but there is a huge drop off from the big two players.  Party Poker averages around 20,000 total players online at a given time and about 5,000 of these players enjoy cash games.  Party has seen a slight increase in players over the past six months, but this is levelling off.  Party Poker seems to be becoming just another one of the smaller poker rooms that can’t compete with the big two.

Juicy Stakes

Juicy Stakes shares players with Cake and Lock Poker and are quickly growing together and their merge has allowed for more games on the Revolution network that they are apart of.  This in turn will continue to bring in more players looking for an alternative to Full Tilt and PokerStars.  The network currently has about 11,000 players online at a time with 2,500 of these being cash game players.  Time will tell if these poker rooms can play fair and gain a larger market share from the top rooms.

Building your bankroll can be greatly helped by clearing online poker bonuses at various websites.  These big 5 sites are great options for those of you interested in building your bankroll through bonuses because there are lots of games to be played and the bonuses are actually very player friendly.