Best Poker Sites

The key to ensuring a safe and fun online poker experience is finding the best poker sites for your business. Most poker websites are perfectly safe places to play, but not all online poker sites exhibit the same level of quality. For example, player traffic is vital to a poker room because traffic determines how many tables you have to choose from and how big tournament prize pools are.

If you take the time to find a high quality poker site, your poker experience will benefit greatly. There is definitely no shortage of online poker sites, but most are just average in quality. You will have the best online poker experience if you visit any of the poker rooms listed below.

Rank	US Poker Site		US?	Bonus	Get Started
#1		BetOnline Poker		25% up to $900	Visit Site
#2		Lock Poker		150% up to $750	Visit Site
#3		Carbon Poker		100% up to $600	Visit Site
#4		Bovada Poker		100% up to $1000	Visit Site

Qualities of the Best Online Poker Sites

The fastest way to find a high quality poker room is to simply choose from any of the online poker sites listed above. However, you can also choose your own poker site if you know what to look for. The following sections will describe the qualities that we look for when naming the best online poker sites.

Reputation

The first thing you should look for in any site is a good reputation. High quality online poker websites can be trusted to keep your information safe and the games fair. If an online poker site has a history of safety concerns or unethical behavior, it's not worth playing there. There are too many options out there for you to have to settle with a room that has a shady past.

Player Traffic

Player traffic is a must-have for a good online poker experience. An online poker site has to have healthy player traffic or else the games will never be able to get off the ground. The more players there are, the easier it is for you to find the type of poker games and tournaments that you like. Preferably, a site has enough player traffic for there to be multiple tables at every level.

Secondly, high player traffic indicates that a poker room is a good place to play. This isn't a fail-safe indicator, but it works for the most part. Poker players don't like to play at sketchy sites, so they tend to congregate at the best choices. This increases traffic, which helps to attract even more players and continually boost traffic.

Software

Software is another big one because the software dictates every interaction you have with the other players. High quality poker software moves quickly, responds quickly to button clicks and looks nice. You would think the software would be one of the priorities of any online poker site, but we have seen a lot of low quality poker downloads.

Poker websites do not need to have ultra realistic tables or 3D graphics to look nice. Sometimes simple software is better. The only thing that we ask for is a clean interface, easy-to-read cards and clearly defined action buttons. If the poker room can give us that much and still perform well, we are happy.

Two Types of Poker Websites

If you visit the website of any major poker site, you will often be presented with a choice between full download software and instant play poker. The default choice for most poker players is the full poker download. This option saves the poker software to your computer and then installs it just like any other program.

Full poker downloads are the best option for most players because the full poker software runs the best and offers the best graphics. Many poker sites have even released Mac versions of their software that is fully compatible with all Mac operating systems. If you own your computer and have a little space on your hard drive, this is the best option.

Instant play poker is the second option at most poker sites. This option allows you to play real money poker through your web browser without downloading or installing any software to your computer. All you have to do is log in at the poker room's website and you'll be taken to the tables. The advantage to instant play poker is that it is compatible with all operating systems and it does not force you to save anything to your computer.

The disadvantage of instant play poker is that it does not move as quickly as full download poker and it doesn't look as nice. The different in quality isn't major, but it does detract from the experience a little. Instant play poker works well overall, but we always recommend the full poker download.

Online Poker Bonuses

Bonuses are a big deal in the online poker world because bonuses promise new players a lot of money just for signing up and depositing. All the top poker sites offer bonuses of some sort. These bonuses are actually real money bonuses that you can play with or cash out. Poker bonuses are real offers even though they may sometimes sound too good to be true.

The only thing you have to do to earn a bonus is sign up at a poker site, make a real money deposit and then play poker. As you play poker, the bonus money is released in small increments. The more poker you play, the faster the bonus is released. Most online poker sites use some sort of frequent points system to keep track of how much poker you play and how quickly the bonus is released.

There are two things to consider when looking at online poker bonuses. The first is the match rate of the bonus. The match rate is a percentage that tells you how much bonus money you get per dollar deposited. The second thing to consider is the maximum bonus amount. In both qualities, bigger numbers are better.

Final Thoughts

Regardless of the poker site you go with, you can't go wrong with any of the ones listed on this page. These are some of the best out there and each one offers something unique. The software is easy to download and registration shouldn't take very long at all, so you can be hitting the tables in no time. Please remember to gamble responsibly and for entertainment purposes only.