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Betfair Poker Review

The Betfair Group was founded in 1999 and is now one of the largest online sports betting providers. Betfair employs over 2,000 people globally and they hold gambling licenses in Gibraltar, Malta, Italy, Tasmania, and the United States. Betfair Poker is licensed and regulated by the Gibraltar Licensing Authority.

Betfair Poker Deposit Bonus

The Betfair Poker welcome bonus allows you to choose from a number of options so that you can select the sign up bonus that is best suited for you. The ‘Choose Your Own’ welcome bonus is not tied to the amount of your first deposit. It is based upon the accumulation of player points that you earn by playing in cash games and real money tournaments. The bonus options range from $50 to $2,500 and the higher the amount of the bonus program the more player points that you need to earn in order to have a portion of the bonus distributed to your cash account.

A minimum deposit amount of $10 is applicable to every deposit made at Betfair Poker, including this welcome bonus. You would, of course, need to deposit a larger amount to be able to earn enough player points as you select higher bonus program amounts. This welcome bonus is only available to a depositor that has never had an account with Betfair Poker. It is only available one time and for one member of any household. All of the terms and conditions of this promotion are available on the Betfair Poker web site.

Another part of the new depositor welcome bonus is the $2,500 Welcome Freeroll that all new players get a free entry in to. This freeroll tournament runs every Thursday at 19:15 UK time.

Betfair Poker Rewards Program

The Betfair Poker rewards program is called the VIP Club. As it is usually done, the Betfair Pokef VIP Club is tiered based upon the amount of player points that you earn. As you move up in levels you receive more benefits such as a better rate of player point accumulation, freeroll tickets, invitations to live events, rakeback, and personalized premium customer support.

Betfair Poker Games Available

The different poker variants that Betfair Poker spreads include:

• Texas holdem
• Omaha
• Omaha hi lo
• 7 card stud
• 7 card stud hi lo
• 5 card draw

Many of these games can be played in limit, no limit, and pot limit betting modes.

Betfair Poker Stakes and Limits

Betfair Poker spreads a very wide range of limits starting as low as $0.01/$0.02 and up. At certain times you will have a little trouble finding anything other than a short handed game at limits of $50/$100 and above.

Betfair Poker Tournaments

There are quite a few guaranteed daily and weekly tournaments at Betfair Poker.

Betfair Poker Freeroll Tournaments

Betfair Poker has the usual new depositor freeroll tournaments and he special freerolls that are offered to players based upon their VIP level. They also run regular freeroll tournament and event specials. For an example there is the 100 iPad 2 Giveaway that runs to the end of April. The way that this promotion works is that if you can earn an average minimum of 150 player points per day in a 15 day period, at tables that are high and medium stakes, and you get an entry in the 75 iPad Giveaway freeroll. If you can collect at least a minimum of 50 player points per day in a 15 day period at low and micro stake level tables, then you will win an entry in to the 25 iPad Giveaway freeroll.

Betfair Poker Special Events

As it is with all of the Ongame Network poker rooms, Betfair Poker has a very good selection of special events and tournaments. There are always some new ones that are coming up and some of the really good ones that are out now include:

$260K Guaranteed WSOP 2011 Online Qualification - This tournament promotion will be having 9 Main Event Tournament and 18 side event tournaments that are guaranteed to award World Series of Poker prize packages. These events will be held between April 5th and June 5th. Betfair is running 12 satellites every day until June 5th that will award $320 tournament tickets to all of the 27 guaranteed tournaments. Some of these satellites have a buy in as low as $2.

$74K WSOP 6-shooter – This is basically a leader board rake race. Through May 26th, they will have a weekly leader board. The final ranking, and the way that the prize position is determined, uses your best 4 weeks results on the weekly leader board. The leader board is based on the amount of player points that a player earns for the week. The overall top 3 players, at the end of the competition, win a $10K WSOP Main Event buy in. Players that end the competition in 4th to 150th place will split a $40K prize pool, of course as you place higher your percentage of the prize pool increases.

The Rake at Betfair Poker

The commission to the house, or ‘Rake’, is very competitive at Betfair Poker. Tournament fees seem to run around 10 % to 20 % lower than most of the other poker sites. Some of the rules that are used in the calculation of rake at tournament fees are:

• The rake can never exceed 5 % of the size of the pot
• The rake will never exceed $3
• The maximum rake that will be taken in a heads-up game is $1
• No rake is taken if the hand ends before the flop

For tournament fees their rule is than it will vary depending on the stakes and the structures of the tournaments but that it will never exceed 10 %.

Casino Games at Betfair Poker

Attached to the Betfair site is a full service casino. They have a wide variety of slots, video poker, and table games. They even have some casino games that they have altered to remove the house edge thereby making the odds 50/50. For example they have a European roulette game where they have removed the ‘0’. In a game like blackjack the house edge could only be removed if the player was extremely knowledgeable in blackjack odds and strategy.

They also have one of the largest sports betting operations in the world.

Betfair Poker Deposit & Withdrawal Methods

Being one of the world’s largest sports betting exchanges it is no wonder that depositing and withdrawing at Betfair Poker is relatively easy and rather painless. Their deposit method options include:

• Master Card
• Visa
• Delta
• PayPal
• Solo
• Maestro
• Neteller
• ClickandBuy
• Skrill
• Bank Transfer
• Check

Your options for withdrawing from your Betfair account include:

• Debit Cards
• Credit Cards
• Neteller
• Skrill
• Bank Transfer
• Check

In most instances a withdrawal by means of Neteller can be accomplished in as little as 24 hours, making it one of the best of the online gaming industry in this area.

Betfair Poker Is Available in the Following Currencies & Languages

The official language of Betfair Poker is English but you can load the software in 17 different language versions including:

• English
• German
• Bulgarian
• Danish
• German
• Czech
• Greek
• Finnish
• Italian
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Turkish
• Swedish
• Chinese

The currencies that you can use at Betfair Poker are:

• AUS
• CAD
• DKK
• EUR
• GBP
• HKD
• NOK
• SEK
• SGD
• USD

The Software at Betfair Poker

Betfair joined the Ongame network in 2008 after acquiring the poker site ‘PokerChamps’ the previous year. This was a big step for Betfair Poker taking them from the software that they were originally using, provided by Crytologic, and moving them on to the Ongame software which is far superior. They have all of the features that you will want and need and the site is easily navigated. They even offer an application that can be downloaded to your iPhone that will allow you to play poker, casino games, and place wagers directly from your cellular phone.

Customer Service at Betfair Poker

Betfair Poker offers customer support by e-mail and by telephone. There are not any toll free phone numbers that you can use to reach the customer service department and there is also not a web chat option that is available. In spite of those deficiencies the Betfair Poker customer service department is friendly, knowledgeable, and fast to respond. Response times vary based upon the time of day and the day of the week but usually averages out to be less than 4 hours.

Betfair Poker Players

Many people say that the action is loose and that the competition is soft at Betfair Poker. Their reasoning is that casino and sports bettors wander over to play poker and that they are less experienced. While this situation may occur from time to time it is really no different than some of the players that are out there who have more money than they do brains and just do not seem to be able to truly understand the game of poker. Betfair Poker is not only a large site but they are part of the Ongame Network which transparently provides a very large network of shared poker players. It has become true at every site and the general rule of thumb is that the overall skills get better as you move in to higher limit games. If you are a good poker player then you already know that you have to learn to understand your opponents from their patterns of play that you have watched. And like the saying goes, ‘If you can’t see the fish at the table then you are it’.

Betfair Poker and the Ongame Network Limited

Joining the Ongame Network was a major move for Betfair Poker. In addition to the software that Ongame provides there is also the shared player network and the Ongame tournament structures. The Ongame Network has a fast growing list of Global, Italian, and French Partners.