Home / Poker Site Reviews / Absolute Poker
Updated
Sun, 2010-08-15 03:43
Absolute Poker
Review
Poker room score
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Deposit Bonus:
150% up to $500
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About Absolute Poker
Considered a “medium-size” poker room not so long ago, Absolute Poker is slowly outgrowing that status as it clearly establishes itself as one of the top destinations for U.S. players and why not, many Europeans as well.
Absolute Poker has been featured in the news quite often recently, sometimes for the right, other times for all the wrong reasons. Whatever the case, they’ve certainly got more publicity than they ever hoped for, and therefore their popularity is still on the rise.
They first caused ripples in the online poker community when their recently introduced bad beat jackpot promotion hit twice within 48 hours against all the odds. That certainly made a few players quite happy, and filled up YouTube with videos of poker chips raining down on the table at Absolute Poker.
The other stunt they pulled was a much more sensitive matter for them. A supposed ex-employee of the company was caught red-handed when detailed hand-histories were leaked out to players. The person in question used a hack that allowed him to view the pocket cards of other players around the table. The incident caused quite a sensation and once again, Absolute Poker was all over the front pages of websites and poker magazines world over.
Absolute Poker Software
Absolute Poker’s software does a great job of handling the over 10,000 players that they get in peak hours, smoothly and elegantly.
Absolute Poker owns the network it’s on (the Absolute network) and as such, it makes the network rules. The software is subject to regular updates and it looks graphically pleasing. There are many useful statistics presented and it’s also compatible with PokerTracker, so diehard poker players can track back every single move that they’ve made in past games. If incidents in the past may have raised a few questions in your mind as to whether the Absolute software is safe enough, you may rest assured that today, AP is probably the most secure online poker room out there. They can no longer afford not to be.
Even though software quality is generally great, it doesn’t yet feature resizable tables which makes multi-tabling cumbersome.
In a recent development, Absolute Poker posted a No-download version of their software on their site, to please all those Mac users who fancy flipping a few virtual cards every now and then.
Absolute Poker Promotions and Best Bonus
While there’s nothing truly innovative about it, Absolute Poker’s bonus system is one of the best in the business. They offer a pretty generous 150% match on your first deposit up to a maximum of $500, and the redemption requirements for the bonus are reasonable too.
Once you’ve made your deposit, you need to generate poker points to unlock your bonus and have it transferred to your real money account. The bonus does expire within 60 days, but depending on the sum, you should be able to unlock it all during that time. For every real money poker hand that you play in which the rake exceeds 50 cents, you earn a poker point. For every dollar you pay out in tournament fees you also earn a poker point. Whenever you gather 30 such points $5 of the bonus finds its way into your real money account. This way, even if you find it impossible to unlock the whole sum you won’t have to leave empty handed at the end of the bonus-expiry period as you’ll still be able to pocket at least a part of it.
Regular reload bonuses are also offered. These expire too after a while but you’ll receive plenty of warning from the poker room as the deadline draws near.
Absolute Poker Tournaments
Besides the various promotions offered by the site (The Blackjack lottery, the VIP awards, the AP dream package and many others) Absolute Poker offers its players a host of tournaments. While tournaments-wise Absolute Poker is considered more of a low-buyin player destination, it does offer a few extremely interesting expensive events as well.
One of them is the $150.000 guaranteed Saturday weekly tourney to which the buy-in is $500+$30 and the prizes are very generous as well. All players start with 5,000 chips and the winner will bag $34,500.
The Sunday $75,000 guaranteed is another major attraction. This tourney is a lot like an austere version of the Saturday event, with buyins of $150+12. There’s nothing austere about the prizes though, as the winner will get a minimum of $12,500, possibly more as the prize-pool grows with the number of participants and the tourney is gaining in popularity.
Absolute Poker Special Offers
Absolute Poker is all about special offers. Their promotions system is very intricate, and it incorporates some pretty insane events too.
The Design a T-shirt competition doesn’t really have a lot to do with poker, and neither do its rewards. People are prompted to come up with ideas towards designing a T-shirt that will be featured in the Absolute Poker rewards store. The winner of the contest gets 10 free T-shirts branded with the AP logo to give away to their friends.
The “refer a friend” promo gives you the possibility to make $75 off your pal’s back (well, not literally, because he gets his own bonus too).
The best and most interesting special promotion is the Bad Beat Jackpot. In order to qualify, players need to play at special tables where they pay a bigger-than-usual rake to feed the bad beat jackpot. In order to take down the jackpot (not only for yourself but for the other guys at your table too) you have to lose on a hand of four eights or something better. Even though the theoretical odds of something like that happening are meager, practice shows the jackpot can be taken down twice in 48 hours.
Absolute Poker Accept US Players
Whether Absolute Poker’s newfound popularity is due to the sudden influx of US players fleeing their former poker rooms where they are no longer welcome, is up for debate, one thing is sure though: AP has become a top destination for Americans over the last year, and its rise couldn’t even be thwarted by the dubious incidents it has been involved in.
Players probably figure the lightning can’t possibly strike twice in the same spot, and they just might be right on that account.
Because they’ve chosen to remain a U.S-oriented poker room, Absolute offers special deposit and withdrawal methods for U.S. players to facilitate risk and fuss free transactions. Deposits as low as $20 are accepted via ePassporte.
Absolute Poker Support
As far as support goes, AP kindly recommends that you check out their FAQ page, and if you cannot find the answer to your problem there, drop them an email.
While the replies to customer emails are supposed to be fast and accurate, the lack of a live support system (be that through phone or chat) just won’t cut it for a poker room this big.