Absolute Poker Review

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Name Absolute Poker Country Costa Rica Network Absolute Poker Established 2001 Support email support Telephone N/A

Overall Rating 4.70 Software/Interface 4.7 Ring Games 4.5 Tournaments 4.9 Game Variety 4.7 Soft Competition 4.5 Signup Bonus 5.1 Frequent Player 4.5 Promotions 4.8 Customer Support 4.6 Deposit & Cashout 5.0

Absolute Poker was started by poker players in 2001 as a stand-alone site that runs proprietary software. Early on they brought in poker pro Mark Seif as an endorser and consultant, and since then they added Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi, who was named Player of the Year in 2006. They have added a couple of skins within the last year or so, as well as the casino game Blackjack. Absolute Poker has grown recently into one of the larger poker rooms, with action concentrated at the Texas Hold’em games, and at peak times there are more than 20,000 players at the tables.

They have remained committed to serving the US market and have welcomed many ‘refugees’ from other sites. Absolute Poker is a comprehensive, interactive online poker room, providing features such as hand history, stat retrieval, player notes, chat, player search, six table play, and representative image selection.

Absolute Poker offers the following games: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo and Razz.

Absolute Poker’s Texas Hold’em lower Fixed Limit and NL traffic is strong at peak hours, but keep in mind that the games have a reputation of being fairly tight. There is a good selection of Texas Hold’em tourneys, with a fair amount of guaranteed tourneys offered daily and a few big guaranteed tourneys offered on the weekends - Absolute Poker offers over $1,000,000 every month in Guaranteed Tournaments. They have both re-buy and non re-buy tourneys along with a large selection of satellites if you do not want to pony up the full buy-in for the bigger tourneys.

The 1, 2, 3, and 5 table Sit and Go’s are quite popular and fill up quickly, especially during peak hours. Absolute Poker has a wide selection of Heads-Up action, and also allows players to create their own tourneys, which is a very popular feature. The action at most all the tables is quite good, with higher view-flop percentages at the lower stakes tables.

Absolute Poker also offers Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card and 7 Card Hi/Lo and RAZZ. The Omaha action is better at the lower stakes in both regular Omaha and Hi/Lo. In 7 Card Stud the action is quite limited at any level, and the action for RAZZ is non-existent outside of peak hours.

They offer frequent reload bonuses in the 20-25% range and even higher for VIPs. They have recently changed the bonus clearing schedule and it has become more difficult, but players are still given 60 days to try to clear what they can. The VIP program is solid. Players earn Rewards Points every time they play real money cash games and tournaments, and these points can be used to buy into special tourneys or buy merchandise in the AR Store and the exclusive VIP Store.

Absolute Poker has many advanced features such as multi-table play (up to 6 ring games) and hand replay, and the software can integrate with Poker Tracker. The software had a reputation of being 'buggy' but it has improved steadily. The dealer speed is average and players have a longer time to act than in most sites. It is also more PC-resource intensive to run than many of the other top sites.

In addition to the past “buggy” reputation, Absolute Poker has also been the butt of jokes for having some of the ugliest tables in the industry. The graphics looked like they were designed by a Nintendo programmer back in 1985. In August 2007, however, Absolute finally released a long overdue update to its software client (dubbed Absolute Poker 8.0) which introduced a sleeker looking interface at the virtual tables. Two new table views were added, in addition to the “classic” view: a three-quarter view and a second overhead view. “Fold” markers were added so that it is easier to tell who is no longer in the hand (the cards in front of the seats are small), but they tend to be distracting to multi-tablers, especially because they overshadow the dealer button.

In the “classic” view, players can download different skins to customize the look of the tables, but those skins are not available yet for the new table views. Players can also use a personal avatar, which is rather large and can be annoying to some, but they can be turned off.

Sound effects are clear, but the ‘check’ sound makes two rapid clicks that can be misunderstood as two players checking instead of one. A visual 'check' graphic has been added to minimize this confusion.

Absolute Poker has done a nice design job with the lobby, which is very easy to navigate. There are separate tabs for Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Stud, Tourneys and Sit and Go’s; and each tab has sub tabs for more detailed searches. Columns can also be sorted by table name, stakes, numbers of players, etc. The game information display includes players per table, wait, average pot size, players per flop and hands per hour. The tourney lobby is very functional, and you can easily find whatever you are looking for, whether it is a special satellite, one of the many guaranteed tourneys, or even a satellite into their big weekly $150k tourney.

Absolute Poker offers Blackjack as their only house game, but if this is not your thing (or if you find it too tempting) the icon can be blocked from view.

The waiting list feature can use an improvement: if a player goes on a wait list for multiple tables, once one of the tables opens up the player is removed from all of the other table wait lists. This can be very frustrating for a multi-tabler, but not a big deal for the average player who is looking to play one table.

Absolute Poker has offered a chat feature since their inception, and you have the possibility to block anyone from chatting with you if you choose. The chat feature is easy to use and can provide some fun banter, just make sure you keep it clean or you may lose your chat privileges.

Absolute Poker has a number of features to protect your privacy. The client software uses the certificates issued by their own Certificate Authority (CA) to authenticate their servers. Absolute Poker software authenticates their servers by using the industry standard DES combined with AP's custom encryption algorithm. They use 256 bit encryption to ensure the highest level of privacy and confidentiality of data both to and from Absolute Poker's servers.

In addition to the variety of deposit and withdrawal methods, Absolute Poker customers can also transfer funds to and from real money accounts at UltimateBet.com. The accounts may belong to the same player or different players who wish move funds between each other’s accounts.

They offer live chat support in addition to email. Their support can be slow at times, but the assistance is usually accurate and helpful.