The Action Poker Network has picked up in traffic lately and it offers a number of Asian card games as well as Black Jack. They have recently launched multi table scheduled tournaments which for a long time they did not have. The partners are reasonably differentiated in graphics and image and offer a variety of promotions that appear to apply to some but rarely all partners. The partners are not as obviously identical as the partners in the Tribeca network for example, but very likely the only difference you will experience is in the promotions that are offered and these do vary quite dramatically between the partners. Content, however, appear to be more or less carbon copied between the partners except for BetNetClub where there is absolutely no poker-related content whatsoever. Support and cashier functions are centralized for all partners except BetNetClub. I have been unable to find a rake table for the Action Poker rooms and as a result the rake rating has been reduced - I don't think it's really acceptable not to publish the amount of rake that you charge and most poker rooms do this.
Summed up, the Action Poker rooms are not a bad choice and they are worth trying out for a number of reasons: good promotions if you choose partner wisely, excellent software and if you hail from the far east or otherwise have a liking for Asian card games then this is one of the few places where you will find what you are looking for.
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The Las Vegas From Home software (or LVFH for short) is used primarily by the rooms in the Action Poker network. It is a beautiful client and I wouldn’t be surprised if the recent growth of this network (it was almost dead only six months ago) is to a large degree due to their great software.
The lobby features a very large tabbed list in the style used by nearly all poker rooms. The fact that it is very large is, I think, good since it provides an excellent overview over what is in the end the most important part of any poker room: the games. Like most controls in the client, navigating the lists is a pleasant experience: the sound effects, mouse-over effects and effects when you make a selection are just right. The lobby doesn’t give you a whole lot of buttons to push but you have everything that you need: the games, support and the options, some info, cashier and buddy list/player search are in the main drop down menu.
It is, however, not the lobby that really makes this software great: it is the tables. As I often point out in software reviews, what I think is important is: how clearly can you percept what takes place in the game, how quickly and accurately can you take the action that you want to take, how does the software handle many tables, and, finally, is it aesthetically appealing? The LVFH client excels on all these criteria with one or two possible exceptions. I won’t go into the individual effects and functions since they all work so well but in my opinion, no other client manages to combine nice graphics with game perception and control as well as LVFH. One of the possible exceptions is the fact that you have to click “Raise Other” to be get a slider and the opportunity to type in a bet amount. However, this turns out to not be terribly disturbing not least because the controls, when they appear, work beautifully. The slider is smooth and you can move it quickly by clicking in the slider interval. If you want to type in an amount you simply click on the amount and type away: the old amount is already marked and disappears as you begin typing. If you mistype, then you run into a little bit of trouble as it is hard to mark the text up again but you don’t typically mistype very often and once you figure it is pretty quick to tap backspace a couple of times. Ok, the typing option has room for improvements but it’s a small thing that the slider works so well that you hardly need it (I usually type when the slider is hard to use). The other possible exception is that some of the buttons are kind smallish, but then again, I use a very high resolution and the graphics are very clear. Turn paging and window focus works perfectly. You see the players’ action only a short while afterwards but not many clients do retain this information so in comparison this is not something that really can count against LVFH. You see where the action is by a very visible but still discrete blinking of the background on which the screen name is displayed. The chat filter is simplistic: you can turn on and off dealer messages and chat but not set the detail level. Also, you can take notes about players – anything else would definitely have been a shortcoming.
The tournament tab has a useful extra feature that few other clients have: you have tabs for announces, registering, running and completed tournaments. This makes for a much cleaner interface with less confusing small text. All necessary information is displayed in the lists and to join a tournament you double click it to bring up its lobby. Nothing strange about the lobby: you can register and unregister, look at tables and so on. They could have added some extra features here such as a player search function and some more detailed tournament info (blind levels, breaks and so on). However, at the moment, it appears that only sit’n go tournaments are offered so I don’t know if these functions (which really only make sense in big tourneys) maybe exist for scheduled tournaments.
In summary, almost everything is great about the LVFH software and this alone is reason enough to check out the card rooms that use it. |
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