| Online Poker Room Review |
| World Poker Exchange is a pretty interesting place that claims to bet 'Your home for everything poker'. The room is operated by World Sports Exchange which is a large and old (1996) online sportsbook and it is a part of the Power Network. It is definitely one of the more interesting partners in this network. Now, the statement about the place being your 'home for everything poker' is of course not true since Pokerator.com is :) but nevertheless there is a lot of interesting things here and they appear to be promoting the poker room and their web site rather aggressively so it is likely that it will grow in the future – or at least contribute well to the growth of the Power Network. In addition to the poker room and the general poker content there is also a sports book here - everything, I should add, is in a setting with lightly dressed girls (no outright porn though - more like lightly dressed models). There is quite a bit of promotional and special events including the 2005 London Open which will have at least a $2 million prize pool. There is also a poker school that is a arranged together with FHM.com (a Tribeca room) and the ten top ranking players will face off in a $20000 event. This event and, it seems, some other events are broadcasted on TV. Support is excellent; you have online material as well as all contact options: email, phone and live chat. Promotions are decent, not so much because they have a lot of cash bonuses but more because they have a lot of additional events going on. |
| Poker Network |
| The Power Network has a rather low volume of traffic but around peak hours there is an acceptable range of limits going and traffic appears to be growing. The partners in the network are rather diverse in design and web site content but they share the cashier function which is a good thing, the bigger the better when it comes to handling money – even if your poker room would default the shared cashier will still be there. The True Money Games poker rooms appears to be an exception though, they handle financial transactions themselves. There is also a shared support function but it is not used by all partners. The level of promotions varies quite a bit between the partners, some have none and some even have a rake-back. However, even if no promotions are listed all partners still participate in network promotional tournaments which are many and rather good. In particular, their $10,000 freeroll at the end of the month is noteworthy. If you are looking for communities and a lot of content, this is not where you will find it. Download can be very problematic if you run an Internet security program such as Norton. |
| Poker platform |
The MicroPower software is used by the poker rooms in the Power Poker Network. The lobby looks good and you have a good overview in the typical tabbed list view with an information panel on the right hand side. The list can be sorted according to any of the column values and you have most information available in the list. The is a semi-drop down main menu where some of the entries work like buttons and other produce a sub menu. This works well however and you have access to all the features collected in one place here in a convenient way. You also have a higher level of control than in most poker rooms: a selection between “Main menu”, “Account tools” and “Play Poker”. This is good since it allows for the inclusion of quite a bit of functionality and information without making the interface cluttered. The main menu gives you access to some web information (a web reader is launched). The account tools let you customize your settings, access the cashier functions, change your info and request hand histories. Play Poker, not surprisingly, brings you to the list of games. The window doesn’t have the large bar at the top of the window but on the other hand you can drag the window by clicking anywhere within it (except clickable elements such as buttons of course). The arrangement of the buttons appears to differ between the rooms that use this software but the functionality appears to be rather constant.
If you select the “Tournaments” button you are given a further choice between single- and multi table tourneys. Single table tournaments are all sit’n’go and you get most of the information you could ask for in the list and in the information panel when you select a tournament. You register for sit’n’go tournaments by launching them and then sitting in at a free seat. The tournament then starts when all seats are taken. You can see who is seated and, if the tournament is going, the amounts of chips that they command. Pay-outs are only displayed in percentages of the prize pool which is, I think, a bit unnecessary: it would have been easy to also display the amounts. For the multi-table tournaments you get an appropriate level of information in the list and to register and get more info you have to launch the tournament’s lobby. The lobby could have contained a great deal of more information such as blind levels, breaks and so on. You can however see a list of tables, a list of players and a list of players for the selected table. You can also watch a table by double clicking it. You don’t launch a table by double clicking a player but you do position the table list cursor at the table at which the player sits. This is maybe even better than actually launching the tables.
The graphics are not great but they work and the controls are not bad at all. The sound effects are good and focus passing is almost perfect except that it shifts focus to table sometime before it’s your turn to act. This becomes extremely irritating if you are sitting out to do something else with your computer: the tables come flying from time to time even though your are not participating in the game. The controls are a bit small but they are so well designed that this is not a big issue in any case. The slider is not as good as it could have been. You can’t quickly position it be clicking in the interval but the type-in option works very well with bet amounts updating dynamically in the buttons. You can access the settings from a button in the top left hand corner of the screen and you can select whether you want to view chat (you can set levels), player notes or statistics. There are ad banners at the table which I think is not a big problem really. They occupy the space where the controls are and they disappear whenever any control needs to be displayed.
The MicroPower client is very good in my opinion although they should work a little bit on the focus shifting between the tables. Usually poker rooms fail here by not passing focus often enough but here it is done too much. |
)
)
