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February 4th, 2012 |
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February 4th, 2012 |
Poker Room Review:
Royal Vegas Poker is an intriguing name for a poker room. Although there is no royalty in Las Vegas, perhaps the name can be viewed as the kind of eclectic kitsch only possible in Vegas. The online poker room it self is a mish mash of good and bad. There is no royal treatment in a noble flawless environment. There is however action crazy Vegas style, and lots of it.
To try to get a piece of this action you are offered a 100% first deposit bonus up to $100 with simplistic clearing requirements. A number of famous poker personalities take part in Royal Vegas Poker, best known are: Lou Krieger (the host), Bob "The Coach" Ciaffone and Mike Cappelletti. Royal Vegas Poker is the biggest room in the Prima Network.
The gaming variation at Royal Vegas Poker is good and deviates a bit from the main stream. Texas Hold’em is the backbone of any poker site. Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, and Seven Card Stud is also offered. There is no low or high-low version of Seven Card Stud though. Instead Five Card Stud is available. There are a big number of shorthanded six player tables. Royal Vegas Poker also boosts with a good volume of pot- and no limit games, at least for the pot- and no limit Hold’em players.
In general there is a good selection of games. Since there are a lot of players on the site, there are a lot of tables. There are comparatively many games all the way from the micro stakes up to the high stakes areas. Here the micro limits are: $0.05/$0.10 and high stakes: $100/$200.
Royal Vegas Poker actually has games going on at the higher limits. Some poker rooms offer really high limits, with a game running once every month or so! For most of us, the availability of high stakes games is not our main concern when choosing a poker site to play at. We could however appreciate that the limits in between also gets frequented, and they do.
Royal Vegas Poker runs a myriad of different tournaments. The traffic is about as high or slightly higher at the tournaments lobby than at the ring game section. There is a good span in the regular tournaments, something for most tastes and wallets: $1 + $0 NL Hold’em Freezeout, $40 + $4 Omaha H/L Fixed, $200 + $15 NL Freezeout. As far as the satellites go, they show style by running specialized satellites for smaller and different WSOP events as well. The Sit & Go’s are also run well. To highlight one area: the heads up matches also includes 4 to 16 player shootouts.
Another area that deserves a special mention (well highlighted by Royal Vegas Poker themselves) is the $5000 Expert Series. Apart from monetary prizes, bounty prizes in this tournament include signed t-shirts and books. In total $1,000,000 in prizes are guaranteed weekly.
If you have tried Royal Vegas Poker or another poker room in the Prima Network with the same software (from Microgaming) before, then you will be in for a positive surprise. The software has improved faster than their competitors. The interface is still not top notch. Continuous upgrades has removed the real annoyances, most importantly the game speed is now on level with most other rooms. Somehow though, they do not seem to have given the graphics an overhaul yet. The lobby is quite smart and easy to use, although a bit sprawling with all the choices that are given.
Royal Vegas Poker has a customized version of the Microgaming software. The player base is shared within the Prima Poker Network and so is the software platform. To this each poker room can choose which elements should be available and if any special function should be added. Royal Vegas Poker runs a basic version for game play purposes. Even though there are no disturbing avatars, Royal Vegas Poker still has some way to go achieve a clean interface. Two nice features are mini-view tables and oversized chat boxes. Players can choose to minimize the tables making it easy to fit loads of tables also on small screens. A different choice is to move the chat box to the side of the tables, the large chatbox makes it easy to track the game play without keeping full focus at all times. There is also a quick start function: if you want to skip the step of skimming through all the tables with their high viewed flop percentages!
Table (click to enlarge)
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Lobby (click to enlarge)
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The best thing with the games at Royal Vegas Poker is not how many there are, but how loose they are. There are lots and lots of games with viewed flop percentages around the 40-ies and 50-ies. Apart from the looseness indicated by these numbers, the games also tend to be aggressive. In other words: lots of fun juicy action.
Royal Vegas Poker has experimented a lot with their promotions. They are still creative when it comes to special deals and events. Rewarding continuous play is done with a generously sized leader board where money trickles down far better than in most poker room’s deals. Regarding the signup bonus however Royal Vegas Poker has found a straight forward deal works best.
Royal Vegas Poker’s signup bonus is a perfect match up to a maximum of $100. Make a first deposit of $100 and you receive a $100 bonus. You get the bonus added to your account within 24 hours of depositing. This money is there to gamble with. In order to cash out a raked hand requirement has to be met. The requirement is likewise candid; you must play 10 raked hands for each $1 in bonus money. You are credited with a "raked hand" when you get dealt cards in a hand and the pot is raked at a minimum of 25 cents. This means that if you deposit $100 or more then you have to play 1,000 raked hands before the bonus money is withdrawable. The bonus is released in one lump sum. If you attempt to withdraw without meeting the raked hands requirements both your deposit and bonus will be credited back to your poker account. Withdraw once again before meeting the requirements and the bonus is forfeited. This special clause is added since the bonus money is accredited the account immediately. The signup bonus is apart from this latest fine print easy to grasp. There is no expiration date to complete the signup bonus.
There are other promotions as well, and they come in all shapes and sizes. The freerolls at Royal Vegas Poker are good. There are daily well sized, good value daily freerolls (four with a prize pool of $1000), a weekly $5000 freeroll, and also sporadic larger ones. The freerolls with prize pools above $200 has moderate raked hand requirements. There is a progressive bad beat jackpot and "magic hands". For players who are rather active, there is a larger chance to cash in on the $40,000 Poker Point Challenge running every month. You need to be one of the top 1500 "point" earners to be eligible for the share of the $40,000 in prizes. To get rakeback from a weekdays play, be one of the top 100 "point" earners for that weekday.
The rake at Royal Vegas Poker is mostly on par with the industry norm. A 10% fee is taken for tournaments with a buy-in below $100, and 5% is raked from the ring games with the largest cap at $3. One example of a slightly less attractive policy is a cap of $1.50 for fixed limit games up to $1/$2 (most sites cap at $1 on this level). Check here for a complete rake table for Royal Vegas Poker.
There is a decent FAQ in the lobby for basic questions, when it is not enough there is email or the telephone. A 24/7 telephone service (toll free from the US and a number of other countries) is helpful and reassuring when something is bugging you. The security gets full points: the room has been around without complaints a long while, it is part of a network where the other rooms shares this aspect, and the mother company of Royal Vegas Poker (The Fortune Group) is a well established online casino company.
