First Impressions of Bet365 Hold 'em Poker

Results: 1 hour played; up $4

Well, I have a couple observations from my first hour of play at Bet365. I played at a six-player $.25/$.50 limit hold 'em table. It was the loosest table I could find at that limit:

• Their software is a little buggy when you make a deposit. I attempted to deposit $200 into the poker room, but it went into the sports bet site. It wouldn't let me transfer it to the poker site nor would it let me make a withdrawal (my email address didn't match the one I registered ad Neteller).
  I ended up depositing an additional $200 into the poker site. Once I closed the client and went back in, I was able to transfer the first $200 into my poker account. It's a little frustrating because they only allow one free Neteller withdrawal every 28 days, so I'm going to leave the majority of my bankroll there for the time being.
  
• The play is much faster than any of the other sites I've played on. The cards are dealt much faster, and betting goes around the tables much faster. A couple times I felt pressured to make a decision before I was ready. Once I realized what was happening, I made a mental adjustment to prepare for my play a little sooner.
• There wasn't a large selection of games to choose from. At the level I was playing, there were two full rings and three 6-handed games. I don't know if this improves later in the day or not.
• Poker Tracker works on the Prima network. I'm finally able to see my stats for this session. I'll share the stats if anyone is interested, but one thing jumped out at me pretty quickly. According to Poker Tracker, I contributed to 41 raked pots (out of 65 played). Since Bet365 only counts hands raked at $.25 or above towards the bonus, I only logged 17 raked hands on Bet365. At this rate, it will take 59 hour of play to clear the bonus. If they all counted, it would take 24 hours of play time. If I'm going to do this in a reasonable amount of time, I'm going to have to move up in limits.
• The players here range from good to bad (even at the level I was playing). The skill range seemed very similar to what I used to see on Party Poker. I played with the fish and was more careful around the decent players.
  

I'll play some more this evening and post another recap then.

If you missed it, I added a link to Poker with WillWonka in the link section. I read through part of his blog this weekend, and liked what I saw. I'll be back in the future to read through some of his older posts.

posted by Kent @ 1:52 PM