Poker Moth

I’ve been playing a  lot on iPoker of late. I’ve had a Titan account for about a year now, but I’ve never really spent much time there until recently. However, I’ve decided to build the old bankroll with some bonuswhoring, and these days, that means playing on lots of iPoker skins. And I have some THOUGHTS on the software. Random THOUGHTS. In no particular order…

1. The site has the most censorious chatbox I’ve ever seen. “Moron” is verboten. I think “Idiot” might be too. On the other hand, I’ve just seen a player sit down on my table called “CuntOfSpades”. Bit odd.

2. iPoker uses rubbish avatars. Oh, look, I can be a cowboy! Or a businessman! Or a mobster! What fun. Now, obviously, anyone with sense is going to disable these ridiculous gewgaws immediately, but other people will still be able to see them, even if you can’t. So make sure you set your avatar to the “slutty woman in low-cut dress” setting. I’ve lost count of the number of times that some knuckle-dragging moron has cackhandedly tried to bluff me off a pot and then  called me a bitch when I’ve checkraised them. Poker-transvestitism can be very profitable.

3. The hand history browser is just plain weird; halfway between a graphical interface and a text one, but with none of the benefits of either. Hell, Betfair might only be able to open a Notepad document, as if it were 1988 or something, but at least you can copy the damn text out of Notepad. POP FACT! iPoker is the third largest poker network in the world behind Stars and Tilt. And yet they can’t even manage a functional hand history browser. And that’s not all…

4. Table resizing. You can’t do it. Srsly. You can have your tables at a standard size, or you can opt for a minimised view. Now, this isn’t that uncommon; Cryptologic used to work in a similar fashion, for instance. What makes iPoker special is that switching from full size tables to the minimised view causes the software to have a seizure, especially is you have more than one table open. It’s particularly catastrophic if you’ve been playing for a while, as the software feels the need to reload the entire contents of the chat box before it will et you play again, for reasons that are completely unfathomable. You may as well go and put the kettle on while it tries to sort itself out.Again, given the size of the network, this is inexcusable.

5. Otherwise… it’s a half-decent poker network. There are a lot of bad players out ther (hello, William Hill!), the Omaha tables are usually pretty busy (Stud, not so much), and they have good tournaments with a reasonably friendly blind structure. And if you’re bonuswhoring, there are a ton of skins with a ton of decent bonuses to chase.

Oh, and it’s rigged, obviously. I know this because someone told me so.