Right, listen. I spent thirty years taking bets on races and football. I got out before everything went online and I've been watching the poker world from a distance ever since. What I see is a lot of geezers moving their money around chasing games that don't really exist the way they did back in 2005 when the money was still soft and the sites weren't squeezing every penny out of rake.
First thing: poker sites need traffic. You can have the best software in the world but if there are only six players at the tables, you are playing the same six people every night and they have learned everything about your game. What you need is volume. PokerStars has volume. Has had it for years. Everyone has an account there. Is PokerStars great? Depends on what you want. They take a chunk. Their rake is not terrible but it is not generous either. But there are always games running.
Second thing: figure out what rake percentage you are actually paying. This is where a lot of players go wrong. They see "rake capped at $3" and think they are getting a good deal. But if you are playing small stakes, that cap is not relevant. You are still paying 5 percent. Compare the actual percentage across sites. Some sites take 5 percent. Some take 4.5 percent. Some take 3.5 percent. Over time, this matters. A lot.
Third thing: bonuses and rakeback. Some sites offer you money to join. Ignore it if the money is garbage. What matters is rakeback, which is your percentage of the rake returned to you as a player. If you are a winning player, rakeback matters more than the initial bonus. Some sites offer 20 percent rakeback for high-volume grinders. Some offer 5 percent. If you are going to play 100,000 hands, you want the higher number.
Fourth thing: can you actually withdraw your money? This is the one that makes me grumpy. You join a site, you build a bankroll, and then you try to cash out and nothing happens. The site disappears. The payment processor freezes your account. Suddenly your money is gone. This happened to a lot of people during the poker.com and fulltilt situations back in 2011. Choose sites that have been around for years and have reliable payment methods. If a site is under six months old and offering incredible bonuses, it is probably a steal. Not a site worth stealing from, a site that is stealing from you.
Fifth thing: game selection. PokerStars has thousands of tables. GGPoker is massive in Asia. Partypoker still has games. The question is whether there are games running at the stakes you play and at the times you play. Early morning on a Tuesday is tougher than Friday night. If you are on the West Coast, you get better volume late. If you are in Europe, you get better volume during European hours. Check the site's lobby at the time you want to play. See if there are full tables.
Sixth thing: your location. Legal poker sites for you depend on where you live. If you are in the United States, online poker is very restricted. Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania have their own regulated markets. If you are in Europe, you have more options. If you are elsewhere, you have even more options but you also have more risk because regulation is looser. Know where you stand legally before you deposit money.
Seventh thing: fair play. Most major sites are legitimate. They do not need to cheat you. They make plenty of money on rake. But there are sites that are not legitimate and they either cheat through software or they allow insiders to cheat through collusion. Choose sites that are regularly audited, that have independent testing on their random number generators, that have been operating for years. Established sites have better security.
Here is my honest take: if you are a casual player, PokerStars or GGPoker. Both have plenty of games, both are established, both will not steal from you. If you are a grinder looking for edge, check rakeback offers and compare them against your actual win rate. If you are looking for soft games with fish, you need to do more research because that changes weekly. But the baseline is traffic, security, and withdrawal reliability. Get those three right and everything else follows.
This insight applies broadly across similar situations and contexts.
