When it comes to playing poker online where you store your money is about as important to bankroll management as the number of total buy-ins you have. On this page you’ll find warnings and historical information related to online poker sites. It is our goal to inform readers on the necessary information required to make an educated decision about which poker sites to patronise.
Current Poker Site Warnings
Online Poker Sites is operated by contributors and does not earn a dime from making these posts. Although we don’t have the staff to cover all issues related to poker sites, we’ll do our best to cover as many warnings possible in the section below.
Merge Poker Warning – 17 January 2012 – Merge Gaming Remains Silent on Poker Cheating Scandal
What appears to be an obvious cheating and collusion ring operated by known poker professional Art Beauchamp (AJB4) has been discovered on the Merge Poker Network – the host of many poker sites such as Carbon Poker, Lock Poker, RPM Poker, G88, Hero Poker etc. When the cheating was first reported it took Merge just 12-hours to conclude nothing had occurred. Since then, a couple dozen charts and graphs have been posted on 2+2 where near irrefutable evidence has been presented. Does Merge stand to benefit financially from the cheating that’s occurred? Will they do the right thing? Can we even get a response? Be sure the click the link above and read the full report.
Bodog Poker Warning – 04 December 2011 – Bodog Circumvents Insider Cheating Detection
In a move Bodog claims is designed to increase net depositing players and their profits, their company rolled out the internet’s first ever “we can cheat and you’d never detect it” online poker room. Bodog’s similarities to Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker where millions were stolen via insider cheating are worth discussing at this point.
Along the same topic, this anonymous response to forum discussion was sent to us by a member of the online poker industry.
BetOnline Poker Warning – 24 November 2011 – Serious BetOnline Poker Issues
This is an updated post: There are serious issues anyone considering using the BetOnline poker room should know about. For example their site does not prevent collusion, multi-accounting, is unregulated, has atrocious customer support and until recently had outstanding complaints involving seized player balances. As a result BetOnline was added to our blacklist. Although the site still has many issues, management recently reversed a decision to confiscate $65,000 from a player. With signs they are starting to take things seriously, we have removed BetOnline from our blacklist and are leaving this here as a warning. We advise players to be very careful when dealing with BetOnline poker.
For additional gambling news and warnings refer to Sports Betting Sites and also be to sure to scroll down further on this page to read our blacklist.
Online Poker News
In the section below we cover current news topics that are not warnings but rather updates to keep players informed about poker site happenings that affect poker players.
Everleaf Gaming Changes – 06 December 2011 – Everleaf Gaming Blocks Winning Players
The tag line about is a bit deceptive, it is only players winning 750 EUR in a week that are blocked from playing tables where players are rated much lower than them. The report is still a very interesting read.
US Poker Site Returns – 11 October 2011 – Americas CardRoom Reopens
One of the many online poker sites that closed after a 2006 change in US laws was Americas CardRoom. One of the oldest and at the time most trust online poker sites has returned from the muck, and is once again in business.
Blacklisted Poker Sites
Poker players are always going to play wherever the games are soft; that’s a key statement behind our blacklist. If a poker site treats their players poorly, has cashout delays, etc. we’ll report and allow each player to evaluate the situation themselves. There are however times where the risk of being stiffed or cheated is so high no one in their right mind should be playing at those poker sites… those are the sites included below on our Online Poker Site Blacklist.
Oddsmaker.com, OddsPoker.com and BetonUSA.com Blacklisted: Oddsmaker and BetonUSA are flagship sites of Futurebet, also known as IGS and now operating as Gametech Solutions. This is a toxic company that has robbed on the online poker community for millions, for details please read our Futurebet and Gametech Solutions Warning.
Other poker sites either associated or previously associated with Futurebet or Gametech Solutions include BetRice, CasinoPolo, FeltStars, Papasino, PokerEon, PokerOne, PokerSyndicate, PokerFaceEnt, Prosbet, and Vegas24. These sites should also be avoided.
Absolute Poker Blacklisted: Now operating at absolutepoker.eu, this poker site was involved in insider cheating and cover ups. Their founders were recently indicted in the United States on multiple charges including money laundering and bank fraud. To make matters more serious they also are in gross slow pay on tens of millions of dollars in requested withdrawals.
Ultimate Bet (UB) Blacklisted: Now operating at ubpoker.eu this is another poker site that was involved in insider cheating and cover ups. Their management was also recently indicted on numerous charges including money laundering and bank fraud, and their company is also grossly late paying poker players who requested withdrawal of their account balances.
World Sports Exchange (WSEX.com) Blacklisted as of June 2011 WSEX.com owes a reported £295,000 in requested player withdrawals; many players have been waiting for 16 months and are now losing hope of ever being paid. In addition on December 16, 2010 the Antigua and Barbuda Financial Services Regulatory Services Commission posted notice WSEX.com is no longer licensed to operate out of Antigua. Once a highly reputable company they are now a member of the Online Poker Site’s blacklist. For more details about their history see our page written by Pokeraddict on The Rise and Fall of WSEX.com.
Please Note: All poker sites listed on this blacklist report should be avoided at all costs.
Merge Poker Network on Yellow List
We don’t actually have a caution list here at OPS but if we did Merge Poker Network would be on it. Merge has the subject of a few past OPS warnings including slow payouts. To be clear, for poker players in the UK this in our opinion is not a good network to patronise. Oddspoker.com which is on our blacklist is part of this network, as are a plethora of rogue sportsbooks including SBG Global’s PokerHost.com, several sportsbook.com brands and even worse many additional FutureBet Skins. For a list of all sites on this network refer to PokerScout.com’s Merge Poker page.
The reason people play at Merge sites, other than not knowing any better, is because they are in the US. Due to the US government shutting down Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, and PokerStars leaving the US market there are simply no reputable places left in the US to play online poker. So our advice is this: If you live outside the US avoid Merge all together. If you are in the US, stick to playing at their flagship site Carbon Poker which a bit more reputable than the others. This site has strong affiliate support which is evident by sites such this one on Carbon Poker, meaning some affiliates have made entire websites about them.
Although good affiliate support is rarely good news for players, in this case it’s probably an exception. This is because their affiliate manager Atil Singh is present on every major player and every major affiliate forum resolving complaints. He’s a good guy and catches a lot of heat from us in warnings only because of his company’s Merge Network ties. I do believe Carbon is a step up from the rest, but again this is a site for US players. For players outside the US there are so many far better options that it seems silly to use a site on the same network as companies like Oddsmaker, SBG Global, and Sportsbook.com which are not reputable companies. From the US if you’re going to play on Merge poker sites stick to Carbon Poker, or maybe Lock Poker. These two at least communication on forums.
Failed Poker Sites
Dozens of Online Poker Sites have come and gone since the first ever hand of online poker was dealt in a $3/$6 Fixed Limit Texas Holdem game on 1 January 1998 at PlanetPoker.com. We’ve added a new section to our website to remember those poker sites no longer with us, some of them were sad to see go whilst others we toasted their demise, you can find them all in The Poker Site Muck.
Recommended Online Poker Sites
Rather than giving an opinion we encourage you to read our report How Online Poker is Regulated. After reading this report you should be well equipped to research online poker sites on you own and then make a safe and informed decision. We will note, in our opinion there are a fair number of online poker sites on the net that offer safe and well regulated games; we’ll leave it to you to make that decision for yourself.
Reporting Standards and Response
Contact Information: To give feedback on any of our site’s published articles email jim at (our domain name).
To Poker Operators: If you represent an online poker site and wish to publicly respond to an article we’ve published, we will gladly publish your response so long as it meets one of the following criteria:
- It is a unique non-template direct response to an article we have published. If so we will include your response in full on our website.
- It is an official response already posted elsewhere on the web. In this case please do not rehash it in a response to us, but rather write us a short response to publish that includes a link to your company’s official statement.
Please contact us from a @yourpokersitename.com or other official email address. We will send you back an email to confirm the response is legitimate prior to posting it on our website.
Archived Poker Warnings
Below are older posts no longer posing an immediate risk, but still working linking to.
Full Tilt Archives
We stopped following the Full Tilt story once the reporting became too much to handle. The gist is on June 2, 2011 we were the first website to issue a Full Tilt Poker Bankruptcy Warning. A few weeks later Full Tilt Poker license was suspended with no notice and they were taken offline. We then started to cover Full Tilt Sold reports but realized this was just FTP posturing and gave up. In any case it does look like they will be sold or are sold or something of that sort. We are not covering this story however, and will focus only on warnings and news about poker sites actually online and operating.
Betfair Archives
As a major fan of Betfair for years, this was a tough post to make. However, as our website is about unbiased poker information it was our responsibility to issue this Befair.com warning.
