Why do you play on the site(s) you play on?

When I started playing online, several years ago, I played on partypoker for the most part. Back then it was much easier to deposit money, and very easy to withdraw. After a while though, the site for the most part became one big "lottery" draw. So did pokerstars. On eBay there were thousands of auctions for "systems" that claimed to expose how to beat partypoker's and pokerstars card generation. This information could also be found for free on several websites. This of course lead to what many of us see now on most of the sites, players that cannot wait to call a big raise and refuse to fold once connected.

I'd love to rant about the donkeys, and fish but will save that for another day. Bottom line, it is very difficult to play winning poker when you always have 5 or more players see every flop. I made my first $100 deposit back then and increased my bankroll to over $800. After that, I ran into a string of losses than pretty much made me believe that those "systems" were correct. Now I know a little better, but back then I did not have enough skill to protect my money.

I joined Poker.com to get away from the crowd and the "lottery" players. With the shut down to US players by sites like party, poker.com saw an influx of the "lottery" style players. Fortunately, for the most part, you can always find a table with only one or two of them. That is manageable, more like live poker. For MTT tournament play, poker.com may not offer the deepest fields or largest top money, but the quality of the play is as good as anywhere else. In addition, the cash and single table SNG's play are perfect for most players.

I must also let you know, no site can beat poker.com's freeroll structure. It start's $50 freerolls every 3 hours that any member can play, even if you never made a deposit. But it gets even better for real money players. Their point system is one of the easiest out there. Daily $1,000 freerolls, big $10,000 Sunday freerolls, and a monthly $50,000 freeroll are all easy to qualify for. Win some freeroll money, there is no play (point/rake) requirement to release your money. Just wait 7 days if you want to cash it out, otherwise you can use it right away. In addition, their bonus money is not hard to release. They actually are now called carbonpoker.com, but the original poker.com players still have their interface so did not have to change over.

I'd say that Poker.com has allowed me to properly work on my game. I still make my share of bad plays, but a lot less than I used to. The suck outs still ... well ... suck, but are within reason over time.

I have signed up for a few of those free money offers, most are for Absolute and Ultimate. I have accounts on many sites though most are empty and inactive. The one thing I noticed, with all that free money you can expect a lot of loose play. Maybe with my current skill level I could have made that free money work. I suggest that if you take advantage of any of those offers, play within your limits. Most of the sites make it hard to release bonus or freeroll money. You cannot just sit there trying to release funds, you will see too many flops and get stuck. Better to just work the money and worry about the other stuff if you can build up a decent bankroll.

As for the other sites,
FullTiltPoker.com seems to be pretty well balanced. Definitely has deep MTT's with good payouts. The cash tables have their share of "lottery" players, so do the SNG's. VIPpoker.com seems to have good action, and a good player can do well there. Problem is their software is not that great. They support browser play, and also have a download. The software is very resource intensive, so reacts slowly. If you multitable it may not be the right choice.