EmpirePoker Review and Information

The online poker room, EmpirePoker.com, is the world's largest poker room, advertising over 40,000 players online actively playing. This is because EmpirePoker is actually a "skin" of PartyPoker. They share the same poker room, but have different marketing entities promoting each poker room differently. So what that means is EmpirePoker shares all the same action, players, and tables with PartyPoker. The only difference between the two is each poker room has individual promotions and tournaments that are restricted to just their members.

So take advantage of both great poker rooms and sign up to both!  Sign-up for EmpirePoker Now!

Like PartyPoker, EmpirePoker is licenced and regulated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, is easy, safe and secure, offers prompt payouts and lots of games (Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo) at many different limits. You may make your deposit via money transfer, wire transfer, Neteller, FirePay, Visa, MasterCard, EmpirePoker's own affiliate IGM-Pay/Pay-Pro, or Citadel Commerce, so you have plenty of options.

EmpirePoker's cashouts can be via check, IGM-PAY, which performs a direct deposit into your checking or savings account, or Neteller. EmpirePoker does not charge for deposits or withdrawals, but the financial service (ie - your credit card) may charge you service fees.

So depositing and withdrawing is very quick and simple. I personally make my deposit with my Visa debit card and make my withdrawals using IGM-Pay, directly depositing back into that same checking account.

So EmpirePoker.com offers Limit, Pot-Limit, and No-Limit Texas Hold'em games. The stakes for pot-limit and no-limit range from a $25 max buy-in, up to $200. The limit Texas hold'em games have a range of $0.5/1 up to $30/60, with plenty of players at just about all stakes.

 

Software Interface/Usability

EmpirePoker.com's software is very easy to use and offers some nice features. EmpirePoker's interface is identical to PartyPoker's, except the color scheme is different (blue!). In the Lobby, it's very easy to find the game and stakes you are looking for. They have a "Hide Full Tables" option so you can choose to see just the tables that have available spots, or all tables. You can also sort the list by the size of the average pot, which is very important in your table selection strategy.

The table game interface is solid. Although not the prettiest to look at, the software is very stable and has some nice features, such as right clicking on your opponent and taking notes, and right clicking on yourself and seeing your session's statistics. When you take notes on an opponent, a little yellow sticky note appears on the corner of your opponent. If you sit down at a table, and some of your opponents have that yellow sticky note, then you know you've played with them before and have notes on them. Unfortunately, you must go through the extra step right-clicking on the opponent to read your notes. The statistics is also a nice feature, but the statistics only report for your current session, and you do not have control of keeping those statistics averaged over several sessions.

Betting is very easy on the no limit tables, there is a slider that you can use or a text box to type in your bet. The bet amounts and pot amounts show the actual dollar amounts under the chips so it is very easy to see the dollar amounts and calculate your odds.

There are three action buttons during play - fold, check/call, and bet/raise buttons. The buttons change depending on the acion, but I do not like how the check and call buttons share the same placement. On one occasion, I had meant to check my hand, not noticing that the player right before me placed a huge bet. So, instead of checking, I actually called his bet. Dumb move on my part, but it can happen so be careful (although this might have happened to me at PartyPoker and not EmpirePoker...can't recall!)

EmpirePoker does lack a good buddy finder (or fish finder). It would be nice to maintain a list of players to keep an eye on, and have EmpirePoker tell you what tables they are playing on. EmpirePoker's Buddy List will inform you if a certain player is logged in, but not where they are at. Considering the multitude of tables at Party, it's very difficult to target your fish.

EmpirePoker, like many other poker rooms, offers your hand histories, but you can only request up to 100 hands at a time, and they are emailed to you.

Overall, We are pleased with the EmpirePoker.com software interface and usability. I'm very comfortable with the software and have been using it for a quite some time now.

 

Poker Room Action

Since EmpirePoker.com is the largest poker room in the world, there is always plenty of action at just about all the stakes in all the games. EmpirePoker is constantly running SnG's (10 Player Sit-N-Go Tournaments) and ring games, there is no end to the action. You can always find a seat to complete a full game, and if you don't like your table, it's very easy to leave and find another table immediately. EmpirePoker (and PartyPoker) has the most action anywhere. If you checked out the lobby screenshot above, you'll see there are 57,307 players online playing across 7,528 tables!

 

Customer and Technical Support

I haven't had any major issues with EmpirePoker, so I haven't had to use their support very often. The cashouts have been easy and prompt. EmpirePoker's support staff is always vigilantly battling online collusion efforts, tracking any player trends and IP addresses that are suspicious. After I signed up to EmpirePoker, I actually received a phone call at my house because I was already a member of PartyPoker, so they just confirmed my information. This effort makes me feel very comfortable playing at EmpirePoker. I know that one person cannot be playing two spots on my table, because EmpirePoker has the technology to ban that. The best kind of support is when you don't need any.

 

Ease of Game, Ease of Making Money, Fish Rating

I believe EmpirePoker (and PartyPoker) has the most fish than any other online poker room. And not just because it has the most players, but I think the percentage of fish to the rest of the population is very high. PartyPoker and EmpirePoker are recruiting new players at an incredible rate. And most of them suck!

Of course with such amateurish play, you can plan on taking some bad beats and swings, but overall it's been a very consistent money maker for me.

 

Bonuses and Promotions

EmpirePoker.com offers the standard initial deposit bonuses - either $25 flat or 20% of your initial deposit, up to $100.

However, EmpirePoker also offers occasional reload bonuses if your account goes idle for a while. EmpirePoker will normally email you with a bonus offer to try to regain your action. Check out our EmpirePoker and PartyPoker Bonus System to learn more about taking advantage of reload bonuses.

In addition to the initial deposit bonuses, and occasional reload bonuses, EmpirePoker also offers FreeRoll events and other nice amenities to its loyal players. EmpirePoker has started a VIP section, allowing players to collect frequent player points, and has routine FreeRoll tournaments offering up nice prizes to it's players. These are offerings that PartyPoker DOES NOT OFFER, and are exclusive to EmpirePoker!


Join EmpirePoker.com Today!

Overall Rating: 6.3