Sportsbook Poker
Established in 1996, Sportsbook.com is a well established sportsbook, racebook and online casino operator. In 2006, Sportsbook Poker was launched and is now one of the fastest growing poker sites online. The poker room is part of the Cake Poker network, and is rather unusual in that it caters purely to US and Canadian players.
The Sportsbook software was created and developed by the Cake Poker team, a group of poker players who were looking to create a better online poker experience. Their practical understanding of what poker players need/want shows in the software’s user friendly and highly functional design. With less emphasis on superficial appeal, the software focuses on providing super smooth and fast game play, plenty of customization options, and useful features including extensive table statistics, instant hand histories, player notes, and multi-table functionality up to ten tables.
Sportsbook offers some pretty solid tournament action. Tournaments are offered in all the poker games found on the site, and players can choose from Multi-table, Sit & Go, & Heads-up tournaments in various Freeze-out, Re-buy and Shoot-out formats. In addition to a wide selection of daily guaranteed tournaments, Sportsbook also holds satellites to live events, cash game qualifiers, and some more unique bounty style tournaments where each time you knock out a player you collect their bounty.
Game selection at Sportsbook is similar to that found in most poker rooms. All variations of Texas Holdem, Omaha, and Seven Card Stud are on offer, varying between No-Limit, Pot-Limit and Fixed-Limit. As usual, most of the action is to be found around the small to medium stake Holdem games, but during peak hours you can pretty find decent action at any limit and for any game.
Sportsbook Poker is also known to have some of the loosest and juiciest cash table games on the internet. The site experiences a lot of crossover traffic from their sportsbook and casino sites, filling the tables with ridiculous amounts of inexperienced and basically horrible poker players. With all the easy fish, more experienced players can rack up some hefty winnings in no time, and beginners can play against players mostly at the same skill level.
The Cake Poker network has continued to grow rapidly, and their player traffic has finally broken into the top ten poker traffic network/sites, with peak volumes at around 2000 ring game players (May 2009). Sportsbook is the 3rd largest US player friendly site after Pokerstars & Full Tilt Poker. Peak hours tend to be around 7pm PT, where you’ll find almost any game at any level well populated with plenty of action.
Customer support at Sportsbook Poker is excellent and available 24/7. In addition to the standard e-mail and phone support, Sportsbook Poker also provides a Live Chat option, exceeding what is offered at most smaller poker sites online. Email response times are exceptional, with most inquiries responded to within 1 to 2 hours; their Phone and Live Chat operators are knowledgeable and provide comprehensive and clear answers to your questions.
Sportsbook has done an excellent job with its poker room, which has quickly gained a reputation amongst players as a trustworthy, highly reliable and enjoyable site to play on. Throw in a good volume of fish, some decent action, and you’ve got a poker room worth checking out!
