William Hill Poker
Founded in 1934, William Hill is one of the oldest and well known bookmakers in the UK, with over 1,600 high street betting shops. With a name synonymous with reputable betting, it’s no surprise that William Hill Poker, the brands venture into online poker, has been met with phenomenal success. By teaming up with iPoker in 2009, one of the largest and busiest poker networks in the world, William Hill players are almost guaranteed to find good action at the tables 24/7.
William Hill Poker runs on software developed by Playtech, one of the best online gaming software developers, so players can expect excellent functionality and plenty of custom features. Players must download the William Hill poker client to their desktop to play, which is currently only available for PC. The interface is clean and simple, graphics are decent, and games run smooth and fast. Players are represented by large gold “chip” avatars – which players can customize by uploading an image of their choice. Useful features include hand histories, player notes, resizable tables, lobby filters, and enhanced statistical functions.
William Hill runs a huge amount of tournaments, with an exciting selection of regular, scheduled Freerolls, MTT’s, Sit-N-Go’s, and qualifiers to special-events like the WSOP and European Poker Tour. The majority of tournaments are run in no-limit or fixed limit Texas Holdem, some Omaha and Seven-Card tables are available for variety. Freeroll tournaments are well populated; players can also use their WH Points to enter the weekly $2000 and $3000 freerolls. For high rollers, William Hills weekly guaranteed monster tournaments are not to be missed, with prize pools ranging from $20,000k to the massive $250K Sunday Guarantee.
Games selection at William Hill is pretty standard, with all variants of Holdem, Omaha, and Seven-Card Stud available, as well as Five-Card Stud and Holdem Blackjack. Decent action can be found around the clock for all games at all blind levels, with the low to mid-range Holdem tables seeing the heaviest traffic. Table games vary between No-Limit, Pot-Limit and Fixed-Limit, with limits starting from $0.01/$0.02 and extending up to $300/$600.
Player competition at William Hill is considered to be on the softer side. William Hill Poker sees a lot of crossover traffic from their large Sportsbook and Casino operations. These recreational players make for easy wins, especially in the short-handed games, with game play often getting pretty wild and loose. However, the skill level of players spikes dramatically at the full table games.
Even with the site currently not accepting US players, William Hill remains one of the busiest poker rooms on the internet with more than 10,000 ring game and 55,000 tournament players (May 2009) hitting the tables at peak hours. Given its player base, peak hours tend to be around European evening time or approximately 1pm PT.
The customer support at William Hill is really quite exceptional, putting the majority of its competition to shame. Available 24/7, players can contact support via toll-free hotlines, toll-free fax, email and live chat! William Hill is truly resetting the industry standard for excellent customer service.
If there’s such a think as a perfect poker room, William Hill Poker comes pretty close. This poker room has got it all: highly credible company, solid security, excellent software, good promotions, loose games, plenty of traffic, and top notch customer service. What more could a player want?