CircusPoker.com Review with Bonus Code and Download

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Circus Poker Room Review

Overview |
Interface |
Action |
Fish |
Bonuses |
Support

Circus Poker Overview

Circus aren’t one of the big names in online poker, but if you’re a regular attendee of casinos in the UK, it’s likely you’ll know the name. They operate 40 bricks-and-mortar gambling houses across the United Kingdom and have recently begun to extend their operations online. This includes a new online poker client, which makes its home on the iPoker network. Circus Poker is owned by the billion dollar Genting Group so you can be sure of its stability. Their poker software has also been independently tested for fairness.

There’s a good spread of games available at Circus, including everything that most everyone would want to play. No Limit, Pot Limit and Limit Hold‘em are all provided, alongside the increasingly popular Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo, in Limit and Pot Limit form. 7 Card Stud, 5 Card stud, and Razz round out the game selection. There’s no space for more exotic games, but the vast majority of players should be well catered for. In practice, it seems that most people need nothing more than a few No Limit Hold ‘em tables. When it comes to cash games, the vast majority of players are in the micro-low stakes NLHE contests. In fact, it’s tough to find anyone playing very high during the off-peak hours. Nothing much above £5/£10 gets any attention during the slower periods.

Sit & Gos are a different story, proving to be pretty popular all day long. There are Sit & Gos for many different games with lots of different formats, but the simple No Limit Hold ‘em tournaments are predictably the most popular. There are S&Gs of all types running throughout the day, with buy-ins as high as $200 + $15 the norm. There are usually one one or two of those active at any one point, but games up to $30 + $3 will be easy to get started. Most of the tournaments are run according to the 6-max format.

The scheduled tournaments cannot compete with their more immediate brethren, but there are plenty of reasons to get excited about the Circus Poker tournament calendar. There are a huge number of guarantees running all day long, with Circus boasting a total of $16 million in guaranteed tournaments every month. There are smaller guarantees starting every few minutes, from $750 to $8,000. Every evening during the week there are larger guaranteed events, ranging from $35k to $50k. The biggest prize pools are saved from the weekend, with a $150,000 guaranteed Saturday tournament and a show-stopping $250k Sunday contest.

CircusPoker.com Software Interface/Usability

If you’ve played on any of the many iPoker sites before, you’ll probably be familiar with this client. The sturdy Playtech software is an excellent platform on which to play some online poker, even if it doesn’t provide anything exciting or innovative.

A table down the left contains sections for Cash Games, Sit & Gos, Scheduled Tournaments, and other promotions. Clicking on any of these will cause them to drop down, displaying the various different games or tournament styles for you to choose from. Buttons along the top of the client allow you to filter between different betting structures, as well as more complicated filters. The table list itself is very standard, containing all the basic details. Sadly there’s none of the common extra info that helps with table selection. The flop % or average pot of every table cannot be seen, so you’ll be leaping in blind.

You can get a look at a game’s players and their stack sizes by selecting the table you want, but that will only help if you’re already familiar with the regular fish and sharks. The way in which that information is displayed depends upon which of two layout options you have selected. Two buttons in the top left of the client allow you to switch between having the information grow out of the table selection in the middle of the table list, or appear in right-side section, which stays permanently in place even when there’s no info to see.

If you’re serious about your poker, you ought to spend most of your time on the table. In contrast to the plain lobby, the simplicity of the tables on Circus Poker are what make them so good. When you’re under pressure and time is ticking away, you want an easy to use interface to help you make your move. The cards and chips are displayed particularly clearly and the selection of check boxes and the betting slider will be familiar to anyone with online poker experience. Circus also provides a series of buttons that set the betting slider to a specific amount relative to the pot size. You can press 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 pot, or all-in, to snap the slider into place. This is very hand time-saving mechanism which helps you keep your betting patterns as identical as possible.

Circus Poker Bonus Codes and Promotions

New players are in for a very nice surprise at Circus Poker. Anyone making their first deposit will have it matched by 200%, up to a total of $600. If you can find the funds to put in the maximum $300, you could have a total of $900 sitting in your account by the end of the bonus clearing process. There’s no code for this bonus, as it automatically activates on your first deposit. It will only work on your very first deposit, so don’t make a small cash injection to test the waters, as you’ll miss out on this great 200% up to $600 first deposit bonus.

If you do miss that initial bonus, then you’ll only have to wait a few weeks for your next boatload of free cash. Every month, there’s a new Loyalty Bonus available, to the tune of 100% up to $500. It works on your first deposit of the month, so keep an eye on the calendar when you’re thinking of adding some extra cash to your account.

Both of these bonuses clear in the same way and at the same rate. To unlock the free money, you need to be earning Circus Points. For every 500 of these you accumulate, $5 of the bonus cash is transferred to your account. Picking up points requires nothing more than playing poker. The rate at which you earn points is dependent on how much rake you pay and your VIP level. At the lowest level, those in the first VIP strata are earning 0.5 points for between $0.01 and $0.09 in rake. At the VIP 6 level, you can expect 1 point from the same rake. This progresses all the way up to $3.01 - $5.00, where a VIP 1 player would earn 15.3 points and a VIP 6 player, 34. Tournament players can also earn Circus Points. A VIP 1 player will acquire 18 points for $1 of tournament fees, while a VIP 6 user will get 35.

To increase your VIP level, you simply need to earn Circus Points. These are the point totals required to pass into the different VIP levels - VIP 1: 0; VIP 2: 1,500; VIP 3: 5,000; VIP 4: 10,000; VIP 5: 20,000; VIP 6: 50,000.