ESPN Poker Club Overview
The ESPN Poker Club has been around for years, providing excellent poker coverage, reporting, opinion columns and promotions. They've even offered a free-play online poker room for dedicated fans since 2005, although the service was a bit lacking. Realizing that the software they were running was rather out-dated and that their pool of players was anything but large, the ESPN Poker Club recently teamed up with PokerStars.net to remedy both problems, and the changes have resulted in an outstanding play-money poker experience.
PokerStars is without question one of the biggest names in the business, and so they bring a lot to the table with the ESPN Poker Club partnership. Firstly, being the online poker giant that they are, they have a lot of players, and so people using the ESPN Poker Club will now have access to more games, tables and opponents. Secondly their software leads the industry, and the ESPN Poker Club download is now a nearly exact replica of the PokerStars client. The only thing lacking in the skin is real money games, but players who want something more than play money can still head over to PokerStars.com and play there.
The ESPN Poker Club is now a part of the PokerStars.net network, which means that people playing with the ESPN client will be able to sit across the table not just with other people using the same download, but instead with everybody on PokerStars and any other site which uses their network. This huge boost in players means that there are now games running at a wide variety of stakes for Hold'em, Omaha, Stud games and even rarer games like Draw variants and Badugi. There are a number of scheduled large tournaments, or if you only have a limited amount of time then Sit & Go tournaments are also available. With so many players you'll never be waiting for a game.
While the ESPN Poker Club doesn't offer cash bonuses or other such incentives to join since all play at the tables is with fictitious money, hitting the tables can still be very worth your while. Those of you with a competitive spirit and a bit of poker knowledge will be happy to hear that the ESPN Poker Club looks set to host freeroll tournaments with awesome prizes, such as seats in major poker tournaments. To celebrate the launch of the new software, for instance, a massive freeroll tournament was held with a North American Poker Tour Main Event ticket up for grabs. With any luck, this trend will continue.
If you'd ever played at the old ESPN Poker Club and found it not to your taste, it's definitely worth reconsidering now. With the might of PokerStars behind it, the best software and largest player base online is being offered to you, completely free of charge. Hopefully awesome promotions awarding seats to major tournaments will continue, but if you like the software and feel like having the chance to win something with real value, then you should check out the PokerStars real money download.
ESPN Poker Software Interface/Usability
The first thing that needs to be made absolutely clear, is that if you've played at the ESPN Poker Club before November 2010, then you were using their old software. With respect to the old software, it very much needed to be retired, and thanks to the ESPN Poker Club's partnership with PokerStars, it has been replaced. The new downloadable client is an almost exact replica of the PokerStars software, although it only supports play money games.
The one thing that's annoying about the ESPN Poker Club client is the apparent need for advertisements. While these wouldn't be such a big problem if they were simply in-client, the system they've gone for involves a webpage automatically opening when you run the client, and an advertisement playing for about fifteen seconds before the actual Poker Club software launches. There are much more seamless ways to integrate these kinds of ads, and it's a bit disappointing that they've stooped to this. Once you get past those fifteen seconds, however, it's all uphill.
The first thing you'll be greeted with once you've logged in is the ESPN Poker Club lobby. This is a list of the currently running tables, which you can double-click to open and sit down at. Above the list is a number of tabs, so you can flick between the Hold'em tables and Omaha tables, as well as other games and tournaments and Sit & Gos. Within each of these categories there are further tabs so you can only show no limit tables, or fixed limit, or other distinctions. Finally, to really streamline the process, the client has an advanced filter section where you may choose the stakes, game-type and other specifications of the tables you're looking for. These filters are remembered so that next time you open the software you can almost immediately grab a seat at one of your desired tables.
The tables themselves are probably the high point of the ESPN Poker Club and PokerStars software. You can choose from a number of different styles, you can upload your own avatar and the animations are crisp. Large buttons, easy-to-read stack and bet sizes and the ability to multi-table make the software very easy to use. There are a number of options for things like the bet slider, preferences about auto-posting blinds, and a bunch of other minor things that can be customized.
The ESPN Poker Club's new download is a great software package, which should come as no surprise to anybody since they're teamed up with PokerStars. Of course it would be nice if real money play was on offer, but for now we'll have to wait. The good news is that if you find yourself liking the software but wanting to play for actual cash, the PokerStars real money client is practically identical and is just a short download away.
ESPN Poker Club Poker Room Action
As a result of joining forces with PokerStars, the ESPN Poker Club has gained access to a simply massive pool of players, with the users online often exceeding 100,000. As such, a wide variety of games are able to be offered, both cash and tournament, Hold'em and otherwise, with enough players spread among them to ensure you should always be able to quickly find a game.
Once again thanks to the sheer number of players on the network, the ESPN Poker Club is able to offer a range of stakes for the games it does support. There are enough players such that you'll find action all the way up the stake chain, regardless of whether you want to play ring games or tournaments, and even nearly regardless of which game you want to play, with the rarer games such as 5 Card Draw and Badugi unsurprisingly having a smaller share of the player pool.
ESPN Poker Ease of Game, Easy of Money Making, Fish Rating
It's no big secret that play money sites and play money tables in general tend to be riddled with fish. These range from players who are drunk to players who are just starting out and learning to the basics to players that just downright don't seem to have a clue no matter how long they've been playing for. While these types of players can be frustrating at times, they're also a great way to rack up a lot of chips quickly, and so we're pleased to report that they're just as present at the ESPN Poker Club as you'd expect.
Perhaps even more so, actually, as the access to all players on the PokerStars.net network puts tens of thousands of users right at your fingertips. With so many players comes an abundance of fish, especially at the lower limits, and so thanks to the recent fusion with PokerStars, the ESPN Poker Club has probably become one of the fishiest free play sites on the internet today.
ESPN Poker Club Bonus Codes and Promotions
Sadly, you're not going to find anything in the way of welcome bonuses at the ESPN Poker Club. While there are many real money sites out there which offer free money just for signing up and awesome first-deposit bonuses, the ESPN Poker Club simply can't offer these, since all their tables run on play money and so they have no source of revenue. The news isn't all bad, however.
Since they're partnered up with PokerStars, it appears as if they're set to run some promotions with truly fantastic prizes. While they can't give away straight cash, other alternatives such as tournament entry tickets are fair game, and we've seen promotions in the past offering tickets to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. In celebrating the launch of the new ESPN Poker Club, a freeroll tournament was hosted with the winner being awarded a seat at a North American Poker Tour Main Event, so we can hope that these kinds of promotions will continue in the future.
If these strike you as being too few and far apart, or you're simply not that interested in major live tournaments, then the ESPN Poker Club may not be for you. However if you really like the software and are willing to take the plunge into real money games, then downloading the PokerStars real money client is probably going to be your best option, and can earn you a bonus of up to $600 on your first deposit.
Even if you're not too thrilled by the idea of depositing vast amounts of money onto PokerStars to earn the $600 bonus, it's still worth your while signing up there through FlopTurnRiver, as when you use our marketing code FLOPTURNRIVER, you'll also be given access to our exclusive freeroll and money-added tournaments, which are hosted each and every month. The freeroll tournaments are a great way to play poker at no cost while still having the chance to win a bit of cash.
ESPN Poker Customer and Technical Support
The customer support side of things seems to be managed largely by PokerStars itself, which is great news. We've got absolutely nothing against ESPN Poker Club support, but given that the downloadable client is now PokerStars software, it seems to make a lot of sense to also hand over the job of Customer Service to those who are already intimately familiar with the product in question.
PokerStars support is also considered to be the best in the online poker business, with responses coming quickly, and being extremely helpful. It seems like people pretty much do nothing but complain about the customer support and helpdesks found online, so a place with the reputation of excellent customer service is truly a rarity, and should be taken advantage of.
The easiest way to get in touch with support is directly via the help menu of the ESPN Poker Club download.
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