Action Poker.com Overview
is owned and operated by Ecom Enterprises, a subsidiary of Playsafe Holding AS, which is a publicly listed company in Norway (OTC). It's a non-US room, so American players (and also Turkish players) need read no further. One of the more interesting things about this room is that it offers games popular in Asia such as Guts Poker, Chinese Poker, Big 2 Poker and Pan (Panguingue), which are not normally found on Western rooms. They also provide the usual Texas Hold'em, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, and Blackjack.
For players unfamiliar with the exotic games they have a complete "how to" section on their website. These can be a lot of fun to play and can be a nice break from Hold'em. Nevertheless, you will still find the most action huddled around the NLHE tables, specifically low-mid stakes. There are always 25, 50 and 100nl tables going at most times of the day and a few higher stakes. If you're in for nosebleed stakes, Action Poker probably isn't for you.
Tournaments aren't exactly the bread and butter of ActionPoker. In fact, they have one of the weakest turnouts of any online site we’ve seen, although they are still trying to build up their player base. Their Sit and Go tourneys range from microstake buy-ins of $0.10+$0.01 up to $200+$10, but don't except to see much action past the $50 level. As for MTTs, you're lucky to get a tournament with over 100 participants. The average buy-in is very low and at the time of our last login the highest available was a $10k guaranteed tournament with rebuys at $30+$3, but that was scheduled for two weeks in the future.
Freerolls are another matter. Nearly half the MTTs on offer at ActionPoker are freerolls with fields of 1,000 players or more. That means Action Poker is a nice place to start if you don't have money to deposit.
Playing at Action Poker earns you Player Option Points (POPs). POPs are earned by paying raked games at cash tables or by tournament fees. For every 10 cents in rake you pay, you earn 1 POP and $1 in tournament fees earns you 10 POP. There are a few things you can do with your POPs, including exchanging them for real money. Currently, the largest exchange available is 20,000 POPs for $100, which after doing math equals out to about $2000 in rake for $100. It might not seem like much, but is better than nothing. There are also special tournaments you can enter with just POPs.
Action Poker.com Software Interface/Usability
Logging in with the client rewards you with an annoying “windows error” sound accompanied by pop-up boxes alerting you of current offers and promotions. The first few times you load the software you think it’s crashed or broken. You cannot disable these pop-up windows so you have to get used to them.
Once you get logged in and connected to the client, it is actually very straightforward. The tabs let you select your general game type and then you can sort by Table Name, Stakes, Limit, Plrs/Seats, Wait, Avg Pot and Flop (players seeing flop %). This saves you from having to scroll through games that you aren’t interested in. Also displayed is the number of players currently online and the number of tables currently active.
A lot of the functions, especially those related to support or cashier, redirect you to a website. It would be better to have support and cashier functionality packaged in the poker client rather than going off to a website, but it's not a huge drawback.
The table view is nicely done; no flashy graphics but very clear, good quality cards and animations. You have the option to select a 4 color deck and also switch the cards from the “poker style” (large card value) to “classic style” which makes the playing cards look like a regular pack of cards. The classic style is, in fact, very easy on the eye and a good option when playing. You can alter the speed of the animations and setting this to the highest value made the chip and card movements extremely smooth even when quad tabling. The ability to slow the animations down is very useful for anybody playing on a slow PC.
The buddy list is great – it allows you to chat to any online buddies and immediately jump to any tables that they’re playing on. Conversely, it is equally useful as a favorite fish finder.
One major drawback is the fact that you can't save Hand History files to your PC. You can only obtain hand histories – and only for real money games – by requesting them through the Options > Reports menu in the lobby.
ActionPoker.com Poker Room Action
The ActionPoker room doesn't really live up to its name due to low traffic levels. The average number of players seen online across various times of day was only around 2,000. At one point it was below 800. The highest level reached even at peak times was 2,200 and a lot of these players are either idle or sitting at the play money tables.
Tournament action is practically nonexistent. Unless the user base increases tenfold over night, avoid this site for tournament play.
Ring games are obviously not overly-crowded either, and those few players that are on the site are spread across the limits fairly evenly. You will struggle to find more than two full tables at any particular limit, so avoid it if you like to multi-table.
Action Poker's Ease of Game, Ease of Making Money, Fish Rating
The level of play at is fairly low, which is only natural at a room with so little traffic – the sharks are swimming in more populated waters. If you do find a full table, by the time you have started to learn your opponents you may find that the table is breaking up and you need to find another one – which you sometimes cannot do. It’s virtually impossible to play more than one table at a time, not due to client restrictions but simply because there isn’t enough traffic to keep multiple tables full for very long.
Expect to find some good players and some awful players, but not very many of either.
Action Poker.com Bonuses and Promotions
See our ActionPoker Bonus page for details on clearing your bonus.
offers a 100% first deposit bonus, with a minimum of $10 up to a maximum of $2,500 (based on deposit limits), which is huge. Keep in mind, though, that you only have 45 days to clear any bonus, which you do by earning “POPs” (Player Option Points). You need to earn 14 POPs for every $1 of bonus (it used to be 12, so they've made the bonus harder to clear). You earn 1 POP for every $0.10 of rake that you pay and you do not earn points for pots where you do not personally contribute to the rake. You also earn 10 POPs for every $1 in entry fees paid for tournaments. Make sure you use the links on this page and enter the Action Poker Bonus Code FTR when creating your account.
Example:
If 5 people are playing at a No-Limit $10 Hold'Em table and each person contributes to the pot evenly and the total pot is $50, then each player would have contributed $10 to the pot. Rake is then calculated at 5% of this so each person would have put 50 cents into the rake. You earn 1 POP per 10 cents in the rake, so therefore your 50 cents into the rake would earn you 5 POP.
The other catch is that no partial bonuses are paid. If you deposit $2,500, you need to earn 35,000 POPs within 45 days to clear the bonus. Earn 34,999 and hit day 46, and you lose the whole of the bonus. So, although the upper limit on the match bonus can be very high (based on your deposit type), you have to carefully calculate a realistic estimate of how many points you will be able to earn within 45 days, otherwise you could lose it all. Considering the low level of traffic on the site if you deposit too much money clearing your bonus could be a struggle, if not impossible.
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Action Poker.com Customer and Technical Support
Support on is handled via e-mail (support@actionpoker.com) or a Live Chat that you can access through the Help menu in the lobby (which takes you to their website). If you need to contact them, the Live Chat response time is practically instantaneous. It also has the nice option of allowing you to request that a transcript of your chat session be automatically e-mailed to you, which gives good documentation should you happen to have a dispute. You can also request a telephone call-back over “certain matters,” although that isn't advertised.
E-mail: support@actionpoker.com
Action Poker is Fun! by David on 26 Nov 2007
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