Golden Palace Poker Overview
is part of the Golden Palace Casino group. It therefore attracts a lot of casino players to its poker tables which is always a good thing - as this means more fish than usual at poker only or poker centric sites. Golden Palace is one of the world's largest and most famous online casinos, ensuring a large growing poker user base and the support and backing of a big organization.
Golden Palace is also well known for their unique marketing tactics - ie - Golden Palace painted on the back of championship boxers, such as Bernard Hopkins during his title fight against Felix Trinidad.
Golden Palace Poker is part of the Tribeca Poker Network, which includes such sites as Victor Chandler Poker and Doyle's Room. This network also feeds into the
player base.
The finance side of the poker room is handled by Best Pay Finance, which as you would expect is a huge and well established company. All of the usual deposit and withdrawal options are available including Neteller, Debit/Credit Card, Citadel, Firepay, eWallet Xpress and Moneybookers. One thing to note however is that the options to withdraw are not the same as those to deposit. You cannot withdraw to a debit/credit card for example, and bank wires have fairly hefty fees. You can ask for a cheque, but unless you pay $35 for Fedex delivery, expect to wait up to 6 weeks for this to arrive. You really need a Neteller or equivalent account if you are going to be cashing out regularly.
Golden Palace Software Interface/Usability
The
software is extremely good. It's very fast, has just about every function you could ask for, and is very well thought out. Something that more experienced poker players will immediately spot though is the lack of a "flop percentage" display on the table listings. It has been stated by the poker room that this is specifically done in order to give newer players an easier time by making it harder to find weak tables. So although this makes it a bit harder for sharks, on the other hand it results in attracting more fish - and if it's harder for you to find them, it's the same for the other good players out there too. Still this said, you will not have that hard a time finding a weak table with plenty of fish on.
The table view, with its usual 4 colour deck option and chat features, is very nicely laid out. You can display user avatars if you wish, or these can be disabled for an even neater view. The cards are nice, large and clear, and the animations are useful rather than annoying (for example when making a bet, the amount wagered grows in size and then shrinks to draw attention to it). The animations that are in place are very fast - for example when the cards are dealt, so you will find yourself playing more hands per hour than at other sites.
Overall, the table view is probably one of the most well thought out that there is. There are no silly gimmicks, but on the other hand it is not plain and boring either. The authors of the software have clearly taken on board comments from experienced online players and incorporated them. In fact they make a point of it - every table you sit on has a "make a suggestion" link in the bottom corner. Click on this, and instantly tell the site about any thoughts you have which could make the table even nicer - a feature which has clearly been well used and well implemented.
Unfortunately there is no "mini view" option on this site, which means in order to play any more than one table (you can play up to a maximum of 4) without overlap you need to be running at a screen resolution of at least 1600x1200.
Support for "other" poker games is not great - they offer only Holdem, Omaha, and Omaha H/L.
Golden Palace Poker Room Action
The action at
is good. The bulk of the players will be found on the Holdem cash games, although there is some limited tournament action as well.
There are plenty of full tables, and plenty of nearly full tables for you to take a seat at, from the micro limits all the way up to the maximum limits. The site was tested both during the day and at night and there were always plenty of games going on with plenty of players.
SNG tournaments fill up fairly quickly, but at higher levels you may have to wait a while to get some company. It seems that people are shy to be the first to sit down at a table on this site, which can probably be attributed to the fact that many of them will be playing their first tournament. So, sit on an empty table, open a can of fish food, and wait for them to arrive. But put the kettle on whilst you're doing this as it can sometimes take a few minutes for everyone to take their seats.
Multi table tournaments seem particularly quiet on Golden Palace. Even the freerolls don't get that busy in relation to the number of users, but the prizes they offer are fairly poor ($2 prize pool for 300 players). But it is free, so what do you expect! They do have larger freerolls aswell, so keep an eye out for them. For the paid tournaments, over the course of several hours and several tournament registrations coming and going, nobody other than me registered. This was on tournaments ranging from $2 to $10 entry.
This site is definitely one for the cash game players out there. If you like tournaments that have more than one entrant, this is not the site for you.
Golden Palace Ease of Game, Ease of Making Money, Fish Rating
GoldenPalace is abundant with fish, especially at the lower limits. Being more famous for their casino, there are a lot of casino players who "want a go at this poker thing." The site has even decided not to have a "flop percentage" view in order to give the fish an easier time, but there are still plenty to be found without too much hunting.
The lower level games appear even looser than you would normally expect. The number of preflop all-ins with any ace or any two suited cards over the space of an hour was almost disturbing, until I took lots of their money which eased the pain a little. One thing to be careful of though - at the lower limits people will have absolutely no concept whatsoever of pot odds, implied odds, number of outs etc. I know this is the case on most other sites, but not to an extent that I have seen here. Don't even think about bluffing until you are at higher limits, it just does not work here. I would expect that a long term player on the lower limits at Golden Palace would see much higher variance and bad beats/suckouts than they would be used to. Bankroll management should be carefully adhered to here.
Golden Palace Poker Bonuses and Promotions
offers a "25% first deposit match" bonus (maximum $100).
There is no friend-referral bonus in place, nor any bad beat / royal flush bonus.
You do earn action points whilst you play, which can be used to pay for entrance in to tournaments or to buy merchandise from participating companies (see their website for the most current list). You also need to earn promotional action points in order to clear pending bonus amounts and you cannot earn "normal" action points and "promotional" action points at the same time, ie, whilst you are clearing a bonus, you will not also be earning action points towards merchandise or tournament entries.
For each bonus dollar you need to earn 125 action points, and there is no trickle feed or partial bonus payout - you have to clear the entire bonus before receiving it. Action points are earned based on the amount of rake you generate, but you do earn them even if you fold preflop - you just earn more if you don't! No clear exact calculations could be found on the site as to how many points you earn based on the rake, but there is an up to date point tracker in the "Help" menu which you can check regularly to see how you are doing.
Click here to join
!
Golden Palace Customer and Technical Support
On each table you have a "call manager" button which gives you instant access to live chat. This was tested on two occasions and both times I was talking to somebody within a matter of seconds.
Likewise their email support is just as impressive. An answer was received within 10 minutes that was both friendly and helpful, and did not appear to be a "canned reply".
They also offer telephone support that again answered within a few rings and were very helpful.
This site has absolutely superb support, and it cannot be faulted in any way. They have clearly invested heavily in this area and all other sites could look here for inspiration.
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Slow pay on 07 Jun 2007
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