Our expert team have compared the best online poker rooms, so that you can find a place to play Texas Hold ‘Em poker online easily, without the hassle of worrying about which rooms are reliable, pay on time and provide a good quality poker game. You also want to play poker online using glitch free software, against players whereby it’s easy to win, too – which are both vital aspects of our rating system.
So where can you play Texas Hold ‘Em poker online?
| Our ranking | Poker Room Name | Our Expert’s Rating | Best sign-up bonus | Play | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 9/10 Read full review |
200% bonus up to $2000! | |||
| #2 | 9/10 Read full review |
100% bonus up to $600! | |||
| #3 | 9/10 Read full review |
100% bonus up to $500! | |||
| #4 | 8.9/10 Read full review |
200% bonus up to $2000! | |||
| #5 | 8/10 No review yet |
400% bonus up to $1000! | |||
| #6 | 8/10 No review yet |
100% bonus up to $800! |
What online poker games can you expect to find at these rooms?
Poker rooms typically offer a number of different types of poker games, the most popular of these being Texas Hold ‘Em. Other popular games include Omaha, and 7-card stud. On this page we focus mainly on the different types of Texas Hold ‘Em you can play online. Traditionally there are three types of Texas Hold ‘Em you can play online: no-limit hold ‘em, limit hold ‘em and pot limit hold ‘em.
No-Limit Hold ‘Em
No-Limit (NL) Hold ‘Em is the most popular form of poker played online. In NL hold ‘em there are no betting limits, which means that on any one hand then potentially one or more players can get all of their stacks into the pot, which makes it the type of poker with the most variance (i.e. the most swings, so you can lose and gain lots of chips every hand), but also often the most exciting. It is typically NL tournaments and cash games that you watch on the television, and hear about most often. This is the type of poker that most people think of when they hear “poker”, and what most people want to play online.
Limit Hold ‘Em
Limit Hold ‘Em is less popular than NL hold ‘em, but none the less still has a large online following. In limit hold ‘em there is a limit on the amount you can bet each hand, which makes it much harder to bluff, and means that variance has far less of an impact on play. To be a profitable limit player you typically have to spend a lot of time grinding, so it’s not for everyone.
Pot Limit Hold ‘Em
Pot limit hold ‘em is a cross between limit and NL hold ‘em. The betting in each hand is limited to the total size of the pot. This often means that with big hands a player can still get much of their stack into a pot, resulting in a game with variance and swings somewhere between limit and NL. Sometimes you may find tables where play is pot limit before the flop, but no-limit after the flop, for example. So a mixture of both pot-limit and no-limit play can be enjoyed.
We recommend that you try out all 3 types of Texas Hold ‘Em, to find which you are personally best at, and enjoy playing the most online. If you’re not sure about exactly how to play, we have some great beginner articles to help you get started:
- How to play Texas Hold ‘Em
- Top ten tips for beginner poker players
- The best and worst starting hands in poker
- 5 Costly mistakes poker players make
and much more on online poker strategy can be found throughout our website, to help even advanced players improve their game.
What’s important when picking an online poker room?
There are a number of factors that influence whether you should join a particular online poker room or not. All the poker rooms we recommend we have personally played on, and have checked to ensure there are no major issues which will affect your experience. Some of the aspects that you should look out for are below.
Number of players
You don’t want to end up playing in a poker room where there’s very few players, do you? The best online poker rooms will have at least hundreds of players online at any time of day, making it easy to find a suitable poker game at the limits you want to play. If the poker room you have signed up for feels a bit deserted, try out one of the rooms we’ve listed above. They all typically have thousands of players online at once.
The level of bonuses offered
If you are playing a lot, or making a big deposit – then the bonus schemes available are important. Poker rooms often compete against each other to offer players the best bonuses possible, and we are always comparing various poker rooms to ensure that we put forward the best bonuses we can find to our readers. Don’t sign-up for a poker room without finding a good bonus here first, or you’ll be missing out on what’s effectively free poker money!
Software offered
You don’t want to get stuck playing online poker on glitchy software. Imagine if you’ve put half your stack in, and the software crashes – you could potentially lose hundreds if not thousands of dollars! We only recommend poker rooms with excellent poker software, to minimise the chance of this happening. Many poker rooms also put measures into place, to minimise the impact of power cuts, computer and internet failures on poker games.
The rake
The rake is the small amount of money that the poker room takes out of the pot in each hand. The rake is how an online poker room make their money from you playing. Poker rooms can have various different rake levels, and we only recommend poker rooms which we believe offer a very fair rake level to players.
Service & support
It’s important if you’re playing online to be confident that the online poker room you are playing at can offer you a good level of support. You don’t want to be stuck in a position where you have thousands of dollars sitting in a poker room which you cannot withdraw! We make sure that each poker room we recommend responds promptly to support requests, and is in a good position to help its players.
Who are some of the world’s best online poker players?
We’ve all heard the amazing stories about some of the staggering amounts of money that players have won playing poker online, so we thought we would put together a couple of brief bio’s on some of the world’s very best online poker players.
Tom “durrr” Dwan – Online cash player
Tom Dwan. Photo credit: Casino Connection International
Tom “durrr” Dwan rose to true fame by playing high stake cash games, having started out with just $50 on full tilt poker, he learnt how to crack the $6 s-n-g’s, and from there his rise just hasn’t stopped. He is well known for his fearless bluffs, and being one seriously aggressive poker pro. Whilst Dwan mainly sticks to playing the cash tables, he also has not insignificant tournament winnings. He has reached the final table of both the WSOP and WPT, and won well in excess of $1m in tournament winnings.
Dwan is famous for losing what was the biggest online poker pot ever at the time, against Di “Urindanger” Dang, in October 2008, whereby Tom Dwan’s kings rather unfortunately ran into Dang’s pocket aces, which held up, resulting in Dwan losing the massively famous ~$723k pot. Not to be scared away from the high stakes, Tom Dwan subsequently was involved in the biggest pot ever to be broadcast on the television show, “High Stakes Poker”. Tom Dwan won an even bigger ~$919k pot on the show against Barry Greenstein, in March 2009.
Most recently Dwan has offered any player 3:1 odds on $500k of their own money in playing against him heads up, online at 4 simultaneous tables for 50,000 hands. Patrik Antonius was the first player to jump at the challenge, however it is believed that Patrik Antonius bought out of the bet, as he was massively down to Dwan. At the last known point of the durrr challenge, Tom Dwan was up by more than $1.8 million, a nearly insurmountable lead for Patrik to catch.
Phil Ivey – Perhaps the all around best poker player in the world
Perhaps the world's greatest when it comes to playing poker, Phil Ivey. Photo credit: ralphunden
Phil Ivey is perhaps the most well known and renowned player in the world. Widely feared at the table, due to his reputation proceeding him, his staggering poker ability – and well, just look at that poker face. Phil Ivey has more or less won it all, from tournaments to cash games and Omaha to Texas Hold ‘Em. A player this successful and diverse is simply staggering, and we struggle to think of anyone like him when it comes to true poker skill.
As a young man, aged 18 Phil Ivey was given the nickname by players down at his local casino: “No Home Jerome”. However at this point in his life, Phil Ivey wasn’t the poker great he is today. He frequently lost, and was not a winning player – his gambling often got him into troubles with keeping up with bills and he ended up in some pretty desperate situations.
This all turned around when he reached the tender age of 21, and begun to start turning a profit. He finally told the floor staff at the casino his real name, after playing with a fake id for years, and aged 24 he started placing in some of the world’s biggest poker tournaments, such as the WSOP events in both NL Hold ‘Em and Omaha. Phil has since won WSOP events 5 times, and finished on the final table 9 times. He has dominated some of the world’s biggest cash games too, a frequent at the $4k/$8k table in the Bellagio.
Phil Ivey’s poker tournament winnings to date total more than $16 million, which is simply staggering.