Pacific Poker

Pacific Poker is a division of 888 Gaming, and one of the fastest growing poker sites on the web. As an avid online player, I regularly frequent some of Pacific Poker’s competitors, so I was anxious to try this site, which my friends were constantly recommending to me. Is the site that good or were they just excited about collecting my referral fees? Here are my impressions.

The first thing I noticed after logging on to Pacific Poker was somewhat cluttered look the site has; unfortunately, this was quickly followed with an annoying pop up for software download. After this minor annoyance, I took in the layout, which is easy enough to navigate. The standard menu items are in place, including a display showing the number of players and tables currently online. In the main menu, you can also take in one of the site’s coolest features- animated poker lessons with “Tucan Tony”. These were extensive and interesting, going well beyond the standard, and relatively dry “How To” pages of many other sites.

While Pacific Poker offers a convenient feature that allows you to play without downloading, I opted to download and try my hand against the locals. The download went quickly and easily on my machine and I was off and playing quicker than usual.

The logon and buddy features were fairly standard, however they have a clean professional look that some other sites lack which adds to the aesthetic appeal. The lobby is also easy to navigate, though not exceptionally so. I was pleasantly surprised when I wasn’t required to give an email address to log-on, this helps prevent your already-overflowing junk folder from exploding. Once underway, I found the gameplay to be stimulating and appealing with only minor flaws. The graphics and look were very nice, and my only complaint was that only screen names appear in the seats at the table, not animated players. The table, cards, chips and details were clean and sharp.

As far as other details go, there’s some good and some not so good on Pacific Poker; The support appears to be very good with toll free numbers for the United States AND Canada unlike some other sites. Also on the positive side is the impressive referral structure (Boy I have some great friends). By contrast, there was no page solely devoted to fees, buy-ins and other ambiguities, and the population and special events seemed to be less than average among the big sites.

Overall, this is a good site, and if I would highly recommend it to a casual recreational player, as it is very friendly to the beginner, with excellent tutorials and gameplay without downloading software. The look is nice, however the smaller number of players and tournaments compared with the industry leaders holds it back for the serious online player.