Absolute Poker
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Current Bonus:
100% Deposit Bonus up to $500
Major Promotions:
$150,000 Guarantee, Absolute Poker Dream Package
Mac Software:
Web-based Java Client is Available
U.S. Customers:
U.S. Players Accepted!
Overview
Absolute Poker is one of the top tournament poker sites on the net today. It’s one of my favorite sites because of its constantly-evolving creative promotions that are sure to catch your eye. Absolute Poker’s tournament schedule is unique as well; unlike sites such as PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Pacific Poker, Absolute runs its major weekly tournament, a $150,000 Guarantee event, on Saturday. It has essentially monopolized the major tournament market on Saturdays, making the site a popular destination for players around the world. In addition, Absolute Poker accepts U.S. players and even offers a web-based Java client for Mac users, meaning there’s no one left out in the cold.
Absolute Poker’s Mac Client
Users of Macs can find a home at Absolute Poker. The site offers an easy to use, easy to launch Java client that will have you playing online poker in no time. The following paragraphs will walk you through the process step by step.
First, visit Absolute Poker and click on the giant “Start” icon with the Apple logo next to it. Your browser and Absolute Poker should send you to Absolute Poker’s Mac landing page. Here’s a look at the Instant Play bar that should be on the top of your screen:
Next, the Java-based client will load. It takes about 30 seconds. If you have an Absolute Poker account, enter your e-mail address and password when prompted. If you don’t, go ahead and register an account when prompted. As is always the case when you sign up a new online poker account, be sure to provide a valid e-mail address.
I love the lobby of Absolute Poker’s Instant Play. It’s very clean. The only downside is that when I use Instant Play in Firefox, Absolute Poker lags a bit. If I use it in Safari, it’s very smooth. Here’s a look at the main cash game lobby:
Tables are listed by stakes as a default, but you can also sort by table name, the number of players seated, the wait list’s length, average pot, the percent of players at the table who see the flop, and hands per hour. If you select a table, the details for it will appear in a console to the right. Absolute Poker will display the names of the players seated and their chip stacks. For real money tables, the Instant Play client lists dollars as “chips,” but rest assured they’re the same thing.
It’s in the middle of the afternoon as I write this, but there are still 14,000 players on Absolute battling it out on 2,500 tables. Not bad for a day’s work! In the evening, it’s not uncommon to see 20,000 players on 3,000 tables.
As you’ll quickly learn to know on Absolute Poker, the tournaments are the source of the site’s popularity. To check out what tournaments are going on, just click the “Tourneys” tab on the top of the lobby. Then, a screen similar to the following will appear. I’ve highlighted the $150,000 Guaranteed weekly tournament as an example:
Each tournament’s ID, name, buy in, and number of registrants listed across the lobby. You can either double click on any tournament or just click on the link labeled “Tournament Lobby” on the right side and you’ll immediately be taken to a specific landing page, or lobby. Here’s an example of a $3 rebuy tournament with a $3,000 guarantee. You can see there are currently 222 players remaining on 25 tables. The tournament started 41 minutes ago with 282 entries:
First place, as it stands now, pays $750 in this tournament and the top six advance to a separate tournament later in the week. It’s that simple. You can even click on any table and view it.
Deposit Options
Absolute Poker does not have a shortage of ways for you to deposit money on the site. Here’s a brief overview of several methods available:
Visa – Recommended for U.S. players
MasterCard – Recommended for U.S. players
Moneybrookers – Non U.S. customers only
Fast Bank Transfer
ClickandBuy
CLICK2PAY – Non U.S. customers only
paysafecard – Primarily European
UKash – Primarily European
Check by Mail
Bank Wire Transfer
UK Debit Cards – Switch, Solo, Maestro
NETeller – Non U.S. customers only
Cash Games on Absolute Poker
There’s currently a rowdy $2/$4 six-handed no limit game going on that’s attracting an average pot size of nearly $90. I watched for a bit and took a snapshot of a healthy $229 pot brewing when the board potentially dealt a straight to one (or both) of the players:
There are a variety of limit and no limit games that you can browse by clicking the tabs at the top of the lobby. The highest no limit game available is a $50/$100 table. The highest fixed limit is $300/$600. To give you an idea, a $30/$60 fixed limit game with just two players can easily have an average pot size of $200.
You can even play for just a few pennies in limit and no limit games on Absolute Poker, or just click on the “Fun” tab at the top of the Hold’em lobby and you can amuse yourself with play chips. Only Hold’em is available on the Instant Play software.
Tournaments on Absolute Poker
Navigating to the tournament lobby is easy. Just click “Tourneys” on the top tab and you’ll be transported to tournament central on Absolute Poker. Guaranteed tournaments appear in red, promotional tournaments appear in green, and play chip qualifiers appear in a pale orange color.
I love the ability to be able to see just the satellite tournaments, guarantees, freerolls, and every tournament related to the $150,000 Guarantee. The buttons on the top allow you to toggle around as needed. Looking through the guarantee tournament lobby now, there are $1,000, $4,500, and $6,000 guarantee events coming up today. You can even browse and look for overlays, which occur when the guarantee is higher than the prize pool from players registered. Last week’s $150,000 Guarantee, the site’s marquee tournament, had a $3,000 overlay, or 2%. The top three players took home a little over $70,000 combined.
Promotions on Absolute Poker
Absolute Poker has some of the most creative promotions in online poker today, so be sure to take advantage of what the site has to offer. You won’t be disappointed.
$200,000 Guarantee Weekends
The best part about Absolute Poker’s $200,000 Guarantee Weekends is that you can easily squeeze each tournament in and still find time to play the Sunday major tournaments on your Mac on PokerStars, Party Poker, and Full Tilt Poker. On Saturday, Absolute Poker features a $150,000 Guarantee. The tournament used to only be for $100,000 and Absolute Poker has since upped the ante by 50%. The buy in is $530 and you’ll start off with a comfortable chip stack of 5,000. First place pays at least $34,500 and the final paycheck for the winner ultimately depends on the number of people who enter. There are a large number of satellites for the $150,000 Guarantee, including ones that you can enter with Absolute Rewards Program points. The $150,000 Guarantee starts at 4:30pm Eastern Time.
On Sunday, Absolute Poker offers a $75,000 Guarantee with a buy in of $162. First place is guaranteed to be at least $12,500 and satellites start as low as $6, meaning you could potentially see an extraordinary return on investment (it’s too high to calculate here, so I won’t even attempt it).
Weekly Guarantee Tournaments
Besides the large guarantee events on Saturdays and Sundays, Absolute Poker offers several other tournaments that caught my eye. There’s a $1,050 buy in $100,000 Pro Bounty Guarantee tournament every Wednesday. Qualifiers during the week for this tournament start at just a few dollars. There’s a $1,000 bounty, or a buy in, on Mark Seif, so be sure to gun for him.
There’s even a Triple Header tournament every Monday that awards a spot in each of Absolute Poker’s three main tournaments: The $100,000 Pro Bounty, the $150,000 Guarantee, and the $75,000 Guarantee.
The Absolute Dream Package
This is, by far, my favorite promotion on any online poker site, period. When Absolute Poker first rolled out this promotion, I was salivating at the thought of winning it myself. Check out the Absolute Dream Package’s grand prize: $50,000 in cash, a buy in to the World Series of Poker Main Event (which is normally $10,000), poker tutoring by pro Mark Seif, and the best part, a “season pass” to the $150,000 Saturday Guarantee for a year. There’s now even an option for you to share everything with a friend except the cash. The tournament for the dream package has a buy in of just $216, which is a terrific value considering the potential payday. If $216 is too much, you can satellite in from $2, which is less than a gallon of gas.