All of the Party skins share player traffic (except in MTT’s) so I will list them together. SNG availability on these sites is tremendous and tables usually fill up in a matter of seconds.

Game Types:

Hold’em, omaha/8, 7-card stud, and 7-card stud/8 with many of these games offering limit, no-limit, and pot-limit tables. Two and three table SNG’s are also available. Buy-ins range from $5 up to $200. Party Poker has recently added step tourneys for those who want to take a shot at a bigger payout.

Players:

The players here tend to be less experienced, however, the games are not as loose as they once were. In the past you could sit out the entire time and still have a good chance of finishing in the money. Currently, more and more players are adopting a tight playing style, so there are often six or more players remaining when the blinds equal a significant percentage of your chip stack.

Tourney Info:

The average single table tourney lasts approximately forty-five minutes. Each player starts with 800 chips (1000 chips in the $100 and $200 buy-ins) and the blinds increase every ten hands.

My Opinion: This is where it all started for me. I began playing the $5 SNG’s and worked my way up from there. The games at that time were incredibly soft. In fact, it was almost free money! Well, times have changed and the games, while still very beatable, are tougher than they once were. The other players are beginning to adopt a tighter style, which means that you are often playing all-in poker prior to the bubble. While there is some strategy involved in this situation, the game becomes more of a card catching contest at this point. The Party SNG’s are most profitable when they are offering re-load bonuses. The games tend to soften up considerably during these periods.

Poker Stars :

The tournament software is far superior to any other site on the net and they have an incredible selection of games. Many players prefer to play here because you start off with more chips and the blinds increase at a slower pace. This makes for a slower tourney and thus benefits the better players.

Game Types:

Hold’em, omaha , omaha/8, 7-card stud, and 7-card stud/8 with many of these games offering limit, no-limit, and pot-limit tables. In addition, they offer short-handed, turbo, heads-up, and multi table SNG’s (up to 5 tables). Buy-ins range from $1 up to $5,000.

Players:

The players here have a tendency to be more experienced than those on the other sites, but if you are patient and follow the proper strategy, then you should do well.

Tourney Info:

The average single table tourney here lasts an average of an hour and fifteen minutes. Each player starts with 1500 chips so if you lose a bunch of chips early, you still have plenty of chips left and you’re not crippled as badly as you would be playing on a site that starts you off with less chips. The blinds increase every ten minutes.

My Opinion:

Poker Stars is where I call home most of the time. I really like the 1500 in starting chips coupled with the blind structure. If I take a stab at a pot early on and miss, then I still have plenty of chips (and time) left to where I’m not crippled. On some of the other sites, if you make a move at the wrong pot, then you end up critically short-stacked and it’s very difficult to mount a comeback. Stars also offers every kind of SNG imaginable. This works well when you want to test your skills at other games or if you are just wanting to try something different to break up the routine.

Paradise Poker :

The selection of games is very limited, however, the hold’em tourneys fill up rather quickly.

Game Types:

Limit and NL hold’em, Omaha/8, and 7-card stud/8. They also offer heads-up matches. Buy-ins range from $5 up to $300.

Players:

The players here are similar to those found at Party Poker. Due to the blind structure, if you find yourself on a table full of tight players, then the game often turns into all-in poker with six or seven players left even in the $5 games.

Tourney Info:

The average single table tourney lasts approximately forty-five minutes. Each player starts with 1,000 chips (800 chips in the limit tourneys) and the blinds increase every ten hands.

My Opinion:

The SNG’s here are very similar to the ones you will find at Party Poker. However, one difference is that they start you off with a few more chips, (1,000) which gives you a little more breathing room when the blinds increase. If you play a lot of SNG’s at Party then you will probably like Paradise as well. It also makes for a nice change of scenery.

UltimateBet :

The software is excellent and the mini-view feature makes it easy to play more than one table at a time.

Game Types:

Hold’em, omaha , omaha/8, and 7-card stud with many of these games offering limit, no-limit, and pot-limit tables. In addition, they offer short-handed, turbo, heads-up, and multi table SNG’s (up to 4 tables). Buy-ins range from $1 up to $5,000.

Players:

The players here are similar to those found at Poker Stars. They tend to be better on the average, but still very beatable.

Tourney Info:

The average single table tourney lasts approximately an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. Each player starts with 1,500 chips and the blinds increase every ten minutes (12 minutes at the $200 an up tourneys).

My Opinion:

Although Poker Stars is my favorite, UltimateBet is not too far behind. They start you off with 1500 chips and have a blind structure similar to the one at Stars. The software is excellent! For those who like to multi-table, they offer a mini view feature I wish all of the sites had.

Pacific Poker :

The games here are some of the softest you will find. The only drawback is that their software is very cumbersome. They currently only offer hold’em.

Game Types:

Limit, NL, and PL hold’em. In addition, they offer short-handed, turbo, heads-up and multi-table SNG’s (up to 4 tables). Buy-ins range from $1 up to $750.

Players:

The players here are some of the least experienced you will find anywhere.

Tourney Info:

The average single table tourney lasts approximately one hour. Players start off with 800 chips in the games up to $20 and 1,000 in chips for the games $30 and above. The blinds increase every 15 hands.

My Opinion:

The players just don’t get any worse than Pacific Poker. I believe this is due to the fact that they get a lot of crossover business from their online casino. The only catch is that their software is almost unbearable at times. Although very slowly, they are making improvements and I will probably be testing the waters here again in the near future.

Final Thoughts

There are without question some other sites out there worth playing and I have played a few of them, but I don’t feel as though I have enough experience with them in order to offer a worthy opinion.. The one thing I will say is that these other sites tend to offer similar games and structures to the sites already listed, but the games tend to take longer to fill up with players.

For most players, hourly rate is the most important factor when choosing which site to play. Although I have mentioned how you will likely earn more per tournament at Poker Stars and UltimateBet, it is possible your hourly rate may be better when playing at Party Poker. This is because the average SNG at Party is much shorter than the ones played at Stars so you will play in many more tourneys over the same period of time. I’m currently doing an analysis on the hourly returns which I will discuss in a future article.

One final and very important note, especially to those playing the lower buy-in tourneys, make sure to take note of the table fee being charged by the different sites. For example, when playing the $5 buy-in tourneys, Party Poker charges $5 plus a $1 table fee ($5+1). In fact Party Poker and Paradise Poker both charge $5+1. When playing the $5 games, I would suggest playing at any of the other sites listed rather than Party or Paradise because they only charge $5+.50. This will make a substantial difference in your overall return.

Next month we will begin to dissect the early stages of a sit’n’go. Until then, see you at the tables!