Best Biggest Poker Sites for May 2012
One of the best ways to find a quality poker room is to look for the biggest poker sites. We are big fans of popular poker sites because they have lots players, lots of games and are trustworthy places to play. In making this list of the biggest poker sites, we used real traffic numbers to rank them in order of popularity.
We did not include any USA poker sites in this page because all of the biggest poker sites left the US market in 2011. There are still plenty of good USA-friendly poker sites out there, but none of them were big enough to make this list. If you live in the US and would like a couple of quality recommendations, take a look at our USA poker downloads page.
Anyways, what we like the most about big poker sites is that they make it easy to find good games. Whether you are a cash game or tournament player, big poker sites make it easy to find games at all levels. Not only that, but there are often dozens of games running at anyone level. This gives you the opportunity to hunt for the softest tables and easiest opponents.
The biggest poker sites are as follows:
PokerStars
PokerStars has been the kind of the hill for a few years now. Even after leaving the US market, it’s not uncommon to log into PokerStars and see 100,000 others players logged in at the same time. There is an average of about 25,000 players actually seated at tables at any given time, so you’ll never suffer from a lack of tables at PokerStars.
Special Offer:
- 100% up to $600 Free Cash
- Use PokerStars Marketing Code: STARS600 when registering.
Poker770
Poker770 is a member of the iPoker Network, which is the largest poker network after PokerStars. You can log in any time and see nearly 10,000 players logged in, with about 4200 players actually sitting at the tables. Cash games and tournaments are hosted around the clock here at a wide variety of stakes. Texas Holdem is the most popular game here, but there are also a lot of active non-Holdem games such as Omaha and 7 Card Stud.
Special Offer:
- 200% up to $2000 Free Cash
- Use Poker 770 Bonus Code: Use link when registering.
Party Poker
Party Poker has been one of the biggest poker sites for a long time. It was once the largest poker site of all, but increased competition has made it a close contest for Party Poker. At any given time, you can log in to Party Poker and find more than 17,000 players logged in, with about 4100 sitting at the tables. Party Poker has a huge amount of respect in the industry thanks to quality customer support and reliable withdrawal methods.
Special Offer:
- 100% up to $500 Free Cash
- Use Party Poker Bonus Code: PWNET when registering.
Why The Biggest Poker Sites are the Best
The size of a poker site is one of the most reliable methods to judge the quality of a poker site. There are several reasons for this. First, poker sites that provide a quality experience naturally attract a lot of traffic. As these poker sites become known for being safe places to play, more players sign up and play at these sites.
Another advantage of the biggest poker sites is that they have a lot of money to reinvest in the business. That means you will generally find better software and better promotions at the biggest poker sites. Big poker sites like to capitalize on their success by constantly improving themselves and running promotions to further increase their market share.
And of course, a big poker site means it’s easier to find active tables. The biggest poker sites have active cash games at all levels and the biggest tournaments on the internet. This also goes for alternative games such as Omaha, 7 Card Stud, Badugi and so on.
The size of a poker site isn’t everything, but it’s a pretty good indicator of what you can expect. Not every big poker site has a perfect track record (Full Tilt Poker for example), but for the most part, you’ll have a great experience if you stick with the biggest and most well-known poker sites. Large, successful poker sites are just a lot less likely to suddenly disappear or go out of business.
Finding the Biggest Poker Sites
We use a multi-pronged approach to find the biggest poker sites. On one hand, we have been involved with online poker long enough to just know which poker sites are biggest. If you do enough research, you’ll eventually get a pretty good handle on which poker sites are mentioned the most and have the most players.
We also log into poker sites ourselves and look at how many players are online. It’s a pretty simple matter to just download the software, log in and see how many active tables there are. High stakes cash games are a good indicator of how many players are online because high stakes games are usually the last games to fill up.
And last, we use third party resources to find exact traffic numbers. One website that we like to refer to often is PokerScout.com. This website monitors all the major poker sites on the internet and provides detailed statistics on overall player traffic and the number of active players. With these three information resources, we found it pretty easy to identify the biggest poker sites.
The poker sites listed above are ranked in order of their popularity. The top poker site has the most players, the second site has the next largest player pool and the third site down has the third-largest player pool. The exact traffic numbers change on a daily basis, but the above poker sites are the most reliable and active poker sites.
