Finding easy poker sites for USA players has become increasingly difficult over the past several months. After the US DOJ shut down Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, neither site was able to reopen for players in the United States. Increased difficulties in funding accounts and receiving payments has further eroded traffic for the remaining USA poker sites.
To be completely honest with you, it’s unlikely that we will have any extremely soft USA poker sites any time soon. Online poker has become difficult for USA players and it seems that only the most dedicated poker players are willing to jump through the hoops necessary to get signed up and fund their accounts. However, there are still a couple of holdouts at which you can find a decent number of soft tables.
1. Bovada Poker
Bovada Poker is a poker room that is attached to a US-facing sportsbook. The entire Bovada organization is actually a spin-off of the Bodog gaming group. Bodog left the USA market in late 2011 but it decided to spin-off Bovada to continue serving its US customer base. The only difference you will see between Bovada Poker and Bodog Poker is the name.
Bovada gets our recommendation as the softest poker site for USA players because it is full of casual poker players. Bovada focuses more effort on sports betting than on poker, so what you get is a lot of sports bettors who wander over into the poker room. This results in games that have higher-than-average numbers of inexperienced players.
At the same time, Bovada Poker does not appeal to hardcore grinders. The introduction of anonymous tables at Bovada Poker has rendered tracking programs such as PokerTracker and Holdem Manager useless. This makes it difficult for grinders to multi-table and keep detailed statistics. Thus, the hardcore players tend to avoid Bovada Poker.
Bovada Poker is not a perfect online poker room, but it is a trusted name brand that is backed by a company with a long reputation for paying players everything they are due. Most notably, there have been criticisms of the anonymous tables at Bovada. But in the end, you can play at Bovada Poker and know you will be paid on time, every time. This is definitely the softest US-friendly poker site at the moment.
2. Carbon Poker
Carbon Poker is another US-friendly poker site with a solid reputation. Poker players are paid when they request cashouts and there have been no major scandals at Carbon Poker. If you play here, you can rest assured that you are getting a fair game and solid player traffic.
If you judge the games at Carbon Poker by stats alone, you might come to the conclusion that Carbon Poker is not a soft poker site. Average player-to-the-flop numbers are low and the average pot size is mediocre at best. This indicates that there are too many tight players to make the games any good at Carbon Poker.
However, what I have found is that the players at Carbon Poker are nitty, not skilled. The key to winning at poker is to adjust your playing style to counter that of your opponents. Tight preflop numbers does not necessarily indicate skill. I’ve found the players at Carbon Poker to be tight, cautious and unimaginative. It’s always better to see a bunch of clueless donks throwing their money at you, but weak-tight players can also be exploited. Adjust your game accordingly and there is money to be made at Carbon Poker.
Also going in Carbon Poker’s favor is steadily increasing traffic numbers. After PokerStars and Full Tilt left the US market, Carbon Poker became one of the main go-to poker sites for USA players. Tournaments have been growing in size (there is now a $100K Guarantee every week) and ring game traffic has increased at all levels. This makes it much easier for you to practice table selection and find good tables.