Guys (and gals!)
Theres been alot of chat about Laddies poker, the site we currently use for our regular forum weekly games, and with the introduction of the official Talksport Forum Poker League soon upon us, we need to decide upon where we will be hosting this.
I think quite rightly alot of people, myself included, are pretty despondent about Laddies, and there have been noises to change for a good while now....but where to??
As some/many of you know, I often format, run, host and organise online poker tournaments, as well as play in them, which can either be privately formatted games or, as a consultant, I organise concepts that are released to the network. The vast majority of these I run over the Ipoker network, via the Rivercard skin (
www.therivercard.com).
Being heavily involved with the skin hosts and network provider, I can very easily set up private games, tailored to individual requirements, so this would take care of the private game set up Laddies offers.
The software itself is pretty good. As with any change of site it takes some getting used to, but it is fairly straight forward to navigate your way around, the basic in play options are the same - and although the full screen avatars are a bit of a nonsense, the table layouts are pretty good. There are sometimes mini lags in play, which can be a tad annoying, and there is no "time bank" to allow you to take that touch longer to make a decision, leaving you with (i think) just 20 seconds to make your play when it is you to act.
The generic site itself offers a huge variety of cash tables, STTs, MTTs and satellites, and much like the VC site, they use action points which are accumulated during play to be used for buy ins into AP tournies and can (eventually) be turned into cash - this in lieu of a rakeback scheme.
The jackpot STT series are very good, where you win a cash jackpot if you finish 1st/2nd in 5 successive 10 seat STT's, as well as offering STT's in other variances of the game which for a change are well populated. There is also a live chat lobby within the software, which is useful to "meet up" before a game.
Its an option for us, in the absence of any other suggestions. Myself and Bally already hold accounts here, and my having access to the people behind it means any problems/issues/requests can normally get sorted out quicker and easier than having to go through the usual email support routines.
I think we are decided on out new league format, and just need to decide on two things....the date it starts, and where we will play it.
I will have a quick check and see if i can get any promotional offers for you to download the software and get a few free $'s to allow you to have a play around with the site, instead of you just having to endure the play money tables - otherwise, what do people think to giving it a bash?