Full Review of CD Poker
Summary of CD Poker
CD Poker is one of the young online poker rooms that have seen rapid expansion since its start. It’s grown up to be one of the favorite poker rooms within the iPoker network. CD Poker works very actively with various promotional schemes in order to retain players, and it certainly works.
Like all members of the iPoker network, CD Poker run their games on PlayTech software, which vouches for a stable and secure gaming environment. When it comes to graphics, this may not be the design that people watch at Guggenheim in 2108, but you can definitely play at the site without welding goggles.
Games are generally soft and profitable (although not for your opponents), and there’s always action at this the fourth largest online poker network.
The site is not bad at all, despite its “degenerate gambler” blinking-graphics red-on-black layout. It comes in many languages and there’s a lot of information on all aspects of internet poker. The free poker school actually gives pretty good advice, make sure you read it! During testing, customer support did a good job in answering our stupid questions.
CD Poker offer lots of good promotions to attract and retain players. There are consolation jackpots for high hands and bad beats to go with the limitless sit-and-go jackpots (see above.) CD Poker gives you an easily cleared $50 bonus for each friend you deliver.
A few other bonuses require some solid efforts at the tables though, so do your homework. There are good satellites to big events and great freerolls for beginners. The guaranteed tournaments can give you an overlay, keep an eyen them.
CD Poker often hand out free tokens that you can use as buy-in for various tournaments and satellites, a really good opportunity for beginners and newbies to wet their feet and possible get a head start to the poker career.
Poker Traffic
Being a rather young site in an established network, CD Poker’s 9,200 real-money cash game players at peak hours (March 2010) is very decent, and virtually guarantees you a game according to your preferences. As long as it’s not a super high stakes Five Card Stud game that you’re craving.
The rake at CD Poker is a pretty standard 5% rake up to $3. On some tables the rake cap is lower, though, and there’s a no-flop no-drop policy. Micro-limit games are rake-free, making this a great site for the true newbie grinder – or the Chris Ferguson wannabe who plans on turning zero cents into $10,000.
Software & Graphics
The CD Poker client runs on iPoker software. In our opinion it’s not the prettiest on the market. The whole manner creaks of awkwardness. Detailed chairs, rugs and dealers don’t contribute to playability or usability.
But the software definitely gets the job done. After all, the most important task for a poker system is to have games running smoothly and calculate your profits correctly (or at least not on the short side.) The software of iPoker and CD Poker fulfill these essential demands easily.
The lobby is easy to navigate and shows no disturbing lags even when the number of active games could appear overwhelming to a Cray 2. The waiting list functionality is of the more advanced sort, which is of very good assistance to players.
At the tables, you’ll recognize the five or six available avatars immediately. The best you can say about them is that they can be turned off. In general, most controls are very easy to handle, and all things taken together, the playability at CD Poker leaves little to be asked for.
Game Variety
CD Poker offers good but not astounding game variety with all the basic variations: Texas Holdem, Omaha High, Omaha High-Low and Seven Card Stud – with the usual forms of fixed-limit, no-limit and pot-limit. As an exotic alibi, there’s also a venue for Five Card Stud games. It’s not overly well-attended, but let’s not blame CD Poker for that.
Table stakes come in most forms you may ever dream of. They range from 1¢-2¢ up to $100/$200 in pot-limit and no-limit games, while fixed-limit games are played at stakes between 2¢/4¢ and $300/$600.
You stand a good chance of finding all the current kinds of cash game tables at your preferred stakes - headsup, short-handed (six players) and full-ring. There are tables specifically welcoming beginners (up to $0.5/$1) and tables that don’t protect players’ hands in the case of disconnections (‘No DP’).
Tournaments come in all flavors as well: headsups, sit-and-gos and fixed-schedule multi-table tournaments with buy-ins from 100 CD points to 1500 dollars. There are freezeouts and rebuys, freerolls and satellites to big events, speeds, turbos, stages, double-stacks and tournaments with guaranteed prize pools up to $2.000.000.
Sit-and-gos at CD Poker are particularly popular thanks to the jackpots – if you win six sit-and-gos in a row you get a really nice jackpot, with a consolation prize for “only” finishing first OR second six times in a row. Obviously, such a series is not an easy feat, but then again, winning a jackpot easily would be against nature.
More About
CD Poker stages one of the biggest guaranteed tournaments on the internet, with a guaranteed prize pool of $2,000,000!
To buy in straight into this
tournament, you’ll have to cough up $1580. Luckily enough, there are plenty of cheaper opportunities as well.
Read more about the CD Poker Million Mania!
Sign up with CD Poker now!
