Review of Royal Vegas Poker

This review of Royal Vegas will discuss all the pearls and hooks with this Prima network site. While I find the Prima competition to be pretty soft overall, Royal Vegas doesn't have the same amount of promotions as a Prima site like Gaming Club. I do, however, give them credit for landing a very good spokesman in poker author Lou Krieger.

Categories Reviewed at RoyalVegasPoker.com

Fish: 4
As the players are on the same network as many other Prima skins, I give RV the same fish score as I gave to Gaming Club Poker. Prima sites are a great place to find timid and fishy opponents. I play mostly no-limit cash games, and these are very popular at the lower limits. High stakes games also get a fair amount of traffic. While the limit action is dying out at many online poker sites, the Prima network still has a good amount of soft players. At Royal Vegas, you'll often run into a table full of calling stations or an extremely tight table that you can easily manipulate.

Sharks: 2.5 (inverse rating)
Again, this is my shark rating for all Prima sites. While many tables tend to have a lower flop percentage, this usually isn't because the games are particularly tough. Players tend to be timid and can be easily dominated. As your opponents will generally be inexperienced, especially at the lower limits, they will tend to play a lot of draws after the flop. When you see an obvious draw on the flop and you're holding a strong but vulnerable hand, you should bet out at least the size of the pot to protect your holdings. While there are some big European sharks on this site, they are mostly restricted to the ultra-high stakes games that Prima offers.

Bait (promotions): 3.5
Royal Vegas offers an interesting promotion - they'll give you $10 just for downloading their software and opening an account. As has been previously noted, the signup process on Prima is pretty frustrating so they probably should give you a reward for getting through it. It's nice in that it allows you to try out their real money games for free, but I believe that you have to actually make a deposit to cash out your winnings. This sort of defeats the purpose of the free money, but it is generous of them to give you something for nothing. Other than the initial free $10, you can get a 40% deposit bonus, which is pretty good.

Skin (software): 3.5
While all Prima sites tend to have identical graphics with only the color scheme as the exception, I find Royal Vegas' software to be a bit more cumbersome than Gaming Club's. However, they do provide some unique options such as the ability to view your raked hand count for use towards freerolls. A staple that I like for Prima software is the ability to see all previous actions in the hand from any player at any time. It's also pretty easy to manage multiple tables with this software.

Prey (tournaments): 4
With lots of players on this shared network, there are lots of tournaments available. Each event attracts a good number of players, as the network experiences heavy tournaments traffic. They offer the same daily freerolls as Gaming Club, with the exception of the initial $5,000 Rookie Freeroll. What is also nice about their tournaments is that they offer a wide range of buy-ins at all times of the day, so it's pretty easy to find a nearby tournament at your level.

Overall Royal Vegas Rating

Pearls (positives)
Royal Vegas gives you $10 free to try out their software, tournament traffic is pretty high, and games are popular at all limits. They also offer live online support and telephone support.

Hooks (negatives)
The winnings that you earn on the free money can be difficult to cash out and the signup process can be tedious.

The Hammer (overall rating): 3.5

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Tips for Playing at Royal Vegas Poker

Meat (tips)
This site attracts many European customers, which is great for filling up games at all times of the day. Unfortunately, the limited number of tables are often filled up with long waiting lists. However, I've found there is a way to jump ahead of the waiting list a bit. Even though a table may claim to have several on the list, open up the table anyway if there is a seat available. Often, you'll be able to take the seat even though you weren't first on the waiting list. Now that's what I call being a sneaky little shark.

Blubber (babble)
Take a tip from the Hammerhead's live game archive: throw off your opponents early. When I walk (well, swim) into the local cardroom, grab a couple stringrays with seaweed salsa at the table, and finally get dealt my first hand, everyone already thinks they know me. It's sort of tough to hide the elongated head and sharp multi-rowed teeth from my opponents, although believe me I've tried everything from coral masks to seaweed bandanas. They automatically expect me to play a tight-aggressive game, but I come out firing right away and raise, raise, raise for a few pots in a row. Usually, I won't get any action and will take a few blinds. This, hopefully, sets my opponents up to give me action on my good hands. Try doing something similar when you first sit down at an online table and set your opponents up for a future Hammering!

♣ ♣ For further details and ratings for RoyalVegasPoker.com, you can visit our basic Royal Vegas Poker review.

     

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