Review of Ultimate Bet

Our review of Ultimate Bet will give you the skinny on this very classy poker room that has been around since 2000. The software is among the most attractive and easiest to use, they have a large amount of ring game and tournament traffic. The players here are more similar to Poker Stars and Full Tilt than a site like Pacific or Party. The games tend to be more consistent with tighter action and lower flop percentages.

Categories Reviewed at UltimateBet.com

Fish: 1.5
UB is one of the least fishy sites available, so I mostly play there after a very filling afternoon snack. If you're looking for soft, loose action then you should probably go elsewhere. As is the case with many older poker sites, their loyal players tend to be on the tight side. While you can still make money on this site, you'll need to do it with stronger cards, more bluffs, and more slowplays.

Sharks: 4.5 (inverse rating)
This poker room offers some of the highest stakes games online, both limit and no-limit. Thus, there tend to be many professionals who play at UB. They're usually relegated to the higher-stakes games, but even the microlimit players tend to be better than most. You'll need to mix up your game and try to play an aggressive game to gain control of the table. Usually, you'll be sitting at a table full of tight-aggressive players who won't play a lot of trash hands. Raise them out of the pot as often as possible and use your continuation bets a lot at this site.

Bait (promotions): 4
Ultimate Bet is a very professional site that seems to care about its players. They offer a nice deposit bonus at 100% up to $650, and they also offer occasional redeposit deposit bonuses. Hopefully, you'll read our strategy articles and won't need to redeposit. Bonuses are paid out slowly through Ultimate Points, and they can take a while to earn through low or mid-level stakes games. UB also offers some interesting promotions such as this year's televised tournament in L.A. that was composed primarily of players who had won their online freerolls.

Skin (software): 5
I can't find any nicks in the scales with their software. The colors are toned down, you can choose the background, and games move along at a solid pace. The occasional slowdown only occurs when a player is completely distracted, as they allow a long time for decision-making. UB provides an in-depth hand history feature, and the lobbies are very easy to navigate. Full tables play 10-handed, and tournaments are very user-friendly.

Prey (tournaments): 4.5
Tournament traffic, including Sit 'n Gos, is excellent at this site. They offer lots of big guaranteed prize pool tournaments every day, while still providing plenty of low buy-in tourneys for smaller bankrolls. Plenty of information is given about each tournament, and you can instantly view your place in the field from the table window. Sit 'n Go action is also busy with tighter players that are easy prey for aggressive players. The only fault with their tournament structure is the lack of freeroll offerings with real money prize pools.

Overall Ultimate Bet Rating

Pearls (positives)
Plenty of tournament action and ring game traffic at a wide range of levels keeps most players satisfied at this poker room. The software is top-notch, and customer service is quick via e-mail. Cashouts are also very fast to verify and receive.

Hooks (negatives)
The general style of UB players makes me believe that other hammerheads have already descended on this site long ago. There just aren't enough fish to go around.

The Hammer (overall rating): 4.5

♣ Visit ultimatebet.com

Tips for Playing at Ultimate Bet

Meat (tips)
You don't want to play as tight on Ultimate Bet as you would on wild sites like Pacific or Party. Since you won't run into a lot of loose calling stations, you can often steal the pot preflop or on the flop. As with any bluff or semi-bluff, I only recommend this play from late position with less than 3 opponents. Sit 'n Go tournaments are especially tight here, so continue your aggressive style and build your chip stack.

Blubber (babble)
Ultimate Bet is one of the few poker sites that offers many poker variations to try on their site. The usual suspects are there such as Omaha and Stud, but they also offer weird games like Triple Draw and Pineapple. I'm an old-coral poker player, and didn't know much about either of these. Still, one of my ring games was going slowly, so I opened up a Triple Draw window to try it out. You get 5 cards in Triple Draw, and the first hand dealt to me was a full house: Aces full of Queens! I'm standing pat, pushing as much as possible into the pot, capping every round until the showdown. What? I lost the hand to 2-3-4-5-7? It wasn't until I read the game rules that I found out that Triple Draw is a lowball game! I put a few teeth marks in my monitor before I realized that I only joined a 1c/2c game. Lesson here: Don't play online poker after a few fermented squid ink shots.

♣ ♣ For further details and ratings for UltimateBet.com, you can visit our basic Ultimate Bet review.

     

More Poker Reviews by Hammerhead

♣ Return to the index page listing all of Hammerhead's poker room reviews.