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Absolute Poker

Absolute Poker
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Absolute Poker is part of the Cereus network and shares its traffic with Ultimate Bet (which many people will recognize as the home of 12-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth). As one of the few remaining online poker sites that accept US players, Absolute has a healthy player base, especially during prime East Coast hours. If you are looking for micro and low stakes NLHE then you are well advised to take a look, for there’s plenty of action here. Omaha is playable at those stakes but there are a lot more PLO than H/L tables. While Stud, Razz, HORSE and HOSE are offered, it’s rare to see anything going on besides one or two tables of low stakes 7 Card Stud.

Absolute does offer plenty of tournament action, with a good list of SnGs going as high as a $5000 buy-in, but almost all the action is at $10 and below. There is some good cash on offer with their MTTs, however, with $100K and $200K Sunday guaranteed prize pools and a $150K Wednesday match. Absolute also offers a variety of casino table games and slots, and is one of the very rare sites to offer real money Blackjack!

Absolute Poker has a ‘Bad Beat Jackpot’ which takes a healthy piece of the pot on those optional tables (in addition to taking the rake). Surprisingly, at the lowest jackpot stakes offered (.25/.50 and .50/$1) these tables see really good traffic, with hope certainly outpacing experience. Yet on a recent Friday night (when that Jackpot had climbed to over $322,000) someone hit it by losing with four 8s or better and took home a huge chunk of change. That total jackpot figure is a bit misleading as the winner with the losing hand only really got to see 32.5% of it. Still $104,000 isn’t a bad payday for not winning a puny poker pot.

Absolute Poker has quite robust traffic most of the time. Evenings in the US are busiest since they still accept American players and there are usually 25,000 to 30,000 players spread out between 3500 to 4500 active tables. Nearly all of this traffic is playing Hold’em with only a few hundred players doing anything else. There is nowhere near the volume on PokerStars or Full Tilt and this is sorely reflected in the near total lack of action at any stakes above $10.

Absolute Poker offers a really juicy range of promotions to attract players. Sure, they have the standards like a first time deposit bonus, reload bonuses and refer-a-friend but how many poker sites offer free college tuition? The Absolute Poker College Challenge is an elimination tournament open to college students that gives the winner free tuition and spreads out another $30,000 among the finalists.

There are some other pretty unique promotions such as the ‘7 Deuce’ (special tables where if you win with 7-2 hole cards you pick up a ‘prop bet’ side pot) and the ‘Donkament’ (a monthly $50,000 MTT with frequent player point buy-ins). Absolute Poker also offers satellite tourneys to things like the WPT Foxwoods and Poker Hispano in Costa Rica, as well as Leaderboard challenges and a VIP program.

For first time depositors, the 150% up to $500 bonus is given by using the Absolute Poker Bonus Code AP500. Even if you do not deposit the full $500, you want to take advantage of it since free money is, after all, free money. See our Bonus Page for full details.

See our Absolute-Poker Promotional Code page for more details.

Absolute Poker offers both PC and Mac versions of their software, as well as a java-based browser window for all platforms (including Linux) that requires no download.

The initial PC software download is small at around 250K and takes only a few seconds on DSL, but this is just the installer. The installation takes several minutes more as additional files are needed. However, it is worth the wait. Absolute Poker is a clean and fast platform, pleasing to the eye and offering speedy game action. Security is provided by the industry standard SSLv3/TLSv1 secure socket as well as 256 bit encryption between client computers and their servers.

You will find a pretty standard tabbed lobby for game selection. Standard display data includes average pot, players seeing the flop, and hands per hour. Filtering options are a little strange as Hold’em varieties have a separate filter box with multiple choices, but other games do not. Omaha and Stud, for example, only have tabs at the top of the window to sort the games in ascending or descending lists. Since there is so little traffic in those games it really doesn’t matter that much. Tournaments (including Sit-n-Goes) open in separate lobby windows when selected, providing good detailed information.

The software offers choices such as a 2 or 4 color deck, uploadable player icons, 3 table views (overhead standard, overhead with chairs, side view with tables and chairs). Each player has a round clock that appears and ticks out their remaining decision time. There is a chat box that allows player and observer chat, both of which can be disabled under options. Hand histories are stored on your hard drive by default and current session hands are viewable in both text and graphic forms. A real nice touch is a Rabbit Cam showing what the next card would have been had you not folded.