The Poker Lab Rat

Evaluating and rating online Poker Rooms for a living is whole heap of fun (if you’re a poker fan). Credible assessments however also require a rigorous process to ensure consistency and the investment of considerable time-in at the tables.

As online Gambling Site testers we rate poker rooms from a range of player perspectives. To achieve this the PokerLabRat.com team includes US, UK, European and Southern Hemisphere members with a balance between professional gamblers, systems guys and casual players.

A poker room scorecard is completed by each tester for each online poker room tested. This scorecard covers a range of evaluation criteria including totally no-brainer areas like a site’s SECURITY (financial as well as technical), REPUTATION (including a media search for ‘noise’) and MONEY MATTERS (how easy it is for a player to deposit and cash out and any strings attached).

We tested 170 online casinos in our last round of evaluations (December 2006) and publish Poker Room Reviews on the top 12 online poker rooms that pass our test criteria, and that we enjoy to play at ourselves. Poker Rooms on PokerLabrat.com are re-tested quarterly and all test data (pass & fail) is collated into a set of industry benchmark data in support of future evaluations.

We fail or reject a staggering 93% of all poker sites we test.

Despite the wide range of criteria we assess, Competition (The Fish Factor) and/or Bonuses are two criteria that often outweight all other factors for many online poker players when looking for a new poker room.

We are often asked how these 2 areas are scored and of course which poker rooms are best accordingly. I’ll outline our apprach to assessing poker room competition below. More details are available on site.

COMPETITION (The Fish Factor)
This one is tricky as it involves sampling a poker room’s poker play. The best we can assess is a snapshot, but as long as the method is consistently applied we can compare results.

Each of our 12 test team members plays Texas Hold’em for at least 5 hours at each poker room during peak and then off-peak play times over the one month test period. (That’s 10 hours total for each tester per poker room). Tables are chosen at random from the poker room lobby from both low stakes and high. Tournament play is excluded from these tests (we assess this separately).  This is where it gets a tad subjective - each tester’s perception of table competition is scored on a scale of 1-4 (Loose, Medium, Tight, Professional) and overall results are compiled and later compared across all poker sites tested.

Poker.com has topped our ‘Best Fish’ poker ratings for 3 consecutive quarterly assessments (Dec 2006, Sep 2006 and June 2006). Poker.com is an Australian owned and operated purpose built (and ultra stylish) poker room that is licenced in Kahnawake, Canada and they still accept USA residents. 

Canbet Poker has been Poker.com’s runner up for Fish in the last 2 assessments. Canbet is a subsidiary of International All Sports Limited (a publicly traded company and so no longer accepting US residents). Canbet runs on the Ongame Poker Network.