Online poker?

[Big A]

Most of the sites use money transfers via Western Union which you can make an account and fund it with regular credit card or you can mail a check to them. Obviously using western union will get money in your account within an hour as opposed to a week mailing a check. Most of these sites survive on US play and are located very close, ie Costa Rica, Caribbean, and Canada. When you want to cash out, same 2 options on some sites, but most mail a check which from Costa Rica is only 3-4 days. Some also offer overnight service to Fed Ex you a check overnight that you get next day.

One thing you need to be careful with Poker sites is that there is no central regulation and many sites have been caught cheating where one of the owners plays in programming mode where he can see everyone cards

This guy was finally just caught last year and the site was Full Tilt Poker which had tons of poker celebrities backing it up, didnt Look any more legit than that and look what happened:

The fugitive CEO of an online poker parlor was grabbed by the feds at Kennedy Airport yesterday after returning from Ireland to face a slew of criminal charges.

Ray Bitar, 40, is charged with violating Internet gambling laws and defrauding customers of FullTiltPoker.com of more than $430 million.

The site was one of three shut down by the FBI last year on a day that online gamblers have since dubbed “Black Friday.”

At the arraignment yesterday in Manhattan federal court, prosecutor Arlo Devlin-Brown said Bitar faced “decades” in the slammer if convicted.

Devlin-Brown said Bitar ran Full Tilt as “little more than a Ponzi scheme” — falsely assuring bettors that their money would be kept in “segregated accounts” — and personally reaped at least $40 million from the scam.

In a prepared statement, Bitar said: “I know a lot of people are very angry at me . . . I believe we are near the end of a very long road, and I will continue to do whatever is required to get the players repaid, and I hope that it will happen soon.”

Bitar was ordered held on $2.5 million bond after pleading not guilty, and is due back in court on Monday.

[Big A]

Here's the article on Absolute Poker, another very well known and trusted site before fraud was found

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/t/story?id=3752500&page=1

[Happy Panther]

Yeah i followed the cheating. The 2+2 forums nailed it from the beginning and some of the guys were using interesting stats to prove the nefariousness.

 

I don't play large stakes and have always been profitable so I am not worried.

[Mother Grabber]

I remembered that I have a credit union visa. Worked just fine.

 

I was recommended 2 sites: Carbon Poker and Bovada (the US version of Bodog)

 

Carbon has a better interface however the customer service is bad. I contacted them 3 times and never received a response. Once was in response to the servers going down. It may have been on my end I'm not sure. But when i was able to reconnect the two games I was in were gone and no evidence that I had played (no hand history etc). The money was gone though. Someone suggested that I go on 2+2 forums as there is usually a CP rep there. But I wanted to try Bovada.

 

Bovada has great customer service. I have contacted them by both email and phone and they couldn't be better or quicker. The interface isn't quite as good as CP and the games aren't perfect. They have 10/5/3 min blind options for single table SnGs. 5 is my pref but they only have 6 player tables. I only play 9 player. I may email and ask if they will open some.

 

Bovada seems jucier so far. There were some decent plays on CP.

 

I play on Carbon free money games.  I haven't put any money back into online poker sites since FullTilt way back when.  I've read on Deuces Cracked about quite a few problems getting money out with the Merge poker network, which Carbon is on.  That seems consistent with your customer service problems you ran into.  It'll be a while before I trust online poker again.  Maybe I'll give Bovada a look.

 

[Happy Panther]

I play on Carbon free money games.  I haven't put any money back into online poker sites since FullTilt way back when.  I've read on Deuces Cracked about quite a few problems getting money out with the Merge poker network, which Carbon is on.  That seems consistent with your customer service problems you ran into.  It'll be a while before I trust online poker again.  Maybe I'll give Bovada a look.

 

Yeah it's pretty good. One interesting thing is there are no avatars or names. Just player 1,2,3 etc. But you can assign notes to players which will be permanent. The chat feature is not nearly as good on Bovada but sometimes it is nice that way.

 

I think are are more people on Bovada. As far as waiting for a $10 table to fill up it rarely takes more than a few minutes. On Carbon it would take a long time sometimes.

 

Not sure if that is game specific.

[Cary Kollins]

I put $32 dollars on bovada for Cam to be MVP at 33/1 odds. He wins I get over $1k. I like it.

[teeray]

Is it sad that I still played at Absolute Poker a lot even after the Potripper scandal?

I play at Bovada now. They do a good job. Never had any issues.