If you’re trying to find an online poker site to join, this is the page for you. We’ve compiled a list of the best cardrooms on the Internet, ranked them, and listed them here. These are the websites we recommend when our personal friends or family members ask us where they should play poker games on the Web.

• Best New Online Poker Sites For Us Players

Best Online Poker Sites. The linked sites offer opportunities to learn and enjoy poker by providing articles, odds, and play money games. Card Player recommends these poker sites for those purposes only: Americas Cardroom, Ignition Casino, BetOnline, Global Poker, Black Chip Poker, Sports Betting Poker. At the best online poker sites, you'll find a good range of MTTs or a quick SNG (Sit 'n Go) for some quick cash. Online satellites, meanwhile, offer the chance to spin a buy-in up into a massive live event entry.

When choosing which cardrooms qualify as the “best online poker sites”, we paid particular attention to safety and trust. How the player interface works, the games available, and the level of competition also played a role in our rankings.

Of course, you shouldn’t just blindly follow recommendations from strangers online, either. Here’s some background about us:

• We have a combined 20+ years’ experience with online gambling.
• All of us play Texas holdem and other poker games.
• We have experience on both sides of the business, as both players and as marketers.

A Quick Online Poker History Lesson and How It Affects U.S. Players

The online poker boom was fun while it lasted, but the legal implications caused significant changes in where you can play from the United States. At one time, Party Poker was the #1 choice in the USA, but they left the market in 2006 to focus on international poker.

PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and Ultimate Bet wasted no time trying to fill Party’s shoes. They were all forced to leave the U.S. market, too, in 2011. Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet both shut down completely. PokerStars acquired Full Tilt Poker and renewed their commitment to poker throughout the world, sans the United States.

That’s what the rest of this page covers.

Choosing the Right Online Poker Site

You want to choose an online poker site that’s going to provide you with a great customer experience. How do we define that in terms of Internet poker?

• A great customer experience means being able to play the poker games you want. This includes more than just Texas holdem for many players.
• A great customer experience means being able to deposit and withdraw your funds quickly and easily. The sites we list have been vetted for customer-friendly banking options.
• A great customer experience means being able to enjoy the interface. Clunky, outdated software won’t do.

Even though a lot of poker sites have left the United States market, you’ll still find a bewildering number of choices. That’s why we’ve put together this comprehensive guide to your options. We’re confident you’ll be satisfied with almost every aspect of the player experience at all the sites we’ve listed.

Top Online Poker Sites by Category

Different poker players have different needs. If you’re looking for a 5-card stud game, an online cardroom which only offers Texas holdem and Omaha is a bad choice — even if it scores well among all our other criteria. When you’re shopping around, keep in mind what preferences you have.

In fact, we recommend putting together a list of what you’re looking for from a poker room.

• Are you just looking for low-stakes Texas holdem games?
• Do you want to play in a lot of freerolls?
• Are you a sit-n-go specialist?
• Do you also want to be able to bet on sports or play casino games some of the time?
• Are you going to be playing primarily from a mobile device?

Here are some of the categories we use when ranking online poker sites:

Anytime a new online poker site hits the scene we get excited. While some new
sites disappoint, plenty are a welcomed sight. Newer sites tend to have better
bonuses, upgraded features, and a lot more potential to grow into solid staples
of the online gaming community. They also tend to be loaded full of new fish
thanks to varied marketing efforts.

If you’re ready to try out some brand new online poker sites, check out the
list we have provided below. These are the best new online poker sites that
offer a great change of pace.

Best New Online Poker Sites For Us Players

These sites have been fully vetted by our staff of online gaming experts for
trust, reliability, security, user interface, customers support, and more. Just
because an online poker site is new does not mean that it gets a free pass to
fly under our review radar. Remember, none of these sites can pay for a better
review or a higher recommendation. The only way that a new online poker site can
make this list is by offering a great product that you can trust.

Why Check out a New Site?

Checking out a new online poker site can sometimes seem like an unnecessary
move. If you’ve already got your own poker home, it may seem silly to fix what’s
not broken. What we want to point out today is that there are several reasons
that you may want to rethink staying put.

Soft Action

New online poker sites are notorious for having some of the softest action on
the planet. Their marketing efforts are usually targeted at market sectors that
existing sites haven’t gone after. This means a lot of brand new players who
have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

On top of having a lot of fish, new poker sites have a lot fewer sharks than
the established brands. Sharks can be lazy or unaware that a new opportunity has
presented itself. Sharks also tend to be loyal to the sites they play on because
they may be chasing some sort of loyalty bonus. This means that the newer sites
will be fish filled and ripe for the pickings.

Great Promos

New online poker sites almost always have fat marketing budgets set aside to
try and acquire new players. It’s so important for their future survival to snag
regular players that they will often offer over the top bonuses and promotions
to get you on board. Whether you plan on staying at a new site or not, these are
usually worth taking a look at.

It’s not uncommon to see astronomical deposit
bonuses, cash back offers, as well as other non-monetary perks.

As the site begins to grow its player base, you can expect them to dial back
the promos to be more in line with the rest of the industry. This means it’s
important to strike early while they have the free money faucet cranking.

Anonymity

No one ever said that you have to have the same screen name on every poker
site you play on. If you’re a well-known player on multiple sites, it may be a
welcomed opportunity to play somewhere that no one knows who you are. All of
their notes and observations on your tendencies are going to go out the window.
They’ll have to start over from square one to try and figure out how you play.

Keep in mind that other players have this option as well. If they choose to
change their screen name, you may be back in the dark about their play styles.
You also may run into players snagging a better-known players screenname so be
aware of that as well.

Every site on the planet has an Isildur1,
but very few of them are actually Viktor Blom. The strategic take away is not to
automatically assume that it’s the same person before you can confirm it.

Tips for Checking out a New Site

When checking out a brand new online poker site, you need to keep several
things in mind. While the experience should be fairly similar to existing sites,
there are some special precautions you need to take and things you must be aware
of.

Trust and Reliability

One of the major reasons we recommend a lot of established online poker sites
is because of their track record. We like to look at their lifespan in the
industry and their history of how they treat their customers. With new online
poker sites, they have no track record. It’s a clean slate which is nice, but it
makes it more challenging to determine whether or not the site can be trusted.

At the risk of sounding like we’re telling you what to do, this is the reason
we recommend only trying new online poker sites that we’ve recommended. We’re
able to use our industry contacts and some resources we have access to in order
to properly vet these new sites in a much quicker manner than you might be able
to. While a site that we haven’t recommended might be great, there’s no real way
for you to know.

Consider Your Screen Name Choice

As we’ve already touched on, there is no requirement to keep the same screen
name that you normally use at a new online poker site. This means that the world
is your oyster and you are free to choose any name that you would like.

Well, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

If you’re looking to build up your brand as an online player, you should
probably keep the same screen name. Isildur and other online monsters like him
only got the sponsorship deals that they did because they kept the same name
across all sites they played on. This allowed people to take notice of them and
realize how great they were at the game.

If you’re not concerned about sponsorship deals, though, you may want to
consider the strategic implications of your name choice. Keeping the same name
means that people will know who you are and be able to continue using their
notes from previous sessions with you. In our opinion, it would be best to
change your name and force any opponents that also come to the new site to start
from square one figuring out your game again.

Fill out Withdrawal Forms Early

If you’ve been playing online poker for years, you may have forgotten that
with your first withdrawal you were required to fill out forms confirming your
identity. In the old days of online poker, this wasn’t standard everywhere. Some
sites required verification, and some did not. Over the past few years, it has
become much more commonplace. This means that before you are allowed to make
your first withdrawal, you will have to fill out a few forms to confirm your
identity.

This only takes a few minutes and a few days for the site to confirm. This
doesn’t seem bad at all unless you wait to do it when you make your first
deposit. Online poker sites will allow you to fill out these forms at any point
in time. We recommend that you get the forms filled out the second you create
your new account. That way when it comes time for you to cash off your winnings
you don’t have any extended and unexpected wait periods.

Getting Started

There’s no time like the present to check out some of these brand new online
poker sites. While we normally tell people to take their time with things, this
is a situation where it’s important to strike while the iron is hot. As the
sites grow in popularity, the bonuses will become less absurd, and the sharks
will slowly move in to gobble up the fish.

We also recommend checking back often
as we are constantly updating this list removing sites that are no longer new
and adding sites that enter the market.