The Skinny: Have you
heard all those stories about online poker
sites full of bad players? Well, no joke
here --- Poker
Heaven is one of the softest and
wildest sites we've seen yet... and
that is saying something.
It really is Poker in Heaven at PokerHeaven.com.
PokerHeaven is mostly marketed to European
and Asian countries, and is a middling-sized
site that might well be worth your look.
It has all the basics: a decent selection
of games, convenient (if unusual) banking
options, and that oh-so-soft competition.
U.S players who are playing around 9pm
est will be facing a wide range of late
night British players, many who have been
drinking all night and are, well let's
just say they aren't making the best decisions
at the poker table as they might have
when they first started their session.
Some of these players have been more than
willing to hand over their valuable British
pounds, all night long. Don't worry, pokerheaven
has a currency converter that allows you
to seamlessly change between currencies
and you don't face any penalties.
Poker Heaven is one of the larger poker
rooms on the Gibralter-based St. Minver
Limited network, an online gaming concern
well established in other areas. St. Minver
--- a big player in online bingo --- is
also the player who gobbled up the old
Gala Group stuff a couple of years back.
But, yeah, we get it: you don't care about
that stuff as much as you care about how
it is to play at heaven and and how it
runs. So let's dig right in.
The
Coolest Thing about Poker Heaven
The coolest thing about Poker Heaven (other
than the truly awful players) is their
wide spread of hold-'em tournaments at
middle-limit buy-ins. Entry numbers that
range from the many-dozens to several-hundreds,
you're not forced to play forever just
for a chance to take one of them down.
For instance, a $30+$3 NL freezeout here
might have 300 players, versus a thousand
or two... or more... on Stars or Party.
We know that there's both sides to the
argument, too; if you do happen to do
well in one of those big Stars tourneys,
you'll take down a big stack of dead prezzies.
Still, it's great to have other options.
You'll also find some nice satellite opportunities
to the $250,000 Guaranteed weekly event,
WSOP-seat finals and other juicy items.
$500 Freeroll every Monday
All you have to do is play at least 100
raked hands in the past seven days, which
takes less than an hour or so on average.
This is a juicy freeroll each and every
Monday that you have no excuse not to
play in if you are playing online poker.
The poker interface
is slick (if a bit leaden.)
Heaven plays very well if you're playing
one, two or three tables, though not so
good if you'd like to try four or the
maximum five. And it's not that the software
doesn't function at the higher numbers,
because it chugs along just fine; it's
just that the other tricks and trinkets
embedded into the games make it somewhat
harder to say on top of what's what. The
software is at times complex, and the
players are often new; the result is play
that can be slower than at some larger
sites with the more basic software.
But hey, that's part of the trade off.
Anyone thinking that a new player making
the wrong decisions is always going to
make those wrong decisions instantaneously
just doesn't have his head on straight.
So accept a bit of slowness as a consequence
of being part of that juicy action, and
there is a lot of juicy action.
Deposit Bonus
Poker Heaven offers a nice sign-up bonus,
typically 100% of your deposit, based
on playing a set number of hands in ring
games. This bonus is rather easy to clear.
Say you deposit $100. In this example,
you are eligible to receive a $100 matching
bonus, payable in two chunks: the first
$25 will be released when you've played
250 hands, and the other $75 follows when
you've played an additional 750 hands.
That compares well with what you'll find
elsewhere. Additional promotions are announced
through e-mails and announcements at the
Poker
Heaven's main web site. They
also have a 4 level VIP program that starts
out with entry into freerolls, to $20
added to your account each month, to exclusive
VIP freerolls and entries into the large
land based events.
Banking
Banking with Poker Heaven is slick, though
a bit unusual. Players who insist on using
only Neteller or Firepay are in for some
disappointment, because Poker Heaven contracts
its banking services out to another player
in this market, Sweden-based WebDollar.
WebDollar is no fly-by-night operation;
rather, they rank with Click2Pay in the
second tier of international hierarchy
of online billfold services, in terms
of how they've been marketed to U.S. players.
They're a strong European player in this
market, they mail you a security key immediately
(you'll need this when it comes time to
withdraw your winnings), and you shouldn't
have many concerns in giving them a try.
Poker Heaven Software As for the software itself, the
table and tournament selection matrix
on the main page offers lots of detail,
but the downside is that it's a bit cluttered
and hard to use --- you'll need to use
it a bit to get comfortable with the feel.
The initial overview grid is nigh-on-useless.
You'll need to have an idea of what games
or tourneys you're interested in before
honing in on the tables of choice.
Poker Heaven offers dozens of filtering
and sorting options, based on game family
and stakes type, limit version, players,
and so on. Poker Heaven also includes
filters based on full tables (whether
or not exclude) and nationality, if you
only want to play at British tables, you
can do so. One hint: the
non-U.S. denominations are often the juiciest
tables, and you'll be able to see
the real-time exchange rate as you join
the table to take your seat. (click
to play now)
Each Poker Heaven table is flagged with
the colors of a specific nation, though
play at that table is not limited
to players only from that country. What
it does, however, is offer a partial soritng
mechanism based on currency in play, becasue
Poker Heaven offers tables with four different
international currencies: the U.S. dollar,
the British pound, the Euro, and the new
Turkish lira (TRY), also familiar to other
parts of the Middle East. And when all
these currencies are mixed together in
the table matrix, it can be a bit daunting
to figure out which table is your most
comfortable choice.
Another quirk of the software is in the
sorting, which is alpha-based even in
numeric fields. So you might find a sorted
field of limit tourneys where the listings
go from $10 to $100 to $20, because the
software thinks that makes the most sense.
Who are we to argue?
Excellent Table Game Variety
You'll find the normal games being spread
at Poker Heaven --- that being Hold'em,
Omaha, 7-Card Stud... plus 5-Card Draw,
which we haven't seen being offered many
places at all lately, outside of Paradise.
The Hold'em comes in no-, pot- and fixed-limit
versions; the same holds true for the
Omaha; but the 7-Stud is dealt as a fixed-limit
game only, not the pot-limit available
on some other sites. As for the 5-Card
Draw, there's a special treat for for
you here, if you're type of player that
likes to sample the more scarce game variations:
In additional to the traditional 5-Card
Draw game, Poker Heaven also serves up
the 7-A ("seven to ace") version of the
game, which I'd played previously... let's
see... exactly never. So being the good
reporter/reviewer type, I had to check
it out.
Strange game, but fun... and once you
get the hang of the rules you'll discover
that the old card-keeping decisions and
mis-direction plays from the normal version
of draw work just the same here. But 7-A
is a bizarre game, and one flaw with Poker
Heaven is that while they offer this game
on their site, they do not provide an
adequate explanation of the rules. I eventually
surfed the web and found a decent explanation
at Sports betting.com. I recommend highly
that you familiarize yourself with this
before attempting to play 7-A, unless
you've already seen the game. You need
to know the following, at a minimum:
1) 7-A draw is played with a short deck;
if four or less players are seated, then
the cards seven up through ace are used
(this would be 32 cards, the same as a
sheepshead deck); if five players are
seated, then the four sixes are added
to the deck, meaning that 36 cards are
in play.
2) The ace is a wrap-around card for straight
purposes, serving as low as well as high.
However, because the number of players
at the table affects the size of the deck,
the qualifying low straight changes. When
four or fewer are playing, the low straight
is 10-9-8-7-A, but when a full five are
seated, the low straight becomes 9-8-7-6-A,
and 10-9-8-7-6 is second-best with the
10-9-8-7-A hand no longer a valid straight
at all.
Confusing stuff, until you get the hang
of it. We sacrificed an incredible $10
to penetrate the shrouds of secrecy and
bring the you the key differences in the
rules. Well, someone had to, right?
Flaws in Heaven?(pokerheaven
that is)
We can think of only two, though they
are significant to some players. You will
find neither note-taking capabilities
nor decent play-tracking stats. In a way,
we'd say that makes it play like real-life
poker, though of course it's non-standard
in terms of the online game. It's up to
you decide if this is a plus or minus
for your purposes, though we've found
that for many of the crazed-'n'-clueless
types you'll encounter, it just doesn't
matter. Final Thoughts on Poker Heaven
We give pokerheaven
a strong plus. Poker Heaven is new in
the US and primarily marketed to international
audiences, and the poker explosion noticed
in the U.S is just now happening there,
and that means a lot of new (bad) players
joining the site. Yes, PokerHeaven has
its quirks, as all sites do, there's enough
going on here to recommend you giving
it a whirl. Your bankroll will respect
you in the morning.
Poker Heaven Software
