Overall Ultimate Bet is a good card room. Ultimate Bet have a lot of good things going for them making it a worthwhile place to play. Ultimate Bet has a wide a variety of game and tournament options, especially when it comes to the range of limits available. The limits at Ultimate Bet range from penny blind no limit and pot limit games to monster games. On the high side while a lot of card rooms offer very high limits, few ever have a game going. At Ultimate Bet you can always find a very high limit game to play or just to sweat for fun. (One of my favorite things to do is watch Phil Helmuth, possibly the greatest tournament player in the world, get his ego checked in the ring games at Ultimate Bet. Look for him in high limit triple draw and Omaha often playing head up against someone who cant even spell poker.)
The selection of games offered at Ultimate bet is excellent. Games are all the standards, Holdem, and Omaha, Omaha 8 or better, and Stud both regular and 8 or better hi/lo. Ultimate Bet also offer Crazy Pineapple, both high and 8 or better, triple draw poker with Duce to Seven and A-5 low versions, and something called Royal Holdem where the deuces through nines have been removed from the deck. Limits at Ultimate Bet range from penny blind all the way up to 300/600 blinds in the no limit games and as high as 300/600 limits in the limit games. You will find the higher games on a regular basis. Ultimate Bet also has a small offering of no limit holdem games with small blinds and unlimited buy ins.
The promotions are good at Ultimate bet. Ultimate Bet offers a $600.00 100% bonus on first deposits. Use bonus code ‘OPR’. Ultimate Bet often increase this bonus on a temporary basis. Ultimate Bet also has a good reload bonus. Ultimate Bet offers a wide range of other promotions including free rolls, jackpots and special satellite tournament for large land based events.
When you can find them (see the bad), Ultimate Bet does have a great selection of tournaments. The sit and goes come in all flavors, turbo, two table heads elimination matches, multi tables, short tables in a buy range that go from 1.00 to $5.000. The regular tournaments also offer the same kind of variety. Whatever your tournament pleasure is you will find it at Ultimate Bet.
Ultimate Bet have one thing I really love about the sit n go tournaments I feel is worth mentioning, because I have not seen it anyplace else yet (not that I have been everyplace else yet). Instead of sitting down at an open table, or trying to catch a game on the list before it fills up, they put all the players on a queue. Once the game starts you are seated. This system shines when things are really busy. If you have ever clicked on a tournament table with 6 empty seats at a place only to find the tournament full you will really appreciate this innovation.
The Ultimate Bet game interface itself is decent. Playing in tournaments I really think the feedback could be better, but it works. The rest of it, the chat. Player notes, buttons and things all work smoothly and it is an elegant interface to play on.
Ultimate bet has good traffic making finding the game and tournament of your choice available most the time. The low and medium limit hold games always have a lot of action 24/7.
Ultimate Bet seems to be on top of things with their shuffle security. The page explaining the process they shuffle the deck with is long, detailed and technical with good explanations for the lay person.
The lobby is hard to navigate, there is room for improvement here. I have played at UB often and always have a bad time locating tournaments or games my friends have suggested. It’s not bad if you’re just shopping around for a game. I also have a very bad time figuring our exactly when tournaments are going to start. I don’t understand why UB and most other card rooms do not ask what time zone you are in so they can give you the time in your particular zone.
For those interested, we recommend visiting pokerplayersalliance.org, a group that has been organized to represent the rights and interests of American poker players.