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Thousands of websites are giving their opinions on what the best poker rooms are. Almost every poker or gambling related website includes a poker room reviews section. But can these reviews actually be trusted?
The answer is no, most of the reviews aren’t genuine. Where there’s money there’s corruption, and there’s a lot of money in the online poker industry. Even the largest poker sites ranking high in search engines will adjust their reviews based on how much a particular poker room is paying them
Online poker sites pay their affiliates a fixed amount of money to sign up players through their site. The problem is that instead of writing reviews on the poker sites, they make up the reviews based on how much money they’re getting paid. I’ve seen poker rooms that are notorious for having the worst quality software and no traffic ranking #1 on many popular poker room reviews sites, just because those rooms offer more money for sign ups.
The poker rooms don’t want you giving them negative ratings. If you read an affiliate terms and conditions policy it will explain that you’re obligated to promote them, “As widely and aggressively as possible so as to maximize the financial benefit to affiliate and to company.” So this means that poker rooms won’t even let you give them any negative reviews or else they’ll ban you from their program.
What ends up happening is many poker room review sites recommend EVERY poker room. All of the poker rooms they rate get a 5/5 or very close to it. Bad aspects of the room are ignored because the ‘job’ as an affiliate isn’t to give honest advice; it’s to sell the room to the readers.
But don’t worry; online poker isn’t filled with only cheats and liars. My site, for one, has detailed and honest poker room reviews. If you can sift through those review sites giving obvious false reviews you’ll find a bunch giving valuable information. Just be aware that many exist only to make money from you.
Mike Jonas runs an online poker blog hosting site which features reviews on online poker rooms. You can find mike playing poker on Full Tilt Poker.
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