Ladbrokes Poker - Review

Ladbrokes is one of the most established gambling brands in the world. With this kind of recognition it comes as no surprise that Ladbrokes Poker is Europe's biggest online card room. Player numbers regularly exceed 8,000 at peak times - all spread over around 2000 poker tables. It's easy to see why people enjoy Ladbrokes; there are always great promotions, cash games, and tournaments with larger starting stacks than other Microgaming sites. No wonder there's over 10 Million hands dealt every month!

Ladbrokes Poker are not part of a network all, but do use Microgaming software (who also provide software for the Prima network). The software itself runs smoothly and has good gameplay.

Ladbrokes have two ways to in which to view the tables. The standard 2D view gives players the classic green tables with no avatars No avatars are used. Some useful features are that the software allows players to take notes on the opposition during play and the lobby supplies vital table statistics like the viewed-flop percentage, the average pot and hands played per hour.

The games run at good speed with the software allowing you to play up to eight tables at once, though 5 is recommended using the mini-mode view. The only quibble with the Ladbrokes software is that when bets are made they are shown in terms of staggered denomination of chips. Personally I would have liked to see the figure amount next to a stack of chips when a bet is made, more like other sites. Apart from this the 2D view gets an above average rating.

Ladbrokes Poker have recently launched a 3D version of the table using the Playwize software (a leading developer in console game graphics). Now you can play the same ppoker games, but with characters that display human like movements. In addition, as well as the standard text chat, they've included a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and over 72 actions and expressions to use while playing the game.

Also there are Live poker stats with draw percentages, pot odds, pre-flop hand rankings and best hand indicator have also been included in the software.

Ladbrokes Poker are Europe's busiest poker room and being stand alone (not relying on other room's player base) they are reasonably busy. At peak times there are around 1,500 real money players at the cash games and around 6,000 at the tournament tables.

There's quite a good mix of game at Ladbrokes Poker. Hold'em is the most popular, but there are quite a few Omaha games too. 7 card stud, Omaha hi/lo and 5 card stud games have less frequent games at any reasonable stakes, but ideal for the beginner to gain practice.

There's always Texas Hold'em games available, ranging from micro-limits up to regular $10/$20 NLH games during non-peak hours, raising to ultra high $200/$400 games if there's support.

Ladbrokes is renowned for having some of the loosest action on the net. Flop percentages can often be in the 60% range and all this action is attributed to the “Maniac Scandies” (in the nicest possible way) and their do or die approach to poker. Ladbrokes Poker is a potential goldmine, albeit with high variance, for good players.

The majority of the games at Ladbrokes are 6 max games so an aggressive style is needed somewhat, there are full games though for those who prefer it.

Omaha games are pretty frequent too. As with the NLH there are games from microlimits to $10/$20 PLO games at non-peak hours rising to $50/$100 games if support warrants at peak times.