Paddy Power Poker

Paddy Power is an Irish based bookmaker who also offers online poker and casino games on the iPoker platform. I haven’t played on Paddy Power in quite a while. One of the first things to note about playing and betting on the Paddy Power platform is they are the largest bookmaker, according to stock market valuation, in Europe. They offer lots of promos in their sports betting, including cash back on some losing bets under certain conditions.

Deposit and withdrawal limits

The minimum deposit at Padedy Power is just £5.00 for accounts in Pounds Sterling and €5.00 for accounts in Euros. These minimums apply to all available deposit methods.

The available payment methods are Visa and MasterCard credit cards, Entropay cards, Switch and Maestro debit cards, Laser cards, Visa Electron cards, Paypal, Skrill, Ukash vouchers, Neteller, Paysafe card vouchers, bank transfers and cheques.

The only deposit method that is not the five euro or five pound minimum is cash deposit, which starts at 10 euros or pounds and has to be done in one of the betting shops.

Withdrawals start at £10.00 or €10.00 by all the above payment methods except for Ukash vouchers and Paysafecard vouchers, neither of which is available for withdrawal;s.

The Default settings can kill you

As I recently wiped my laptop. I had to reinstall Paddy Poker. I forgot just how annoying some of the default settings are on iPoker. The first thing I noticed was a ridiculous dealer voice speaking as each part of the hand progresses, so some of the first things I did were to address these default settings.

  1. I went to the settings menu, clicked on Audio and unchecked ‘Dealer Sound’ to get rid of that annoyance. Instant lowering of blood pressure!
  2. Then I changed Cards to a 4-color deck and the shiny red background
  3. In system I clicked Check Store Hand history locally. A vital requirement if you are using poker tracking software.

Super Turbo not super busy

I began playing at off-peak time. I checked the Super Turbo heads up games; the traffic was disappointing, there wasn’t many games running. I began by playing a Super Turbo €5 heads up no Limit game as it was the only table at the time with a player waiting at the €5 stakes or less. The fee was €.20 which at a calculation of €.20/€4.80 works out at 4.167%, this is not great, over a percentage point higher than either Full Tilt or PokerStars.

My opponent also seemed tough enough, he certainly knew how to play good heads up poker, I got the impression he was one of the regulars there. I then tried a €1 game, this opponent wasn’t as good, one glaring mistake was his raising 3BBs instead of the routine 2BBs that you should usually do in heads up poker. Needless to say I won against the tougher opponent and lost against the poorer one. Such is poker!

Poker sites, you need to think about visuals!

I meant to continue playing, but life got in the way, so I had to wait another day before I returned to play. When I logged on an Irish Open Popup appeared. It actually took me a while to figure out it was a pop up as it blended in too neatly with the background. Sites should really think about these things, it’s only a minor thing but all these annoyances add up. I only noticed it was a pop-up when my clicking on buttons wasn’t working, and I finally spotted the grey ok button (THE SAME COLOR AS THE BACKGROUND! C’mon!).

Twister was soft but quiet but once again annoying.
I decided to try Twister, that new variant of poker where you can win a huge multiple of your buy-in up to 1000 times. What was a bit worrying was there was a waiting list for a €5 game, granted I didn’t have to wait long but if I play this type of game I don’t want to be waiting around at all, even at off-peak time. Also the mechanism display for deciding the prize appears over the table as a time-bar, it hadn’t finished by the time it was my turn to act, another annoyance!

The good news though was the standard of play was pretty terrible. I managed to win the game very quickly as my two opponents made two very loose all-in calls pre-flop and my better hand held up both times; unfortunately it was for the minimum prize of €10.

Another annoyance, you spotting the trend here!

I moved on to No Limit Hold Em Cash games. Once again, I was confounded by the default settings on Paddy Power Poker (I imagine this goes for all of the iPoker skins).

The lobby comes in 3 views;

  • a detailed view
  • a view where you can opt to click on ‘play now’ without seeing any details of the individual tables
  • a hybrid view where you can view tables by stake.

Either the first or the last view are fine to use in my opinion but the default is the middle one, which happens to be the least useful one of the three, especially as clicking on ‘play now’ more often than not resulted in a ‘no table was available’ message, even though there were ones available when I went into the detailed view.

Soft micro, tough low limit No limit hold’em cash games.
On with the game itself! No surprise that the micro games were soft with several players limping and both strange and transparent bet-sizing. The 6-man £.25/£.50 game I played however was tough and I’ll hold my hands up and say I was probably the worst player at the table, something I don’t often say at low limit cash games even if they are not my speciality.

PLO is where the action’s at

I played two Pot Limit Omaha games, one at €.10/.€20 and one at €.25/€50, both times there was one poor loose aggressive player. I doubled up my minimum starting stack of 40 BBs in the first game unfortunately in the second one I lost my stack against the poor LAG when he hit his flush draw.

I didn’t try the Multi Table tournaments. These have always been softer on iPoker than on the likes of Pokerstars and to be perfectly honest I don’t even need to try them to know that here is where you will find the loosest of players. Remember though there is a trade-off between having a higher proportion of poorer players in these MTTS. Variance is far higher than in most other poker formats, and also you have to put a lot of hours in before you reach the money stage of tournaments.

Summary

This review is just a snapshot of Paddy Power at off-peak poker playing times, but I think interesting nonetheless. Game play wise the only noticeable difference that I found in comparison to Full Tilt, the review of which you can read here. There was a clearly poor loose aggressive player on both of the 6-max PLO games I played. If your PLO is as good or is better than your Hold Em game then this would seem like the better option on Paddy Power.