UltimateBet Poker Review


Ultimate Bet LobbyUltimate Bet Game

Ultimate Bet, established in 1999 and sister site to the beleaguered Absolute Poker (see the [Absolute Poker review] for more info), is another stand-alone poker room running on it’s own software which it has recently upgraded (1st November 2007) to include features like being able to save your hand history, the ability to tile and cascade poker tables for maximum organization and resizeable poker table function. It looks like no other and is a fast, stable platform with a few unique features such as “UltimateBuddy” and Elimination Blackjack.

Besides from offering almost every poker game known to man as well as Roshambo, there are many feature tournaments (see below). The Tournament Leaderboard is a weekly contest where the top MTT players wins prizes. One of UltimateBet’s featured poker professionals is Phil “poker brat” Hellmuth, the blow-hard high stakes player with the world’s biggest ego. The poker lobby itself is slick with it’s darkish tone and flashy graphics. Very easy on the eyes in this man’s humble opinion.

Games, Traffic & Tournaments

Traffic on UltimateBet is high, somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 players on peak hours. The [NLHE] section being by far the busiest with games from $0.01/0.02 to $50/100, other games such as Omaha, 2-7[TD] and Pineapple do run from time to time. Micro-mid stakes [NL] games can always be found and plenty of them. I counted over 100 active full ring games between $0.01/0.02 and $1/2 today and this was at 8am server time. In other words, a good room from the average No Limit player.

Besides from the feature tournaments listed (left), you will find many more tournaments. Between 5 and 10 [MTTs] goes off every hour with buy-ins ranging from a single dollar to $100. A large number of freerolls run on a daily basis, most of them with a tiny or small prize pool. There’s plenty of satellites, both rebuys and freezeouts, to the bigger tournaments as well. $10 to $100 MTTs with a guaranteed prize pool run several times a day if you happen to like those. SnGs from 50c to $5000 are listed although tables above $100 rarely run. 50c to $20 ones do on the other hand and you will never have to wait long for a table to open up if you are a player in this range.

Promotions And Support

UltimateBet’s first deposit bonus is 111% up to $1100. This may sound sounds like a lot of free money but unfortunately, this bonus is extremely difficult to clear. Or should I say it never clears?! 10 Ultimate Points(UPs) is required for every bonus dollar, that’s 100 raked hands at the lower/lowest limits to earn a lousy buck! Even at higher limits, UPs accumulate slowly making this one of the worst bonuses I’ve ever seen. Reloads are frequent but moot since you won’t clear those either without putting in a hideous amount of table hours.

Ultimate Bets support/customer service is good, emails are always answered the same day and mostly within a couple of hours. They are always written in proper english (not a given when it comes to other poker rooms) which is nice. The easy to fill out form for contacting them can be found in the support section on the UltimateBet home page.

Banking

There are plenty of options for when you need to fund your account. Approved methods are VISA, MasterCard, UK Debit Cards, Neteller, ClickandBuy, UKash, Moneybookers, Click2Pay, [ePassporte], paysafecard, Bank Wire and Check. Withdrawals are fast, on average 12-24 hours to Neteller and 7-10 days for checks. NOTE: UltimateBet and Absolute Poker ([Absolute Poker review]) recently started a program which allows you to move money between the two sites, a nice little feature if you are a member of both these poker rooms.

Conclusion

UltimateBet is one of the better poker rooms today with it’s wide variety of games/tournaments, good customer service and prompt cashouts.