BASoares

BASoares

Hi, everybody! I’m writing this testimonial to describe my last experience with the PokerSource.com promotion. PokerSource.com has a lot of promotions in many poker rooms. There are basically three types of promotions: no deposit bonus, deposit bonus and free poker gifts. In my case, as I live in Brazil, there aren’t any no deposit offers that I can take (although I’ve taken one of these promotions in the past, as this past promo allowed Brazilians to take advantage of it). Taking a deposit bonus wasn’t an option either because, as I play poker for something like 3 years now, I have accounts in many poker rooms, including all the rooms in the list of available deposit bonus offers. So, I had to take a free poker gift offer. In fact, this was far from being a problem, as I really prefer free poker gifts than the deposit offers.

One big advantage of the free poker gift offers is that you have twice the time to complete the requirements of the promo. This is especially good if you don’t have that much time to dedicate to poker, like in my case. I’ve taken a deposit bonus offer at Carbon Poker some months ago and I couldn’t complete it. As I didn’t have much time to play, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to complete the promo if I played following the conventional bankroll management methods. So, I ended up playing higher limits than I should and I was eventually broken before completing the requirements of the deposit offer.

Another advantage of the free poker gifts offer is that, once you complete the requirements and receive the PokerSource Points, you can choose among a big variety of products such as books, softwares and gift certificates.  In the end, you’ll receive at least the same amount of money you would receive by taking a deposit offer (if the gift is equal or higher than 10000 points, what happens for 90% of the offers).The con of this is that if you decide to purchase a poker gift card, you’ll have to play in the room of the gift card until you earn the right to withdraw the money (by accumulating points). But this isn’t really a problem, for example for a PokerStars $100 gift card, you only have to earn 50 FPPs, which is really easy, before being able to withdraw the money. When you choose a free poker gift promo, you can also take advantage of the first deposit bonus given by the selected room (just like in the deposit offers; that’s why it is at least as lucrative as a deposit offer: PS Points + first deposit bonus).

Ok, time to talk specifically about the Purple Lounge gift offer. The reason why I chose it is because from the rooms I could choose, this was the only one that offered 12000 PS Points. But I may try the other offers in the future, as my experience with a free gift offer was really good. Now, I’ll list a number of pros and cons of Purple Lounge.

At first, I wasn’t really expecting much of Purple Lounge. I had read some reviews of it before starting playing there and I thought it’d be just a common room, without many surprises. It was the first time that I played in a room that uses the Microgaming software, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect of it. The first time I opened the software, I kind of had no reaction because the lobby doesn’t have anything especially good or bad. But then when I opened a table, I had a good surprise. I really liked the layout of the table and the design of the cards and chips. The graphics and animations were very good too. At this point, I started thinking that I’d enjoy playing at Purple Lounge (and yes, I did enjoy playing there).

Normally, there are between 2,000 and 10,000 online players at Purple Lounge and lots of active cash tables in many limits. I don’t really know about the tournaments, they were not my focus. I only played one tournament, a €500 freeroll for new players, and finished it in the 6th position, winning €20. These tournaments take place on every Wednesday and any player who signed up at Purple Lounge in the previous 3 weeks is invited to play in these tournaments (around 1800 registered players). I could have also played a €200 freeroll for first time depositors, but I preferred not playing most of these freerolls because the “real money” is only in the final table (5 or 6 hours to get there, if you get there). I prefer playing cash games than playing these tournaments, as I think that I can make more money in the cash games. But, of course, it depends on each one. If you have time and like tournaments, then give it a try (after all, these tournaments are free).

One bad thing of Purple Lounge is that you can’t check your points in the lobby. There is a “long path” you must follow if you want to check how many points you have. And the points are not updated during the day; they are only updated in the first hours of the week days. The last bad thing is that you can’t do anything with your points, like using them to buy in into tournaments or exchanging them for products. Their support is not online 24h/day and they can be a little confusing sometimes. They first informed me that I couldn’t take advantage of their first deposit bonus. Then, I contacted Poker Source and everything was solved. Still about the first deposit bonus, they say one thing in their website but they apply it in another way. It is not bad for the player, it is even better, but it gave me the impression that they are not very well organized. The support girl seemed a little confused about it too.

Oh, I was almost forgot, you can’t play using dollars as currency. It must be euro. If you deposit only the minimum amount of $50, you might have some problems, since they consider raked hands only the hands that have at least €0.25 of rake. This is especially bad considering that, to have this rake, you must play at least in a 0.05/0.10 pot limit or no limit table. I wasn’t really comfortable with this, because it meant that I’d have to take more money to the tables than my bankroll management allows. So, if you can deposit more than $50, I suggest you do it.

I played no limit Holdem, pot limit Omaha and pot limit Omaha Hi/Lo. And I can tell you for sure that you’ll earn points much faster by playing pot limit Omaha or Omaha Hi/Lo. There are many very loose players playing these games and sometimes very big pots. And the best part of it is that you just need to be dealt cards to earn the points; the points you earn are not proportional to the amount of money you bet. I’m not remembering exactly, but I think I completed this promo in 17 days playing Omaha most of the time.

That’s it. I’d like to finish saying that I really appreciate PokerSource and it is in my opinion the best poker site of its genre. I’ll probably try some other promotions in the future, as this is a very reliable website with very good promos. I’d like to thank their support too; they are always very kind and patient. My username is BASoares and I live in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Thanks for reading it!

BASoares

PokerSource Username: BASoares
Location: Belo Horizonte, Brazil