Best Online Poker Sites 2021. Play at the best online poker sites of 2021! With our expert rankings and in-depth reviews of the best online poker sites it's easy to choose the right one. We also provide the best sign-up bonuses for players that open a new account via our PokerListings links. If you’re new to the world of online poker and are looking for high-quality poker training, there are several online poker training sites that I would like to recommend. Run It Once — One of the top poker training sites featuring coaching from Phil Galfond, a legendary poker professional.
A minimum deposit poker site is one that allows players to make deposits as small as $5 to $20 (though you could argue that a site with a minimum deposit of $50 fits the list too). These micro stakes poker sites exist because not everyone can afford to deposit hundreds or thousands of dollars. Others prefer to treat online poker as a hobby. When you factor in that online the stakes are as low as .01/.02 and .05 for tournaments, depositing more than $20 or $50 is unnecessary for many players.
If you’re shopping for a minimum deposit poker site, you’ll find our top recommendations below. Further down the page you can read about the benefits of small deposit poker sites and what the best games are for playing poker on a budget.
The minimum deposit required will be different from one online poker room to the next. The following are the top US poker sites with small deposit requirements. Bovada andIgnition accept $10 poker deposits using Bitcoin or $20 deposits using MasterCard. Intertops Poker has a minimum deposit of $25. And finally, Sportsbetting and BetOnline have $50 minimum deposit requirements. Once you make a small deposit, play in the micro stakes poker games to manage your bankroll and clear any wagering requirements for your poker bonus.
Credit cards will often have the lowest minimum deposit requirements at popular poker rooms. However, keep in mind that some of them will have fees too, which obviously raises the minimum a bit. Visit sites’ payment method pages to learn about minimum deposits and withdrawals. You’ll find that $10-$20 is the norm, while other (arguably better) options have much higher minimum limits.
You might considering depositing a small amount for a couple of reasons.
One, making a small poker deposit minimizes your risks. There are more bad or unstable sites than there are good and stable poker rooms. By making a small deposit you have the opportunity to test the site out. If they turn out to be bad it’s not such a big deal. You only have $10, $20 or $30 invested in the site.
Secondly, you might not want to deposit that much money until you’re sure you like the site first. While reviews help, they don’t replace hands on experience. You might want to play different games or stakes, not to mention that your experience depositing or working with support might be different than any review you read. Furthermore, many (if not most) reviews are biased. Anyway, the point is that you’ll want to try a site first, but without having to deposit hundreds of dollars to do so.
For a lot of people it’ll just come down to budget. For everyone else you can use the minimum requirements to your advantage to reduce the risk of playing poker online.
If you’re on a budget there are certain poker games that I recommend over others.
The best games to play on a budget are sit’n go’s (SNGs), namely the multi-table variations. What I like about them is that they’re relatively easy to learn, primarily a pre-flop game, have large payouts compared to the buy-in and smaller variance compared to large MTTs. They give you more bang for your buck too – where else can you play a game for 45 minutes to 2 hours for as low as $1?!
Those are the best games to play. The games you should avoid include heads-up, hyper turbos, double or nothings or any sort of short stack game. These have a lot of variance to them, and while you can earn a lot of money quickly, you can lose your ass just as fast. The games I mentioned above have a solid balance of variance and opportunity.
Accept entry into any freerolls offered. Most poker sites give new players a ticket into a new depositors’ free-roll poker event. Always accept entry, even if the prize pool is small. You’re playing on the margins with minimum deposits, so any small bonuses or freerolls matter.
I would also avoid cash games. If you do, with a $20 deposit the highest you should play is .01/.02 games. Many people just don’t have the patience to grind out a bankroll in order to move up. If you do, by all means play them. Otherwise I would just stick to the games I mention above, build a roll and then make the switch to cash (if you want) when you have $500-$1,000. At that point you can play 50nl.
Depositing small amounts in online poker rooms can lead to negative experiences too. So you want to keep the following points in mind when making your deposit.
These are important points to keep in mind because you could lose out on hundreds or thousands of dollars otherwise.
The best online poker tournaments are usually found at the largest internet poker rooms. Our top three sites for poker tournaments are all amongst the ten largest poker sites in the world. Our three top sites for tournaments are PokerStars, William Hill Poker, and 888 Poker.
In this page we will describe what we do and don’t like about the poker tournaments offered by these three sites. This should help you to make a better informed decision on where you choose to play online poker tournaments. You can follow our links in the table on this page to play at any of these online poker sites, and you can claim an exclusive bonus at each of the three poker sites. If you would like to enter free tournaments that have cash prizes, please read more about our poker freerolls here.
PokerStars is the largest poker site in the world, and by a pretty wide margin. They are more than five times larger than William Hill Poker, who is listed second on our list of poker sites with the best tournaments. We measure the largest by the seven day average of real money poker players on the site.
Having the biggest site gives PokerStars several unique advantages over the rest of the poker sites when putting together a schedule of poker tournaments. By being the largest site, their tournaments typically have more players than do tournaments on any other site. This means that the prizepools for these tournaments are larger. This is of course very appealing to players looking to hit a big score.
PokerStars can also boast higher guarantees for each of their tournaments. They can do this because they know it’s likely that most of the tournaments will exceed their respective guarantees. In addition to this, PokerStars can also put together fairly large poker tournaments in games besides no limit holdem. If you have ever played on other poker sites, you have probably noticed that there just aren’t many tournaments that are not no limit holdem. PokerStars has such a huge player base that they are capable of running many other large tournaments such as limit holdem, Omaha, stud, and mixed games tournaments.
In addition to this, the software for tournaments at PokerStars is phenomenal, and is widely considered to be the best in the industry. When signing up to PokerStars, use our best marketing code for PokerStars. That marketing code is POKERNEWS, and when using this code you can claim a $600 cash bonus and exclusive freeroll entries.
William Hill comes in at number two on our list of sites with the best internet poker tournaments. William Hill has a large selection of sit n gos, multi table cash tournaments, freerolls, and satellite tournaments. Most of their tournaments are currently Texas Holdem and Omaha. William Hill does have some smaller tournaments for other poker variants.
William Hill Poker offers a wide variety of different styles of poker tournaments including bounty tournaments, guaranteed tournaments, and shootout tournaments. While these are all fun kinds of tournaments to play, the most intriguing set of tournaments on William Hill Poker are the satellite tournaments. Players can win packages into live poker tournaments that include travel money, hotel rooms, and of course entry into the tournament. Players can win their way into the Aussie Millions, World Series of Poker, WPT, and EPT.
888Poker comes in at number three in our rankings of best online poker sites for tournaments. 888Poker is the flagship site of the 888 Poker Network, which is currently one of the ten largest poker networks in the world. 888 offers a wide variety of tournament buy ins that range from freerolls to tournaments with an entry fee of a few hundred dollars. They offer multi table tourneys, satellite tourneys, and sit and go tournaments. Please see our 888 bonus page for full details of our exclusive bonus offer for 888.