This was the very first place I played poker, back in the long long ago when before they offered real money games. Back then, their java games seemed, and probably were, the highest of high tech. They worked though, and taught me the basics of Holdem. I even played my first real money game there, with some free money they gave me.

Since that time PokerRoom has established itself as one of the top brands in the industry.

When I came back to PokerRoom a couple of years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much work they had done, both on their software and on getting more players. The interface was still clean and somewhat cartoony, but they had moved from the garish colours of 1999 to a futuristic blue look (the lady in the three seat still had improbable breasts - only now they are 3D).

The download version of PokerRoom runs a little faster, unless you're playing against a lot of people using the java client. The download is worth it if you're on cable (and these days, who isn't) because it lets you play more than one table - up to 6 or 7, if you're on ritalin and a lightening fast internet connection - it also allows you to take notes on and color-code other players, and a pretty detailed statistics package (even including an hourly win rate, which sometimes makes for rather depressing reading).

Pokerroom has a lot of small games (up to about 2/4 or 3/6 depending on the time of day) and a regular line up of small buyin tournaments. They have a number of nice on going promotions like daily freerolls, tournaments with guaranteed additions to the prize pools, and simillar stuff added at the low to mid limit players (unlike the bigger sites whose big promotions tend to be aimed more at mid to high level players). I also like playing the smaller buyin multitable tournaments here as they tend to get a lot of entries, so the prizepools can be pretty good.

Another thing in Pokerroom's favour is that support is surprisingly good. They speak good English, and give helpful answers to questions (even complicated ones). The downside is that they are kind of slow, and pad their emails with promotional garbage. I have never recieved a response in less than 24 hours, and it's sometimes been over 48. Still, when it comes to support, a 90% answer late is usually better than a 40% answer on time. Cashouts typically take about about 24 hours to hit my neteller account, which is satisfactory as far as I am concerned.

The players at pokerroom are pretty average. There aren't as many total morons as at other sites - I think I blame the online Poker School run by PokerRoom :) Still, it's not a tough site to beat, kind of average I guess (and after playing online poker for a while, you'll learn that average is actually pretty bad at low levels).

So, PokerRoom is a nice place to play, and the no download option and mobile compatibility makes it my poker site of choice when I travel.