Lucky Ace Poker (888)

[Buckshot]

This is a tough one to write. I've only been playing there a short time, but already there are several things which stand out.

The Good-
I thought I'd seen horrible players at Party Poker, but geez the players here make them all look like Doyle Brunson. Definitely a lot of easy money to be made, with a rediculous number of players willing to bluff all their chips away every hand. I've seen players call me down for their entire stack heads up after a PF raise on a broadway board with 2-3 off suit. It's hard to play solid poker against these players, you'll find yourself having to call overbets on pretty much every flop if you want to pursue the hand, and it's difficult to read a maniac if he's going to put all his money in with any two cards, but with patience you can make a very nice profit here. I recommend heads up over larger games in these circumstances, as if you have a table full of maniacs you end up just playing bingo, even heads up the horrible play of most players at this site means that you'll have a much higher luck factor in the games than there should be, but if you can stay off tilt when some moron re-raises all in with 2-3 after you raise preflop with A-A and goes on to hit runner runner 2-2 to win, you'll definitely make a very nice profit if you have any clue how to play poker.

Bonus scheme seems very generous for new players, an odds calculator worth around $100 free to new depositors (seems not many use it ) and a good 100% match bonus which gives you part of the bonus right up front.

I haven't withdrawn from this site yet, but will likely be doing so in the coming weeks as my bankroll builds up, so will give feedback on that process and how smoothly it goes.

The not so good-
No Poker Tracker support, for any player who wants to stay ahead of the game in online poker, Poker Tracker or something similar is a must, being one of the few sites which does not support Poker Tracker is probably a good reason why most of the serioius players stay away from here and there is such an amazing proportion of donkeys at this site.

The software in general, this is a personal opinion, but I really cannot stand the interface, it is one of the hardest to use and read on screen, if you are having connection problems I haven't seen any site which takes anywhere near as long to register that you have dropped out and re-connect you, you will miss out on a dozen hands easily if you have a split second drop out which most software will handle without missing a hand, very costly when you are in the final stages of a tournament as I found out.

The players, this has to really go into the bad as well as the good to be fair. The good points are already covered, obviously the bad side to this is that you are going to have to be pushing a lot of chips around more often than you should, having maniacs everywhere pushes the luck factor through the roof, which means you are going to have much bigger swings here than other sites, and it seems to be the case at all levels here. Still as pointed out, if you play solid poker you will definitely find a lot of easy money here. The big danger is in getting into bad habbits, and having that affect your play if you play in other games against decent players, and avoiding the tilt train when you go through a bad run of players hitting two outers on the river to beat you after calling off with their entire stack virtually drawing dead.

[Buckshot]

Ok, have some info on deposits, bonuses and withdrawals.

Depositing here was no issue, I used moneybookers which I use for most sites, and it was very easy, only potential catch is you must have registered with the same email as you use for moneybookers, if you haven't support can help out.

The bonus has some good points and bad points. You do get a 25% up front bonus, which is better than most sites, in my case I deposited $100 US so got a $25 bonus straight up, unlike most other sites though, you don't get the rest of the bonus until you work the entire amount off, if you don't, you lose the rest. In my case the remaining bonus of $75 meant I would have to earn 1000 points to get that, if I earned 999 points then I don't get a cent (other than the $25 bonus), most other sites tend to pay the bonuses back in $5 increments which I feel is much more fair, so the moral here is that if getting the bonus is important to you, make sure you deposit an amount that you know you can earn enough points within 30 days to earn back. In my case I wasn't really interested in playing here long enough to worry about the bonus.

I just put in a withdrawal for the $250 I made playing heads up games, process was fairly easy as it should be, the software says to allow 3 days, so I'll see how that goes and let you all know.

[Buckshot]

Hmm, not looking too good so far. Went to check on my withdrawal today, nothing in the moneybookers account, log into the poker room, and the $252 is sitting in my account again. Contacted support and was told that an email was sent on the 12th explaining why the transaction didn't go through, something apparently to do with the bonus. No sign of the email here, so they are sending it again, will see what that says.

A little disappointing, I make withdrawals from a number of poker rooms on average every two weeks, have never had the slightest hiccup with a payment, so while this could very well be a mistake on my end, it doesn't help my confidence in this poker room.

[UPDATE]- received the email, seems to have been a misunderstanding, the money I withdrew included the $25 bonus, now I may have misread the initial terms and conditions, but I understood that to be free of any controls. It seems though that this cannot be withdrawn until I have wagered a set amount of money, I'm willing to surmise that I didn't read the T&C well enough. I have put the withdrawal request back in for the amount minus the $25 so we'll see how that goes.

[Buckshot]

Another update...

3 days later, I find the funds are back in my poker account again... This time I can be 100% sure there was no email. A bit rich that they apparently haven't let me withdraw the money even without including the bonus.

I don't really have too many concerns, I know that the 888 group is a reputable group and I have no doubts I will get the money, I am just very disappointed in the extremely poor communication and the number of hoops I have to jump through. I'm sure once the month is up and the bonus period is finished there will be no problem, but compared to other rooms I can't really say this is acceptable.

[Buckshot]

Ok, I've now successfully withdrawn $100 US from the account, the money arrived in my moneybookers account right on the 3 days as promised, so no dramas there.

I did get some time to dig through the fine print of the terms and conditions of their bonuses to figure out why I can't withdraw the rest of my money just yet, and found the following clauses-

# The Promotion is comprised of two bonus levels:

1. An Instant Bonus equal to 25% of the first deposit made by a new player.
2. A Pending Bonus equal to 75% of the first deposit made by the same player.

# The Instant Bonus will be remitted directly into the new player's account upon his/her first deposit.

Now this one I had already read previously, and took to mean that the $25 up front was yours to do what you like with as per other poker rooms...

The following is a bit further down the document though-

All non-pending bonuses and promotional offers extended to members can be cashed out after an amount totaling no less than twenty (20) times the bonus amount received has been wagered within 90 days of being credited to a member's account, unless otherwise specified in the notification of a promotional offer.

It's a little unclear what this means, for instance, what happens after 90 days if you haven't wagered that amount, it also doesn't explain why I wasn't able to withdraw the winnings minus the $25 bonus money, anyhow, I'll try at the end of the 30 day bonus period, and try get an explanation from support again if I'm still having problems, in the meantime I'm still building on my winnings, so no biggy.

[Buckshot]

Well I've now managed to withdraw most of the money, doing it in $100 lots, still not quite sure what the rules are, and even my chat with support didn't give me any useful information, but anyhow, it does seem only related to the bonus period, it is much messier than other rooms I've used, but at the same time, I made a nice profit out of the delay so I'm not too worried.

I'm probably going to stay away from this room unless the software improves considerably, I definitely do recommend it to anyone wanting to make some quick money though, the players here are some of the worst around, so you can really make some money fast. If you are looking at the bonus, do read the fine print, most players would not be attempting to get out while in the middle of the bonus period, so would not run into the problems I ran into, but in the interest of a complete review, these issues should be pointed out. If you have any questions on the fine print, I'd recommend talking to support prior to depositing.

In the end, we are talking about a very reputable and long established room, so there will never be any question of non-payment, and all payments that did go through, went through within 3 days.

[karlosullivan]

I played 888 a long time before i heard of lucky ace, i knew 888 had bad connection issues as they do on lucky ace, when i contacted them about this they were very unhelpful, at the time i was only in a freeroll but had lke 85,000 chips blinds were quite big at 25,000 50,000 , was delt kk i was in the bb so was no way going to fold, then dissconection came so it folded me, i was fuming, went st8 to support who told me it was my internet connection, so i lokked through the hand history and it showed that the whole table was dissconected exept 1 player.
they however, had no sympathey or appoligies.
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