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Cake Poker Review
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A complete guide to cake Poker in 2010
Updated 10/2010 - Cake Poker is still one of the most promising emerging poker rooms that accept U.S. players. Cake Poker was launching in early 2006 and licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. Since then they have grown at a phenomenal rate, mainly due to the company’s willingness to provide a solid rewards program and great tournament schedule. The poker room features two separate loyalty programs for players including one specific to cash games and the other for all real money games. Cake Poker provides seats to live events, frequent tournament overlays, and plenty of loose action spread across the board. The poker room is available for USA players. During peak hours you'll find 10,000-15,000 players at the tables.
Cake Poker's sign-up Bonus code
Cake Poker what appears to be an excellent deposit bonus and loyalty program but from my experience they can be quite misleading. New players who use the Cake Poker signup code “TOPBONUS” when they register along with the bonus code TOPBONUS when they deposit will be able to receive a first deposit bonus of 110% up to $600 plus entry into the daily $500 new depositor freerolls. The poker room does offer monthly reloads bonuses and all of CakePoker’s bonuses are stackable. The bonus is stored in your pending bonus account until you have earned enough frequent player points to release it. Points are distributed in all real money games and have a cash value of $0.06 pt for every $1 in your bonus. As an example if you were to make a first deposit of $50, you would receive a $50 bonus and need a total of 830 player points to clear the full amount. Cake will however deposit your bonus in your player account in increments of $10 once you have reached the number of FPP’s required. That all sounds pretty good but from my own personal experience the Cake Poker deposit bonus is one of the hardest to clear in the industry. I've said it before and I'l say it again, the reviews on this site are not fluff like what you'll find everywhere else. If there is something I don't like about a room I'm going to let you know.
The most notable feature in the bonus/player rewards program is the Gold Cards. Gold Cards are only available for real money ring game players and actually reward players for playing at Cake. They are awarded randomly to every table, be it the micro or high limit games. Gold Cards are just as valuable as the money in your player account and can be redeem in the Daily Lotteries program, used towards entry into exclusive tournaments or when collected as a set, worth $52,000. Gold Chips are a point based reward and can also be used to enter special tournaments or redeem in the CakePoker online store. I used to play at Cake Poker on a regular basis and earned around 50 Gold Cards. Only 1 of them was over 5 which makes them useless because a majority of the Gold Card lotteries are hands like a high straight flush or a Qh X 50 (50 of them!). The Gold chips are also very hard to accumulate and it takes a lot of them to buy into a decent tournament.
Tournaments At Cake Poker
The tournament schedule is continuously packed with tournaments for all players at various skill levels. Players will be able to find freezeouts, freerolls, guarantees, re-buys and even bounty tournaments with the biggest event schedule each Sunday and offering a $150,000 prize pool. Cake Poker does provide players with the ability to qualify online for most land based events and is known for offering some exclusive promotions for trips to the NASCAR, or Playboy Mansion to play in celebrity events. Tournament buyins typically start at the $1 range and will increase up to a couple hundred. Once you start earning Gold Cards and Gold Chips you will be able to use these to enter various freerolls where the prize pools are guaranteed to be at least a few thousand dollars each. All freerolls at Cake are paid in cash not bonus dollars, providing extra value to these events. Sit and Go tournaments are available in a wide range of buy-ins and formats. With the increase of traffic over recent months players will not need to wait long for a game to fill.\
Cake Poker's Game Selection
Overall the poker room has done an excellent job in being able to attract and maintain a solid level of traffic throughout most of the day. Players will find Texas Holdem, Omaha and Omaha HL available with emphasis placed on the Holdem games more than the other. Stakes are available at the $0.05/$0.10 range and go as high as $100/$200, although we typically don’t find many active tables above $10/$20NL. Cake Poker is known for the level of soft tables which is why it’s not uncommon to find the average viewed flop percentage in cash games leading into the high 50’s. The poker room will take a 5% rake from each pot, but does support the no flop no drop rule.
Cake Poker's Software
The software is provided by the Cake Network and offers a simple yet stable platform for users. The lobby features an easy to use navigation with all of the games categorized into tabs allowing users to quickly select the game they are looking for. In addition to this you will also find a tournament monitor located in the right hand side of the lobby. This little feature provides you with up to date information on upcoming tournaments. This little tool becomes very valuable when finding overlays on the site, which do happen frequently. Another unique feature with Cake Poker is the ability to change your screen name which can be done once every seven days, to avoid players from picking up your playing habits and tagging you. Game statistics are available in the lobby and at the tables; with in lobby data such as % of players seeing the flop, hands played per hour, average pot size and chip stack of the other opponents at the table. Your game stats can be found in the chat window, where you will also find the tagging system and information for your Gold Chip meter. Other features include multi-tabling, choice in deck colors, preferred seating and friend finder.
Deposit Methods At Cake Poker
Cake Poker is a USA poker room and although payment options are limited, USA players will be able to fund their accounts. Withdrawals are quick and you can expect to have your request processed within 24 – 48 hours. The current options available include; Moneybookers, UseMyWallet, Eco Card, QuickTender, eWalletXpress, Neteller, Visa and MasterCard.
Cake Poker's Promotions
The promotions below are the type the run all year long at Cake Poker. Cake Poker offers a variety of unique promotions you won't find at any other poker room, with the exception of other rooms on the Cake Poker Network. Unlike other poker portals which list promotions that ended years ago this page is updated regularly. The section until this one contains time sensitive promotions and news from Cake Poker.
- Gold Chip Promotion - The Gold Chip promo at Cake Poker is part of a comprehensive loyalty/VIP program. While you play at the real monet tables you will be earning Gold Chips. As you can see from the chart above you can earn Gold Chips at a faster ratio by playing more. You will have to earn 120 FPP's to acquire your first chip but as you play that number will be reduced to 70 FPP's when you have earned a total of 505 FPP's. You can use your Cake Poker Gold Chips for sitngo, freeroll and tournament buy-ins. You can also buy Cake Poker gear, electronics and more.
- Gold Card Promotion - Gold Cards are randomly distributed while you are playing at the real money tables. You can use these cards to buy into special Gold Card tournaments. You can also save them up and try to win one of the jackpots. For instance if you collect all 52 cards you will win $52,000. In addition to this there is a daily Gold Card lottery in which you can win cash and prizes. The Gold Chip and Gold Card promotions sound very cool but in my personal opinion they are somewhat overrated. I collected over 50 cards which took 10,000+ hands and 99% of my cards were 5 or less. You can receive more than 1 of the same card. Most of the daily lotteries require high cards so there isn't much value in this aspect of the promo.
- Freerolls - Cake Poker offers a variety of freeroll tournaments. Every month they run a $250,000 freeroll which is solid for a medium sized poker room. As I mentioned above you can use your Gold Chips/Cards to buy into many of these freerolls.
- Reload Bonuses - Cake Poker offers reload bonuses every now and then. You must use the bonus code they send you in their newsletters. Many times these emails go straight to your junk/spam folder and most email programs will automatically delete these within a week so keep an eye out for them.
Cake Poker Support
Cake Poker has an excellent support system in place allowing players to contact them 24/7 through email or by phone. You can expect quick and timely responses, from a dedicated support team. We have yet to experience any negative issues with the poker room in terms of support. An interesting feature for players who may be experiencing issues with the poker client is the Known Issues area, which is located in the support menu. This page provides you with up to date information of any known problems (if any) the poker room is experiencing and when they expect it to be resolved.
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