SkyPoker.com is a new poker room from BSkyB Ltd. It offers competitive promotions, software and support as well as unique features that separate it from the rest. Sky Poker is run by SkyBet; you can use your account to access the poker, SkyBet and SkyBet Vegas services. Your account can be used on the internet, TV, telephone and WAP (Sky Poker only on internet and TV). Sky Poker offer Texas Hold’em in ‘no-limit’, ‘pot-limit’ and ‘fixed-limit’ variants. You can play multi-table tournaments, sit-and-go tournaments or simple cash games. It is a relatively small poker site hosting mainly UK players, there are on average a thousand people connected at any one time.

One of the great things about Sky Poker is The Open. This is a multi-table tournament running every night for a buy-in of £10. The Open is live on Sky channel 846 and starts at 9pm. This tournament gives you a unique proposition; you get the chance to become an instant TV-star by seeing your hands replayed in the studio, appearing in the leader boards and see your details brought to life with the statistical and graphical player profiles.

Sky Soccer AM presenter Helen Chamberlain is one of the presenters and is supported by different poker analysts who offer detailed and intelligent insights into The Open’s tournament play. If you don’t have Sky then you can watch all the action on the website. It’s a real buzz seeing yourself on the television and having people analyze your play in certain situations. There are three spot prizes of £25 given out by the presenter for players that have done something different, either made a great bluff an amazing fold or sometimes for a player who has been beaten purely by chance. Each night in the studio are two guests of Sky who play in the tournament, these people are usually poker pros or celebrities players. Once the guests are knocked out of the tournament they are placed into sit-and-go tournaments which you can buy into as well. Once a week The Open makes way for a tournament called Velocity, this carries a slightly smaller prize pool than The Open but runs twice-as-fast.

Also on channel 846 is a new interactive poker show called The Club, presented by Dan Lobb of Sky Sports News and Matt Broughton the editor of Flush magazine. The Club is a one hour program that takes you through all the action from what’s been happening on Sky Poker. Also discussed is the latest news from the world of poker. You can contact the show and ask questions about poker as well as asking advice for a certain hand that you may have encountered that week, simply note down the hand number and you could receive professional advice or consolation from the guests of the show.

These are the main reasons to play Sky Poker, if you have always wanted the chance to play on TV then here it is!

Sky Poker’s customer service team is available by phone or email. Their customer care team is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week to handle your queries. Emails are answered within 24 hours and should take care of any problem that you are having. The site is easy to use and the account page is detailed and easily navigable.

There is a useful help and support feature on the website which may well address a problem you may be having. In this section there is information about Sky Bet, details of how to create an account and using your account. There is also a guide to using SkyBet.com, SkyPoker.com and SkyBetVegas.com. There is information about transactions and banking, rules and responsible gambling advice.

Sky currently offer their customers a £20 free bet when they place their first bet. This is not the most generous amount to begin but it means you have a fairly decent kitty to begin playing with.

Sky Poker uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption technology to protect information in transit for any sensitive transactions such as payments and withdrawals. They also state that additional security features are in place to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of user information. Your information will not be kept longer than is necessary as is stated in their privacy policy.

Sky Poker are registered with IBAS (an independent betting adjudication service), GameCare (support for problem gamblers), ICRA (Family online safety institute) and gambling control.

Login to Sky Poker is done through your player alias and a four-digit pin number which you choose upon registering an account with them.

At Sky Poker you can choose to play in 16 different currencies including the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Euro, British Pound and the U.S. dollar.

Accepted forms of payment are MasterCard, VISA, VISA Electron, Solo, Maestro, VISA Delta and Laser.

You can set deposit limits for your account to help manage your finances, this service is voluntary and details can be found on the website under responsible gambling/player protection. Any withdrawn funds will take between 3-5 days to reach your bank account.

The main strength of Sky Poker and its community features is the television coverage. The Sky team is passionate about their poker and offer a first class service. Away from the televised games and poker shows the website offers a poker school. Covered in the poker school are useful video tutorials designed to help you with certain parts of your game. The tutorials teach you about danger hands, card rankings, how to play pocket pairs, head-to-head play, bluffing strategies and betting help.

Sky Poker is run directly from its website so no download is required. Once you log in to the website the poker lobby is found under the ‘Play Poker Now’ tab. Navigation around the website is basic and intuitive, a cluttered is never fun to use!

Once in the game the software is much the same as other sites. You have all the usual pre selection buttons available to speed up game play; checking, betting and raising are all extremely straight forward. One criticism of the software is that it is not the prettiest aesthetically and can sometimes be a little slow compared to some of its competitors. However, this is a small trade off when you consider all of the things Sky Poker has going for it.

In the game software is a fun feature called the ‘HOTOMETER’, the temperature gauge will indicate to you just how hot the cards you are holding are! One useful aspect to this is the percentage chance given to your hand developing into a better one e.g. the chance of developing a straight or a flush. This is both a useful learning tool and something which a more advanced player can use to help him calculate pot odds.

Because of the relatively small amount of people on the site if you are a regular player you will start to encounter the same players again and again. This is no bad thing. Far too often whilst playing online poker you have absolutely no idea what kind of player you are up against. After a few weeks of note taking and concentration you should be able to build good player profiles (this can be the difference between a winning or losing session). A serious player has to be prepared to go the extra mile to get an advantage over their opponents and it is possible to do it at Sky Poker.

In-game statistics allow you to monitor your play over a session and allows you to see at any time stats such as the percentage of flops seen, how often you raise, where you raise and fold plus actual win percentages of hands you have played.

Overall Sky Poker is a good place to play your online poker. The variety of games offered is limited but if you are a Hold’em player who wants something different Sky Poker is strongly recommended.