Black Chip Poker is a Merge Network skin started in 2010. It has seen considerable network traffic increases since Black Friday as it is one of the few sites to accept US players. They are also part of Merge Bad beat Jackpot that is shared between other rooms on the network. Having several rooms contribute to the jackpot allows it to grow very quickly. This Jackpot swelled to a staggering $1.2 Million back in 2009 and is quite often in the six figure range before it hits.
Black chip offers a broad range of poker tournaments. The majority of these tournaments are No Limit Hold’em but they also run most variations of Omaha, Stud, as well as H.O.R.S.E and Badugi. The most unique tournament is called “All in or Fold”, these shove fests do not require much skill, but I have to admit that they are fun. Black chip naturally offers the more standard formats (Re-buys, Deep Stack, Shoot-Outs, Bounty, Turbo and Short Handed). Black Chip Poker averages about 160 different real money tournaments a day with buy ins ranging from $1 to $20. Their “major” tournaments often have a decent overlay with prize pools that guarantee from $5,000 to $100,000.
Black Chip Poker’s software allows for players to customize tables. They are one of the few rooms to offer poker software for Mac users. They even went as far to include animations that you can summon up to really needle the other players (donkey, fish, sharks ect). Cash games have neat tricks like Rabbit Hunting and an option to Run it Twice that will aid in variance neutralization. You can also show one hole card prior to folding or mucking your hand.
Cash games consist of mostly No Limit Hold’em and Omaha. Most of the games are in the 25NL to 200NL buy in range for NLHE and about the same for PLO. These levels are on the soft side and even a donkey like me was able to win about $200 in 1200 hands running 4 tables of 50NLHE.
Black Chip poker’s Casino Suite & Game Room
Black chip also offer a casino complete with Blackjack, Roulette, Caribbean Stud and video poker. After taking a horrific bad beat in the poker room it’s a fun way to blow off some steam. The Caribbean Stud offers not one but 2 progressive Jackpots of $25k for lower limits, and over $50k for upper limits. A small game room which includes Euchre and Backgammon rounds out an overall decent casino experience.
Current deposit options for US players are Click 2 Pay as well as Visa, West Union and E-check. Withdrawal options are limited to paper checks. Non-US players are offered additional deposit as well as withdrawal options. I was able to deposit with E-check and was almost instantly approved. I have cashed out twice with paper checks and both times there was about a 2 week lead time from request to check arrival. This is about average for a poker room still operating post Black Friday. Black Chip Poker offers e-mail and Live Chat support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. My emails to support were answered in ½ to 2 hours. This is lightning fast compared to sites like FullTilt. Most online poker rooms are still only offering e-mail support so Black Chip is well ahead of the competition.
Overall I would say this is a pretty great room. It carries plenty of traffic to multi-table micro and low stakes cash games. It also gets some decent low to mid buy-in MTT’s. You won’t see durrr and Ivey battling in the nosebleeds or Sunday majors with 7 figure guarantees. What you will get is a solid site, good software, great support and an overall enjoyable room. » Read more: Black Chip Poker Bonus Review
