"New rooms like JackPoker try harder" - PriscoInline

We chat to our latest Bankroll Challenge finisher, and man with the coolest shirt in poker, about the insane value at new room JackPoker.

OK most important question first, who is the dog in the picture?

PriscoInline: That's Elvis our Labrador, he has been with us for seven years now. 

Tell us your story in poker and how you found PokerStrategy.com.

PriscoInline: As is the case for many of our members, I started with a bankroll offer from PokerStrategy.com that required me to study a few articles and answer a few questionnaires - that was over a decade ago.

I used the website and forum a lot for information regarding poker rooms and basic poker strategy. I was never interested in nursing an internet persona with a blog or such, I was pretty much a lurker, but once I was given the opportunity to join the PT PokerStrategy community I wanted to do as much as I could, so I started to blog and made up a Bankroll Challenge for me.

Congrats on completing your Bankroll Challenge, what made you join it?

PriscoInline: The BR Challenge is great to keep you on track with your goals, as blogging is, and I highly recommend anyone to try it out. It makes you feel accountable for your goals and actions, forcing you to try harder for whatever goal you seek. This goes beyond poker goals, keeping track of your progress is a very useful tool for whatever path you take in your life.

"All the bonuses are instantly playable money"

Why did you join JackPoker for the Challenge?

PriscoInline: I decided to try out JackPoker because it was highly recommended by PokerStrategy.com members and I had never tried a brand new room, I always played on more consolidated rooms like iPoker and PartyPoker. Plus, I recognised a lot of profitable bonuses and promotions, since they are a new room and seeking traffic, they are really going all out to grab newcomers.

I had a pretty basic goal for the BR Challenge - go from $100 to $500, without counting bonuses or promotions (otherwise the deposit itself would have given me enough to reach the goal, just with bonuses). I am mostly a tournament player, anyone that looks me up will figure that out. I am mediocre at best on micro-stakes cash games, but I still have fun trying to play a few cash games. Once I deposited $100, I had $300 bonus money and $50 cash straight up. Of course, this was all withdrawal restricted and required me to generate rake before cashing out.

But it gave great value to my deposit. I also got some casino spins with it that gave even more bonuses. So my goal was to generate as much rake as possible to clear the bonuses and play MTTs, which is my game of choice, with the free money I had. What is interesting is that all the bonuses you get is playable money, but unfortunately for me only in cash games. So I pretty much had almost a $500 cash game bankroll from the get-go with my $100 deposit, which is rather sweet. JackPoker starts with NL10, so this amount is not that much to play cash games, and tournaments are a bit scarce, with very few playing for less than $10. I played a lot of Texas Hold'em and PLO for the rake and MTTs as often as I could, but I usually had to wait between 30-60 minutes for the tournaments to start since they do not have a lot of MTT traffic yet.

Overall, JackPoker really amazed me with the amount of bonuses and gratifications they gave. Honestly, there were so many bonuses coming out of my butt I couldn't keep track of what was happening, I just saw my bonus bankroll increasing. I was able to make use of the Jack Spring Quests promotion, that unfortunately isn't running anymore, but gave me almost $2k in playable bonus money by completing challenges like winning hands with X cards or playing X amount of hands in PLO. Even though the bonus money was for cash games, I was able to play on high limits, such as NL100 and NL200, to win just a few dozen blinds and play tournaments. A risky game, but gave me a huge opportunity to play higher stakes on MTTs. Just to make sense of how generous JackPoker is on newcomers, when I was short on unrestricted cash (about $20 from my initial $100), they offered me another 50% reload bonus up to $50. I immediately took advantage of it and guess what - for some reason they gave me 75% of bonus. I did not ask why!

Is it as soft as people say?

PriscoInline: The games on JackPoker are pretty much soft. I can't discuss much about the cash games because I am not a cash gamer myself, but once I went over the top and played much higher limits, there was something to be noted - the same players I saw on NL10 were playing NL20, NL50, even NL200. That was great for me since I was able to pick tables with the players I already had info about and gain a huge advantage, regardless of the stakes. Apart from cash games, tournaments were also very attractive. I enjoy small-field MTTs, with just a few hundred players, and that is what you get right now on JackPoker. All MTTs have around 150-200 players, which is my sweet spot. Some people prefer major MTTs with thousands of players for a huge payout, you won't get that at this time on JackPoker, but what I saw on the MTT tables was almost absurd - even on final tables I saw four-way all-ins with Ax, suited connectors, and random cards, I saw extremely bad calls all over. Honestly, most of the players seemed to have no clue at all. I didn't have many results though, just three good scores, 1st place on a $2 Rebuy & Add-on, 2nd place in a $5 freezeout, and 2nd place in a $30 freezeout that made me complete my goal. All of them had around 150~ players.

"My withdrawal of winnings came back fast"

What are the pros and cons of JackPoker?

PriscoInline: All in all, I was able to enjoy a ton of bonuses to play a shit-ton of cash games and MTTs, even as a mediocre and probably losing cash player I could get a lot of cash on bonuses and rakeback. Also, I got a sweet rakeback deal from PokerStrategy.com, which is available to any member, that guaranteed a lot more profit to me. After this endeavor, I ended up with $766.18 and $70 from PokerStrategy.com RB. I had about $1.5k in bonuses, but I gave that up to withdraw $666.18, as I wanted to make sure the room was legit and had no problems with money transfers. On my blog, I have screenshots of my withdrawal that was successful in under 24h, so I can safely answer - JackPoker pays.

Did the process of blogging help you?

PriscoInline: Blogging helped to keep my feet on the ground and not going crazy. Once I won $2k on a bonus, including $275 of unrestricted cash, I felt at risk of just going for an NL1k table or a $1K MTT, but since I was blogging my activities I felt accountability for my actions and kept myself together. I still went a bit crazy playing NL100 and NL200, but on tables with players I already had info on.

What is your next bankroll challenge goal?

PriscoInline: My BR Challenge was mostly for fun and to get to know the new partner room. I wasn't much worried about profits, but I am happy to say the challenge turned out very profitable. If I get to the next challenge, I would probably go for something I would have the most fun at - I enjoy MTT satellites a lot, and I am currently interested in studying the All-in-or-Fold SNGs format of GGPoker. Maybe I go for something like that in the near future.

Thanks and good luck if you do another challenge!

Play our JackPoker Rake Chase in July!

JackPoker is our latest partner room and is bringing our members one of the juiciest rooms you can currently play at.

To make you feel at home right right away, we're again running an exclusive Rake Chase in July, August and September for PokerStrategists, giving you the perfect opportunity to test out the games at JackPoker while getting more bang for your buck!

The next Rake Chase starts on July 1, running until July 31, and all you need to do in order to rake part is:

• Create a JackPoker account through PokerStrategy.com.
• Enter your JackPoker account in your PokerStrategy.com profile right here.

That done, the rake you generate counts towards your progress in our Rake Chase, with increasing prizes the higher the rake threshold you're able to reach. So in contrast to a Rake Race, you won't have to battle other players for leaderboard spots in this Chase.

Bonus payout and a new maximum reward!

Apart from offering this Chase for the next three months, we're also adding a special twist to reward you for consistency: The lowest payout tier that you've reached in July, August and September will be paid out an additional fourth time at the end of the three months.

Example: If you reach 1,500 SP in July, and 750 SP each in August and September, you'll receive an extra $50 + $5 JackSpin Ticket at the start of October. However, if you miss earning any reward in one of the three months, you won't be eligible for this extra reward.

And to spice things up even more, we've also introduced a new maximum payout step in the Chase, with 12,000 SP a month netting you $600 that will be credited to your Tell-a-Friend balance at PokerStrategy.com.

Check out the table below for a full overview of the prizes given away in our Rake Chase and if you want to learn more about our latest partner JackPoker, you'll find a comprehensive introduction of them in our news right here:

Find out more about our latest partner JackPoker

And remember, you'll be able to start out with a massive 50% rakeback at our new partner room if you join the Rake Chase, with 25% coming through JackPoker's own bonusses and reward systems and another up to 25% rakeback on top through the chase!

Lastly, with Astropay, Muchbetter and Visa/Mastercard there are now even more deposit options available at JackPoker and the team is consistently adding more. Make sure to give them a visit!

Sign up and join our JackPoker Chase today