PPPoker App Review: Soft, Profitable Site or Too Risky in 2023?

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PPPoker broke the mold with its mobile poker app, which debuted in 2016. Eschewing the traditional model at most poker sites of focusing on desktop poker clients – perhaps with a mobile product as an afterthought – PPPoker puts the smartphone first, making it popular with recreational players and others who don't have time to settle down at their computers for hours-long sessions.

Additionally, its policy of allowing private clubs, wherein whatever happens is between the club owner and club members, has made it a forum for effectively real money games although PPPoker claims to only offer play money tables. Because it officially offers only practice chip play, PPPoker bypasses the various anti-gambling laws in effect in many parts of the world. Americans, Australians, Britons – all are welcome here.

Social media and poker forums are abuzz with talk about PPPoker, which has become perhaps the most well-known of the mobile poker social gaming apps. Thus, we decided to compose a thorough review of the site to give you an idea of how the clubs work, what the software is like, what games are available, and other details about this online poker operation.

Poker Games

PPPoker supports many forms of poker gaming, roughly divided into cash games, sit-n-gos, and multi-table tournaments. However, it's important to note that the specific formats and stakes you'll have access to will depend upon the particular club(s) you join. Thus, the entire menu of games described below may not be available when you look in your club's lobby.

Cash Games

The biggest advantage of PPPoker over its many copy-cat competitors may lie in the breadth of variants that it is possible for you to play. Depending, of course, on your club and its offerings, you may be able to enjoy ring games of these forms of poker:

• No Limit Texas Hold'em
• Flash NLHE (Fast-Fold)
• 6+ Hold'em
• Pot Limit Omaha
• Flash PLO (Fast-Fold)
• Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo
• 5 Card Pot Limit Omaha
• 5 Card Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo
• Mixed NLHE + PLO (Dealer's Choice)
• Mixed NLHE + PLO5 (Dealer's Choice)
• Pineapple Open Face Chinese
• Pineapple Open Face Chinese Progressive
• Pineapple Open Face Chinese Ultimate
• Pineapple Open Face Chinese Joker

Tables sizes are nine-handed, six-max, and heads-up except for the OFC games, which use two- and three-seat tables. The club manager can set up a range of valid buyin amounts for each table, from 20bb to 500bb. Some tables may have certain advanced features enabled, like running it multiple times, minimum VPIP requirements, EV Chop when all-in, and straddling.

Sit N Gos

Single table contests can be found in some PPPoker Clubs. They permit either six or nine players to enter, and both standard and turbo structures exist. SNGs are possible in NLHE (but not Six Plus) and PLO (four card game, hi only).

Multi-Table Tournaments

The tournaments at PPPoker consist of Hold'em and PLO (including 5 Card PLO) events. Some of them come with guaranteed prize pools, and in some clubs, you can join satellites to attempt to win tickets to bigger tourneys. Freezeouts, tournaments with a specified number of rebuys allowed, and unlimited rebuy MTTs are all present within the app as are bounty and progressive bounty games.

Play Money

PPPoker provides a global lobby where you can enter games denominated in play chips, called Gold, even without being a member of any club. You will receive a small amount of gold upon registering a new account, and there are many ways of earning more going forward, such as by completing Missions.

Gold (Play Money) Cash Game Lobby

You can sit in NLHE, PLO, and OFC play chip ring games, and there are also tournaments with Gold buyins to join. There's one type of game that is currently only offered for Gold rather than real money. It's called SpinUp, and this is PPPoker's form of lottery-style SNG. The multipliers can reach as high as 10,000.

PPPoker Agent/Club Model

Unlike at most mainstream online poker destinations, PPPoker employs a club model, which it largely invented. Under this arrangement, it provides chips to private clubs, and the distribution of these chips is left up to the club managers. Each club can host whatever cash games, SNGs, and tournaments it desires as long as they're supported by the software.

Thus, when you purchase or sell chips with these clubs, you are not dealing with the developer of the app, an entity known as AceKing Tech Limited. Instead, you have to work out the details with the individual clubs in question.

What Does a Club Manager Do?

The club manager or owner is the one ultimately responsible for what happens within the club. He or she purchases chips within the app and can then transfer them to the members of the club. The manager also determines which games to feature and at what stakes.

Some clubs really are just social organizations that are happy to play with club chips merely for fun and bragging rights. In this case, the club manager is basically just someone who volunteers to run the games, kind of like the coach of a weekend softball team or the organizer of a bowling league. But there's more going on beneath the surface at most clubs on the PPPoker site.

Real Money Loophole

Though it professes that all games utilize virtual items with no real-world value, it has become basically an open secret that PPPoker is really being used mostly for real money gaming. You see, the owners of the clubs can sell chips to players at a stated money cost per chip, and they then buy back chips from winners at the same rate.

The costs of purchasing the club chips from PPPoker in the first place are pretty small, and some of the chips are raked away and paid in tournament fees over time. As long as enough chips disappear to cover the initial price plus the expenses associated with running the club, the owner makes a profit.

How Do Agents Fit In?

Though managing a small club with a couple dozen users may require just a few hours of work per week, running a larger group can be quite a time-consuming affair. Between marketing, overseeing the games, crediting deposits, paying out withdrawals, handling inquiries from members, and all the other tasks involved, many club managers find themselves swamped with work. This is where agents come into the picture.

Agents fulfill a role similar to that of affiliates at other sites. They recruit players to the clubs usually in exchange for a percentage of those players' rake. They sometimes also handle financial matters directly with players on behalf of the club. This is where they differ from old-school affiliates who are generally not involved in payment processing at all.

Players are tracked to agents through a Referral ID. When you join a club, there's a space in the form to enter in this number. Then your agent will receive credit for recruiting you, and you will be considered a member of that agent's “downline.” It's also possible to apply for membership to a club without putting in any Referral ID.

Fill Out These Fields to Apply for Club Membership

Unions

Unions are a mechanism for clubs to provide their members with a broader palette of games to play in. All clubs that are members of a union combine their games and player pools, meaning that a user of one participating club can join tables at all clubs in the union.

The big advantage of unions is that there are more games to choose from, but on the other hand, it also means an additional layer of administration that could affect your gaming experience. From time to time, there are disagreements between clubs and their unions, and these fights sometimes affect ordinary users.

Unions have to pay more than standalone clubs for certain things, like creating tables, and this cuts into their margins. Should a member club go rogue, the burden could prove too much for the union to bear, and it might dissolve amidst financial losses and mutual acrimony.

Diamonds

Diamonds, represented by a green gem graphic, are the in-app currency used at PPPoker. Various packages of diamonds are offered in the PPPoker store with discounts provided for larger purchases. This is the only way that AceKing Tech makes money from PPPoker users.

Diamonds Are the Virtual Currency of PPPoker

These diamonds are what club owners use to pay the various fees associated with running a club. Players too may have occasion to buy diamonds if they run out of play chips (Gold).

Moreover, certain features of the site cost diamonds, and you cannot use them unless you have enough diamonds in your account. These include rabbit hunting, using emojis, activating the timebank, and even gaining access to certain advanced reports on your history at the tables. Thus, you must consider the cost of diamonds when determining how much you will invest into this app.

Points

Besides diamonds, you can use points to buy a subset of the shop items. These points are granted when you complete certain tasks, like playing a designated number of hands, logging into the app each day, and completing missions. Points are indicated in the app by an icon that looks like a lightning bolt.

Multilayered Structure Leads to Lack of Accountability

The creators of PPPoker have come up with an effective model for running a mobile poker room while keeping their liability, both financial and legal, very low. However, this achievement has been accomplished by shifting a lot of the risk on to the players.

First of all, you have to be able to trust the agent you sign up with. Even if this person proves to be honest and competent, the leaders of the club you join might be dishonest. Then if your club is part of a union, then it will be subject to the directives and whims of the union head.

These multiple levels of overlapping and potentially conflicting responsibility mean that you might be out of luck if an issue arises. Your agent might blame the club, and the club may say it's the agent's fault. They could also say that your problem was the result of a software glitch, which would mean that it's AceKing Tech Limited's fault. They, of course, will likely deny this and probably give you yet another differing explanation.

This is assuming that everyone is being honest and simply confused or otherwise unable to personally assist you. However, the possibility of actual fraud is very real. If an agent or club admin opts to abscond with members' funds, then you will have little recourse, and your money will likely be gone forever. Check out the NYPokerKing fiasco for an example of this.

Deposits

As we've previously mentioned, all financial matters are handled between the individual user and the club he or she wishes to deposit to. You'll probably be interacting with the agent under whose ID code you joined the club.

One implication of this fact is that your balance at each club is totally distinct from any chips you hold in any other club. Therefore, if you register for multiple clubs, then you will have to fund them all separately. Some of the larger clubs and unions permit you to exchange chips between them, but this will depend on the policies in place at any particular club.

Most serious PPPoker grinders opt to join several clubs so that they can benefit from the widest possible table selection at any time of day. The need to manage balances separately at all of them is a hassle that's not present at traditional online poker rooms, which employ one central cashier for the entire site.

The specific methods available for depositing are up to the discretion of each agent and club. Crypto-currency, like Bitcoin, and peer-to-peer wallets, like Cash App, are commonly employed. Clubs focused on geographical areas outside the United States may also support USA-disallowed ewallets, like Neteller and Skrill.

Once you get in touch with your agent, he or she will give you instructions on how to send the money you want to deposit. Upon successful completion of the transaction, your club account will be credited the corresponding number of chips.

It's critical that you inform yourself of the ratio between currency units and club chips before you deposit. It's relatively common to find a rate of 1 USD equaling 1 chip, but this is by no means standard. PPPoker has greater international exposure, especially in Asia, than most of its peers in the mobile poker app space, and so you may encounter clubs that use chips denominated in Australian dollars, Philippine pesos, Indian rupees, and other currencies.

Withdrawals

The process of retrieving your winnings from a PPPoker club is basically the mirror image of making a deposit. After alerting your agent to your wish to receive a payout, you will get instructions on how to proceed. The chips will be subtracted from your club balance, and the cash will be shipped your way.

Though almost every club acts quickly in processing deposits, the same is not necessarily true when it comes to withdrawals. There are some shady people inhabiting the PPPoker app, and it's not unheard-of for them to slow-pay or no-pay winnings.

This is why it's essential to only do business with those agents and clubs you can trust. We can't really help you in this department because there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of clubs and agents, all with varying levels of trustworthiness. Even if we could enumerate and rate them all, this information would rapidly become out-of-date with the opening of new clubs, the closure of others, and changes in club administration. We can only leave you with the advice: Let the buyer beware.

If you're looking for a poker room with fast, reliable payouts, then it might be a good idea to consult our monthly offshore gaming payment report, which contains a list of reputable sites that pay users fairly and within a reasonable timeframe.

PPPoker Takes a Hands-Off Approach

AceKing Tech, the organization behind PPPoker, will not take sides in any disputes between you and your club/agent. Indeed, a desire on the part of management to keep clear of the financial end of the poker equation is a major reason for the app being set up the way it is in the first place.

You therefore have no overarching authority to appeal to if your funds are confiscated through no fault of your own. Your only remedy in this case would be to raise a ruckus on poker forums and other player advocacy sites in the hope of shaming the derelict parties into reforming their attitudes. And if they are indeed crooked enough to steal your money to begin with, then they probably have no shame anyway, and this tactic will not work.

You're Breaking the Rules Too

Even if you have solid, incontrovertible proof that you have been wronged by your club or agent, PPPoker almost certainly will not take any action on your behalf. You see, you are also in violation of the terms and conditions of PPPoker simply by using its platform for real money gaming. The following legal text on the PPP website applies to both players and clubs:

You are not allowed to transfer Virtual Items outside of the Services (e.g., in the “real world”), for example by selling, gifting, or trading them. We won’t recognize those transfers as legitimate. You are not allowed to sublicense, trade, sell, or attempt to sell Virtual Items for “real” money, or exchange Virtual Items for value of any kind outside of a game. Any such transfer or attempted transfer is prohibited and void, and we may terminate your Account because of it.

Yes, that’s right – not only does PPPoker not condone the exchange of chips for any consideration, but this is actually grounds for account termination! EVERYONE knows that the app is being used for real money play: the club managers, the players, and not least the app team itself. However, with this cover-your-ass language in its terms, PPPoker maintains the legal fiction that it's just a play money platform.

If you do attempt to escalate your woes with your club to PPPoker support, not only will you most assuredly fail in obtaining any satisfaction, but your account might be closed as well. If this happens, you can imagine what your chances are of ever seeing your account balance again (HINT: snowballs in hell).

PPPoker Rakeback

Many agents advertise rakeback for PPPoker. Deals tend to be in the range of 10% to 40%. Needless to say, there's no promise from the app creators respecting any rakeback arrangements you might have at any particular club. Any such PPPoker rakeback that you're set up to receive is between you and your club/agent.

Everything might be all right with your rakeback payments if you're lucky enough to transact with someone who's ethical. On the other hand, you might encounter delays with your RB or even a total failure to pay it.

Additional Fees May Apply

Even if you do secure a solid PPPoker rakeback percentage with an agent who's legit, you'll have to carefully investigate the rules at your club because they sometimes figure out underhanded ways of retaining more of the rake for themselves. Some clubs levy a weekly tax on winnings and others charge fees for withdrawals. Really, the club managers can do whatever they want with the chips they have distributed, and so it behooves you to do your homework on these matters before beginning to play.

Variable Rake

Even with a high rakeback percentage, you may not be doing as well as you think because the net value of your RB will depend on the rake that's charged to begin with. Clubs can customize the amount they take from each pot.

It's standard for PPPoker clubs to rake 5%, which is more or less what other online poker rooms charge. However, the cap on the rake is typically expressed in multiples of the big blind as opposed to a dollar amount.

Many PPPoker tables have the rake limit set at 3bbs. This isn't too bad if you're at the equivalent of an NL10 table. It's a different story if you're playing stakes in the ballpark of NL400 where the rake cap is a whopping $12! It gets even worse as you go up even higher in the blind levels, and so the extra rake you pay could pretty much negate any benefits you derive from a seemingly great rakeback rebate.

There's an optional Cooler Jackpot that some clubs participate in. If your club is one of them, then you will have to pay an extra big blind toward the jackpot fund on any pot you win that's larger than 20bbs. This extra drop can really add up and negatively affect your winrate.

There are also clubs that rake a more reasonable amount, but few pokerists ever bother to ask about the rake before signing up. If you decide to take a chance on PPPoker, be sure to educate yourself on this point when you're looking into the various clubs that are available.

PPPoker Software

PPPoker deserves a lot of credit for coming up with the hugely appreciated mobile social poker formula several years ago. At the time it was first released, this was a groundbreaking take on the then-existing internet poker model.

The app programmers have continuously updated the software since that time. Nevertheless, this site has faced significant competition from other apps, like PokerBros, that have built upon the foundation laid by PPPoker but have added enhanced graphics and gameplay innovations.

Lobby

There is a main PPPoker games lobby where you will see the Gold (play money) games, but most users will head instead to the lobby of their club to view the real money action that's going on.

Club Lobby

Each game is represented by a small table with text overlaid atop it. You will see the game type, the blind level, and the number of seats occupied as well as the total number of seats at the table. To open a table up, simply press it.

Click on the small icon to the right of the lobby to access the filters. Here you can include or exclude tables according to several criteria.

Lobby Filters to Narrow Down the Table List

In May 2020, PPPoker added an alternate lobby view wherein the tables are shown in a list, and players are free to choose whichever lobby arrangement they prefer. However, this new lobby format still only has space for about eight tables. Therefore, you might have to do a fair bit of scrolling around to find a game you're interested in whichever lobby view you're using.

Alternative Lobby Layout

Tables

PPPoker made the decision to orient its tables in portrait form, an element that has been copied by virtually every other social poker app on the market. There's no way to switch to a landscape orientation of the table. Your seat is always at the bottom-center of the display with the other players arranged around the table in the other positions.

No Limit Texas Hold'em Table at PPPoker

Betting is accomplished by moving a slider, clicking plus and minus buttons to adjust your bet size, pressing one of the preset bet size buttons, or typing in a number manually through a calculator-like interface.

You can open up the chat by pressing the chat bubble icon in the bottom-right of the screen. The chat window will then expand to fill most of the screen. You can type in a text chat message, send a voice message, or choose from among several pre-entered phrases.

The Chat Window at PPPoker

The top-left menu contains several functions that you will probably access during each session. You can Step Away (sit out) or Stand Up (leave your seat) in addition to closing the table outright. Unfortunately, there isn't any way to sit out the next big blind, so you'll have to wait until you're under the gun and then click to leave your seat.

Open up the Menu of Table Options to Control Your Session

The Table Settings menu item allows you to turn sound on/off, alter the bet size button values, and customize a few other options. Also within this menu is the option to top up your stack. You will almost assuredly need to access this feature because the default buyin amount is set to the table minimum, and there's no way to increase it.

The top-right icon that looks like a bar graph brings up certain info about the table. You will see the screennames of all currently seated individuals along with their winnings or losses this session. A list of people spectating the game is also contained in this screen.

You Can Get a Rundown on How Your Opponents Are Doing

Hand History

The hand history feature launches when you tap the icon on the bottom-left of the table that looks like a pair of hole cards. A window will appear showing you a summary of the last hand you played.

Review Your Hands on This Screen

You can click over to the Hand Details tab to get more in-depth info, like the actions on every street and stack sizes. There are buttons letting you share the hand via Facebook or through a custom link.

Multi-Tabling

PPPoker supports multi-tabling up to three games at a time. Whenever you are seated at a table, you can click on the plus sign near the top of the screen to go back to the lobby and find another game to play.

If you have multiple tables open, you will see a representation of each of them toward the top of the display. Each table will have the game format (e.g., NLH, 6+NLH, PLO) written atop it.

When Multi-Tabling, You'll See a Representation of Each Table at the Top of Your Display

When it's your turn to act at any table, the little graphic that represents that table will slowly fill yellow, representing how much time you have left to make your action. Unfortunately, you aren't shown the hole cards at any table in the top row of small table icons.

There are some PPPoker aficionados who have managed to play at more than three tables at a time by using multiple accounts and devices. An explanation of how exactly this is done is beyond the scope of this review, but you should be aware that this is possible.

Compatibility

The PPPoker app can be downloaded for iOS devices from the Apple Store and for Android systems from the Google Play Store. There's also a Windows version that can be acquired directly from the PPPoker website.

To run PPPoker on an Android phone or tablet, you need version 4.1 or higher of the operating system. For iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touch, you need to have iOS 8.0+. We could not find any info on what versions of Windows the PC installer requires.

There is no dedicated Mac poker download. However, some Mac users report success in running PPPoker with Windows emulation software, like Boot Camp or Parallels.

We tried out the Android version of the PPPoker client on a phone running Android 5.0. The software worked fine, and we were able to play without incident. We then checked out the Windows version on a machine with Windows 10 Home, and we encountered no problems.

Fair Gaming

Besides issues surrounding the club/agent setup, many have raised concerns about the integrity of the actual games themselves. Nobody wants to sit at tables in which the honesty of the gameplay is in question. We've taken a look at some of the common complaints regarding PPPoker in this area to see if they have any merit.

Rigged RNG?

We've encountered myriad posts indicating that the random number generator at PPPoker has been fiddled with to generate more action and larger pots. Unlikely coolers, odds-defying bad beats, and insane board runouts lead some to the conclusion that there's something funny going on.

What these theories generally tend to have in common is a lack of significant sample size, an absence of any sort of statistical evidence of dishonesty, and an illogical or incomprehensible train of thought. These types of stories crop up regularly about every online poker room, and the overwhelming majority of the time, there's nothing substantial behind them.

Our sessions at PPPoker appeared to be normal, and we did not notice anything out of the ordinary with the distribution of the cards dealt to us. We suspect that what might be happening is that a combination of unorthodox opponent playing styles and unexpected losses at the tables has preyed upon the psychology of certain individuals who believe that there's no way they could have lost unless there were dishonest shenanigans taking place.

The outside testing firm Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) has tested the RNG in use at PPPoker and has given it a “PASS” rating. This is a well-respected company that has certified the software in use at many of the leading gaming sites. In the absence of any solid evidence opposing GLI's findings, we feel fairly confident in dismissing any charges of a rigged RNG at PPPoker.

Security Department

Of course, there's more to running legitimate poker games than just possessing sufficiently randomized dealing and shuffling mechanisms. Collusion, botting, multi-accounting, and other nefarious activities committed by other players rather than the site itself can also affect the integrity of the game. In this area, we find that there's more to worry about at PPPoker.

The site claims to take such wrongdoing seriously, and it has even created an “Anti-Cheating Team” and developed “Anti-Bot Measures” both of which are touted on its website. Yet, the history of PPPoker's efforts to keep its games clean leaves a lot to be desired. There's ample evidence that this platform cracks down not on cheaters but rather on big winners, high-volume grinders, and others whom it considers detrimental to its focus on recreational (read: losing) players.

Beginning around the middle of 2019, PPPoker started to crack down hard on what it characterized as botting and collusion. Thousands of players have had their accounts banned. Several reached out to support to get further clarification on what they allegedly did wrong, and they offered to prove their innocence. Such messages were routinely ignored by PPPoker.

In some cases, an agent and his entire downline (all players who joined a given club with a particular agent code) were banned. Some of them got their funds back, but others saw their chips disappear entirely. When major Russian affiliate v-pokere.ru and its players got caught up in these events, some clubs refused to pay while others did refund player balances and pay agent commissions.

Inconsistencies in the details of these bans raised some troubling questions. A few players were booted from some clubs but allowed to continue to play at others, and certain accounts were prohibited from logging on from a specific device while still being able to access the site from other devices. If these users were really cheating, then it would have made more sense to prohibit them from using PPPoker altogether.

We've heard whispers around the internet that the real reason for booting many of these players is because they were winning too much. We've also seen rumors that regional PPPoker marketing managers are pressuring clubs to evict low-margin players.

This makes little sense if PPPoker is just hosting play money games and selling chips, but word on the street is that PPPoker personnel are working closely with the clubs and perhaps even receiving kickbacks from some of them. We cannot substantiate these tales, but whatever the case may be, something just doesn't add up with the security measures taken by the site.

Club Security

With the PPPoker security measures largely mistargeted against winning customers, protecting the games from illicit activities falls mostly in the hands of club administrators. There are undoubtedly some of them who wish to run impartial and equitable games, but there are others who couldn't care less what's happening at the tables as long as the rake keeps rolling in.

Even if a club manager is faithfully committed to ensuring the integrity of the games, the tools at his or her disposal are severely limited. The sophisticated methods that mainstream poker sites employ to detect bots and colluders, like IP checks, Captchas, and exhaustive hand history databases, are not accessible to club owners at PPPoker.

Even if a user is found to be cheating and kicked out of a club, he or she can then open up a new account on another device and rejoin without anybody being any the wiser. Should a club owner figure out a way to detect that it's the same person and permanently bar them altogether, then the miscreant can simply target another unsuspecting club.

When we consider the weak and possibly misdirected efforts of PPP itself, the inadequate resources clubs have to police their games, the existence of emulators and VPNs for cheaters to cloak their machines, and other factors, we find that the risk of illicit and unfair play at PPPoker is quite high.

HUDs and Tracking Programs

In-App HUD

The programmers at PPPoker have thoughtfully included a HUD package within the poker software itself. It consists of eight statistics displayed in two rows next to the nameplate of each opponent:

The In-App HUD Shows You Basic Stats on the Other Players

There's one big issue with this built-in HUD: You have to pay to use it!

You see, you do not get to enable this HUD display unless you acquire a Black or Platinum VIP card. Although there are a few ways to get such a card for free, the typical way of obtaining one is by spending 1,580 diamonds for a Black card or 3,880 diamonds for a Platinum one.

VIP Cards Unlock Additional Features

This works out to more than $25 for a Black Card or $60 for Platinum although there are sometimes discounts, and you do get a slight price break if you buy large packages of diamonds at one time. Even worse: Each VIP card is good for only 30 days before expiring!

If you want to keep using the PPPoker HUD, you must pay $25+ each month.

Besides just the cost, there are a few oddities with this HUD. It is not customizable at all; you must be content with the stats and their arrangement that your betters at PPPoker management have decided for you. More worrisome perhaps is the fact that the HUD displays information gleaned from hands in which you were not a participant. It even collects and consolidates stats across all clubs, increasing the sample size and reliability of the figures shown.

This amounts to a form of datamining because the HUD provides users with information gleaned from hands in which they did not participate. Even at online poker rooms that freely permit HUDs and tracking software to be used, there is usually a stipulation that all hands within a player's database must have been played (or at least observed) by that user personally.

This is very close to being a pay-to-win mechanic wherein those who are willing to keep forking over the dough can get a huge advantage over their adversaries at the tables.

If you opt to preserve your purity by eschewing this blatant money grab, then you do have some simple methods of tracking your opponents manually. You can color code them with a tag and also save notes on them, but that's about it.

PPPoker Player Tagging Interface

Third Party HUDs and Trackers

If the limitations and cost of the in-app HUD leave you searching for alternatives, then you do have quite a few options available to you. Unfortunately, setting up these third-party HUDs is a pain in the ass.

None of the major tracking + HUD packages have native support for PPPoker. Thus, you will need to buy a hand converter to write the hand histories in a format that your tracking software can understand. Most of these hand converters employ a subscription model where you have to pay a monthly fee to use it. Prices tend to start at around $30/month, but there are some that are more expensive.

In order to benefit from the functionality of these HUDs, you have to be running PPPoker on a computer because there are few if any tracking programs that are compatible with mobile devices. However, many of the hand converters will only work properly if you use an emulator to run the Android version of the poker site on your Windows system rather than the native Windows version.

This is a lot of rigamarole just to get a simple heads-up display to appear on your tables. Even if you do get all the components to play well together, you will still be at a disadvantage compared to those who pay AceKing Tech to use the standard PPPoker HUD because they will get to see stats compiled even from hands for which they were not present.

If you wish to use a tracking package to record your own playing history and aren't really interested in the HUD, then you might be better served by looking within the Career tab on the bottom of the main PPPoker screen. Here you can get an overview of your results although the information given is pretty basic.

Get a Summary of Your Results in the Career Page

Support

The PPPoker support email address is support[at]pppoker.net. There's also a feedback option within the Profile tab at the bottom of the app. PPPoker is active on social media, and you can get in touch with them on Facebook if you prefer this medium of communication.

Opinions From Real Players

What real-life players think of PPPoker varies based on the individual. Many newcomers to the game appreciate it as an entertaining and easy-to-use way to play poker. Savvier and more experienced commenters are less enthusiastic, and some of them express the same worries that we have.

Here's a selection of actual posts made by PPPoker players on various internet sites devoted to the poker community:

Conclusion

There are definitely a few interesting aspects to the PPPoker app, including the ability to play against schools of fish while scoring a sweet rakeback deal. However, in order to realize this optimistic scenario, you really need to do a lot of research to find a reputable agent who represents a club with juicy games.

Even if you are able to achieve this, you could be banned for reasons that are unclear possibly forfeiting your balance in the process. Serious questions have been raised as to the probability of collusion and bots inhabiting some of the games, and it's beyond the ability of most players to investigate these matters adequately before joining a club.

In addition to the above points, customer service, game quality, withdrawal speeds, and many other elements are variable depending on the club you join. Thus, it would be reckless and irresponsible for us to promote this site given the wide range of experiences that are possible due to circumstances outside the control of players.

In summary, we counsel our visitors to choose a site other than PPPoker as their main online poker home. This app does have certain appealing aspects, but we really feel that only veteran players with years of experience and a deep knowledge of the gaming industry ought to take a chance on it. For the remainder of our readers, we suggest checking out a list of the best USA-friendly internet poker sites for better places to play.

Frequently Asked Questions

PPPoker works a bit differently than most offshore poker sites, and so it's perfectly natural if you have a few questions about this operation rattling around in your head. Look below because we have collected answers to some of the most common queries about this site.