Online Poker Reviews

CAKE POKER REVIEW

Visit Cake Poker

  For a smaller poker room Cake Poker has one of the more robust US cashiers. Your first option, of course, is to try to use a major credit or debit card. The success rate seems to be fairly high and the minimum deposit is $25. Cake Poker recommends that players try debit cards over credit cards, which does seem to increase the processing success. The next-best and easiest solution would be the UseMyWallet e-wallet service. UseMyWallet can be intimidating if you don't already have an account as it is invitation-only. However, you should easily be able to acquire an invitation by requesting one from the Cake Poker support.

The other two US deposit options at Cake Poker are cash transfer and MoneyLineWallet. Cash transfer has become popular for poker deposits over the last few years because of their ubiquitous presence in grocery stores and pharmacies. You may even be able to send deposits online using some cash transfer sites. Finally, MoneyLineWallet is an oddly named e-wallet service that has yet to be supported by many poker rooms. You leave the Cake Poker cashier to sign up with this third-party service, which can accept deposits directly from your checking account. You can then transfer that to the poker room cashier.

Overall:  4/5

Launched in 2006 with a strange promotion that allowed players a chance at owning part of the poker room Cake Poker has largely flown under the radar since its inception, attracting numerous also-ran skins but little attention. Now, with recent events claiming a number of the largest US poker rooms, Cake Poker has been thrown into the spotlight as one of the few poker rooms still accepting all US players. Aside from that distinction, Cake Poker quietly does a number of things right: offers a sizable cashier, quick payouts, great new software, and one of the easier bonuses to cash out.

Interestingly, the remaining US poker rooms, Cake Poker included, all feature much looser tables than the now-shut-down powerhouses. In an increasingly tighter era of online poker Cake Poker remains one of the few havens for finding overly aggressive and/or inexperienced players. Being the flagship site of a smaller network Cake Poker is largely bypassed by mid-limit grinders and the quality of play is more reminiscent of a casual brick-and-mortar table.

The Cake Poker promotional system is also above average with a 110% deposit bonus but, more importantly, is one of the easiest bonuses to cash out in the US market. After falling victim to numerous convoluted bonus schemes designed to withhold payouts over the years I've maintained that the ability to cash out a bonus is much more important than the actual bonus number. Cake Poker doesn't offer a big tournament schedule and its player traffic leaves something to be desired but in its loose games and well-designed software it excels in some key features that will keep most players satisfied.

Bonus (110% up to $600) and Promotions:   4/5

The actual bonus amount for our players at Cake Poker is strong but about average in the current market at 110% up to $600. However, the pleasant surprise comes when you see how little gameplay is actually required in order to release it. As with just about every other poker bonus you'll have $5 increments transferred into your real money account as you earn player points. I appreciate that Cake Poker has a built-in point progress bar in each table and they track the bonus down to the cent. It isn't uncommon to earn $4-5 of bonus per table per hour at the $1/2 or $.50/1 limits. Cake Poker also gives 90 days to clear the bonus, which is a couple of months more than the industry standard.

Other promotions at Cake Poker largely revolve around the Gold Chip and Gold Card system. Gold Chips are given every time you earn a set amount of player points and can then be used either as buy-ins for certain tournaments or for free merchandise. Interestingly, the amount of required player points to earn a Gold Chip decreases as you earn more each month. Gold Cards represent cards in a standard deck and are given away randomly to a player seated at a cash game. Cake Poker offers prizes when players make specific poker hands out of Gold Cards. Finally, our new players also earn entry in a private $500 freeroll only available to new depositors.

Fish:   4/5 

Despite ups and downs in terms of player traffic one constant at Cake Poker has always been the loose level of play at the cash games. Online poker is becoming a more more difficult nut to crack in recent years largely due to the lack of new player infusion and discretional spending combined with the proliferation of poker strategy books and low-limit grinders. It's refreshing to find a poker room like Cake Poker that still draws plenty of players that don't seem to care about their money. Prior to their shutdown, the biggest US poker rooms were offering flop percentages of 5-15% for full cash games. Cake Poker tables usually settle between 25-35%, which is indicative of the higher number of players willing to pay to see the flop.

Cake Poker features a large number of European and Asian players who are, on the whole, more aggressive than their US counterparts and that helps to soften up the games a bit. Whereas most players are past the point of risking their entire stack pre-flop on pocket Jacks or AK I've found Cake Poker players typically make these plays. The best strategy for experienced players is simply to punish the gambling-prone players with your premium hands. Allow them to make mistakes by trying to run over you and tend to raise early and often to maximize profit with your top pocket pairs.

Tournaments:   3.5/5

Probably the biggest area to suffer because of lack of traffic is the tournament schedule. Cake Poker can be enjoyable for casual low-buy-in tournaments but dedicated tournament players probably won't find many worthwhile events. The most popular Cake Poker tournaments attract about 150-200 players and feature buy-ins of $20 or less. They do have several guarantees throughout the day with common prize pools being $2,000-5,000 but with increased buy-ins of $20-50. There are some exceptions that appeal to low-limit players such as several $1,000 guarantees for less than $10 and $2,000 guarantees with a 40 cent buy-ins.

Sunday afternoons have become the standard for poker rooms to feature their largest tournament of the week. Cake Poker can't really compare to the larger networks but does offer a $25,000 guarantee at 2PM. The buy-in is $150 with numerous satellites running throughout the week. Sit and gos fill up pretty quickly without much time up to the $5 level. They also offer Bounty tournaments, which is one of my favorite styles. Cake Poker simply doesn't boast the tournament numbers of the largest poker rooms but can certainly serve a purpose for casual players or those who prefer to play against small fields and complete a tourney within a couple of hours.

Software:   4.5/5

The redesigned software is clearly one of the highlights of Cake Poker. The old Classic theme (which can still be enabled), complete with a handful of bizarre digitized photograph avatars, would have looked dated and stale 10 years ago. It was always functional with a nice hand history function and embedded bonus information but probably turned a lot of players off with its ugly graphics. However, the new Simple theme, dubbed with the marketing-friendly term Cake Poker 2.0, is excellent. The table and card graphics are seamless and sleek with the new ability to customize the look of the carpet, table, and cards. All table windows are resizable and able to be tiled or set to the corners of your monitor.

The new Cake Poker software also makes players feel more like individuals that are part of more friendly and less sterile community. While it has no effect on the actual gameplay players can now select a customized little player icon from categories like sports, poker, or animals. Another big improvement at Cake Poker is the use of a a timer graphic that shows the number of seconds left for a player to act. This helps to speed up 9-player cash games to a quick 60-70 hands per hour and cuts down on useless posturing. The lobby also easily displays your reward numbers and the graphical hand history has remained. Overall, the software is one of the standout features of Cake Poker.

US Payouts:   4.5/5 

I have exclusively used UseMyWallet for deposits and payouts at Cake Poker since they started offering them a few years ago. I have really been pleased with their processing time for electronic withdrawals, which is usually under 12 hours. While that should be expected for withdrawal methods that don't require additional processing some poker rooms are simply lazy or hesitant to give players their own money in a timely manner. Paper checks are processed fairly quickly and should be received within a couple of weeks via regular mail. Unfortunately, due to recent banking troubles Cake Poker has imposed a ludicrous $500 minimum for checks. They claim they will be adding more methods in the future but in the meantime I highly suggest players use UseMyWallet for withdrawals.

Customer Service:   3.5/5

One aspect that Cake Poker could improve upon is customer service. While some of the bigger poker rooms may have been able to get away with e-mail-only support for years Cake Poker should seize their opportunity as a smaller network to build player trust. Granted I do usually receive an e-mail response within 24 hours but telephone support or, at the very least, live chat would have been appreciated.

Player Traffic

One of the difficulties Cake Poker has had over the years is holding high player numbers. With several key skins leaving the network in the last year I felt like Cake Poker was one step away from shutting down entirely. Enter the events of April 2011, which have largely obliterated the US market to a handful of poker rooms. With Cake Poker being one of the few games left in town they've boosted their player numbers to a decent level. Peak times usually draw 2,000 or so total players with 4 or 5 tournaments per hour. The lower-to-middle cash game levels usually draw 8-10 active games per level up to the $1/2 NL level. There are scattered games at the larger limits.

Best Features

Accepts all US players. Cake Poker hosts one of the few networks remaining in the US market.

Bonus is easy to cash out. Just as important as the 110% is the fact that excessive gameplay isn't required to actually see your bonus money.

Tables are quite loose. Even though the table numbers aren't incredibly high the ones that do fill up are much looser than average.

Solid software. The old Cake Poker software always looked pretty outdated but the new package is now one of the better ones online.

Game Selection: Hold'em, Omaha

Limits: Limit: 2c/4c up to $100/200    No-Limit: 2c/4c up to $500/1,000

Deposit Methods: major credit cards, UseMyWallet, cash transfer, MoneyLineWallet, Moneybookers, NETeller, ClickandBuy, EcoCard, Ukash, and WebMoney.

Minimum Deposit: $25

Tips: One of the benefits of playing at a looser site like Cake Poker is the ability to largely play on auto-pilot during cash game sessions. Most experienced players are used to disguising the strength of their hands by varying raise frequency and amounts to combat giving watchful opponents a key to your holdings. Putting those skills into practice on Cake Poker players is largely counterintuitive and a waste of your mental energy. With so many players willing to risk large bets on speculative hands pre-flop or draws post-flop the best value play is simply to play aggressively and not out-think yourself. Bet for value when you have a strong hand and don't allow draw-happy opponents to do so for free.

With more players seeing the flop at Cake Poker you should always be raising your premium starting hands aggressively pre-flop to limit the competition and to start building yourself a sizable pot. You also might want to consider raising your standard no-limit raise to 4-5x the big blind if you're at an especially loose table. Premium pocket pairs are heavy favorites against a small number of random opponents but lose a lot of that advantage for every extra player that stays in the pot. If the players at Cake Poker are going to play more hands and stay in longer than average why not shelve the advanced plays and allow them to call and bluff themselves away?

Visit Cake Poker

Other Poker Sections

♠ Join our newsletter