 Everest Poker Summary
Everest Poker is an example of a successful approach to the post-UIGEA online poker market. Following the UIGEA, it became necessary for poker rooms to adopt unique solutions which would continue to offer their players something they wouldn’t find at other poker rooms. Some have come up with unique user interfaces that take player interaction to the next level, others have whipped their promotions system in shape. Everest Poker’s solution to the problem was to develop a poker room which targets Europeans. The multitude of languages in which the site is available clearly shows that they want to provide something familiar to the large variety of nations populating Europe. Their promotions and events are also focused on given countries and regions. Providing games for people in a setting in which they can feel at home culturally is Everest’s trademark, and so far it’s working just fine. Keeping the rake as low as possible is another weapon in their marketing arsenal. Besides providing some of the juiciest games for their players, Everest Poker does indeed feature the lowest rake in the industry.
Everest Poker Games Available
On Everest Poker you can play all the most popular poker variations - that is. Holdem and Omaha, he he. Only two games. It’s a limitation, and if you crave other variations, there’s no way around it at Everest.
Stakes range from $0.05/0.10 to $50/50 for no limit or pot limit, and a little higher for fixed limit. This is not your ultra high stakes poker room. Most games are found on low to middle stakes. On the other hand, on these levels, action is lively.
Tournaments at Everest are great, as we’ve already mentioned. There are lots of tournaments with guaranteed prize pools. Mostly they are played without overlay because of the big interest, but one in a while you can make a sweet deal and get like 2:1 on your buy-in just by entering the competition.
Everest Poker Player Traffic
Despite being on its own network (but then it’s not a network), Everest Poker is presently number six in poker traffic, quite impressive. At this writing, they peak between 5000 and 6000 players (Nov. 2008).
Players at your table may come from more or less any country on the planet, which is really cool. For sure, it adds some spice to the game if the guy who moves in against your nuts is based in Istanbul or Marrakesh. It’s an added aspect when you analyze the game, and it’s all the way nice.
Tournaments range from freerolls and one dollar buy-ins up to the occasional $100-200 event, which most of the time is a satellite to big live events like EPT or APT, but may also be a $15K guaranteed or sometimes even bigger. There are also smaller guaranteed tournaments running each day.
Everest Poker Quality of Players
At Everest, players like to play a lot of hands, and there’s a lot of aggression. This may sound like the recipe for a hard fight, but the truth is that your opponents rarely know what they’re doing, or why. There’s really good value playing here. If you dream of playing a big live event, see if the dream works with a big Everest logo on your chest.
Everest Poker Tournament Info
Everest’s tournaments are the regular bunch, with most of the specials taking place on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. STTs range from $.4+$.1 in buy-ins and tournament fees to $500+$30. Please note that the tournament fees are less than the usual 10% of the buy-in, which means that Everest is probably the best place for STTs value-wise. Add to that the fact that no actual rake is taken in tournaments (other than the above mentioned fee), and that games are relatively loose and you’ll probably have Everest’s huge popularity partly explained.
Everest Poker Multi-table tournaments feature NL Holdem, but there are plenty of PL and FL Omaha ones running too. They have several $1+$0 (no tourney fee) NL Holdem MTTs going on, otherwise, the fees represent 10% of the buy-in sum. The most noteworthy MTTs are the daily $5,000 guaranteed, the weekly $20,000 guaranteed as well as satellites and qualifiers for EPT events. All of these bigger tourneys have satellites and sub-satellites running for them.
Everest Poker Software
Everest poker’s software is not a particularly outstanding piece of engineering, but it is fast, reliable and well capable of dealing with the player-traffic that they get. Graphically, the user interface is not likely to cause a visual overload, but it’s ok and does the job it’s supposed to do. Until not so long ago Everest Poker only featured Texas Holdem, but they offer Omaha now as well. Despite all the apparent shortcomings it still built up a pretty big player base virtually from nowhere, which means that the public is content with what the Everest software has to offer them. The other good news is, Everest doesn’t belong to any poker network, it is an independent poker room operating on the software provided by Grand Virtual. The statistics offered at Everest are the industry-standard ones: flops viewed percentage, hands per hour, average pot sizes etc. Multi tabling is supported although made a tad difficult by the lack of resizable tables and mini views. Up to eight tables are supported for simultaneous play.
Everest Poker Bonus & Promotions
Everest Poker’s promotions are also shaped to reflect its local-specific nature. There are freerolls and satellites running all the time as qualifiers for different regional poker events, as well as for bigger WSOP and WPT level events. One of the hottest promotions Everest is currently running is the one that makes it possible for winners to live like a top-class pro for a few months. This promotion consists of several packages totaling $100,000 in travel expenses and entries to different WSOP and WPT events world-wide.
Everest’s “refer a friend” promotion gives players the possibility to earn $50 after each referred friend. People referred need to be depositing real money players and one can’t refer more than 100 of them over any 180-day period. If traveling to Las Vegas and spending a few days there posing as a high-roller has always been a dream of yours, Everest Poker might just make it come true. Their Vegas travel packages will take care of all your expenses including spending money for 6 days.
The Everest Poker signup bonus amounts to $200 and it can be unlocked in smaller increments by generating 1 Summit point for every 7 cents of it. The “refer a friend” bonus is such an incremental one as well.
Everest Poker Deposit & Withdrawal Options
Deposit Options: Neteller, FirePay, Click2Pay, Visa, MasterCard, ECO, Moneybookers and PaySafe Card.
Withdrawal Options: Neteller and wire transfer.
Everest Poker Customer Service
Everest’s support is a fine blend of extremely nice and rather disappointing features. To start with, they offer support in no less than 16 languages. No longer is it imperative to be a fluent English-speaker for the players of Everest to be able to reach out and ask for help. Disappointingly though, all this multi-language bonanza of online help is only available through e-mail. Response times are good, however some sort of live support would be more than welcome. Even if phone support is out of the question (I suppose it is rather difficult to find and hire people who are fluent in the 16 languages used for support) a live chat option would be great. That said, Everest’s support staff is friendly and they certainly know their business, so no problems there.
Everest Poker Additional Information
Everest Poker does not currently accept US players. While many of the industry’s heavyweights saw a decline in player numbers following the UIGEA, Everest Poker swam right up against the tide and achieved the greatest growth during this poker-hostile period. They knew exactly how to turn a handicap into an advantage, and made progress when most poker rooms found it challenging to maintain their existing player-base. Also, Everest achieved all that with an average poker software and without resorting to dirty tactics.
Everest Poker Pros & Cons
Pros: Lots of tournament traffic. Very flexible lobby software. Very soft competition. Multi-lingual e-mail support.
Cons: Only Texas Hold'em supported. Mostly low to medium stake players. |
