Bookie comparison sites like this make placing online bets quick, easy and simple. Even if you have no experience with bookies, and may not have even placed bets at sites like http://partycasino.com you are sure to quickly pick up how this software works. Compare Bookies is a great way to make sure you are getting the best possible odds for the bets which you are looking to place. If it’s been a while since you played a game of poker and you could do with brushing up on your poker knowledge, then this blog post will remind you of three of the most popular types of poker.

The most popular variants of poker are Draw, Stud and Community poker. The game of play is similar amongst them all but what differs is the hand values, the number of betting rounds and which cards are dealt face-up or face-down.
Draw poker: This is where a player keeps their hand hidden and attempts to improve it by replacing cards with new ones from the pack. This is also known as a Five-card draw.

Stud poker: Here, players receive their cards either face-up or face-down in multiple betting rounds.
Community card poker: Everyone’s own cards are hidden but in order to complete a hand, players use shared face-up cards. This is also known as Texas hold ‘em or Omaha hold ‘em.

The outrights are the most impressive thing here as they have gone above and beyond the call of duty to price up Gaelic Games, Aussie Rules and obscure(ish) Rugby Union leagues. Obscure for outright betting anyway. The amount of football matches priced up is large but, as is the case with a few firms, they are all mouth and no trouser as they offer only one market for many matches.

Sports on offer in play

888 are roughly 888 miles behind the top boys in the industry in terms of live betting. A Saturday afternoon is a time to log on to a site and be blown away by how much football they are trading in play but 888 have only 20 matches for the whole day. The big boys would be doing more than 20 3pm kick offs alone. Tennis is pretty average but other sports seem up to scratch but they may only be because other firms don’t trade other sports very much.

Offers

Everybody’s favourite balding, leg spinning legend who has somehow managed to bag a 40 year old scorcher Shane Warne is on board and will happily offer us a £50 matched bet to start us off on our 888 sporting adventure. As if getting Warney wasn’t enough, they reward current customers in all sorts of ways using all sorts of platforms. Like them on facebook to win football tickets, bet a fiver for 20 free spins in the casino, playing on the 8 theme there is an offer to protect your bet against goals scored in or after the 88th minute. Continuing the theme, the 888th bet placed on the site each day wins £888 which is gr-eight.

Pricing

From this coming Saturday’s Premier League matches, the only best prices that 888 have are for Wolves away at Everton, Newcastle away at City and for three draws. This translates that they don’t offer the best bets around for what people want to bet on.

Site Design

As a bookie, it’s hard to find a colour to use for your website which isn’t already synonymous with another bookie. Red, Labdrokes. Green, Bet365. Blue, a few. Orange, no-one springs to mind but maybe 888 in a few years. The orange works well and adds to the snazzy nature of the site. It seems that they can’t give you enough information, there’s a stats section, live results section, an area to which tells you when the next events are off and a scrolling highlights photo informing you of what to look forward to.

Customer service

There seems to be no way of contacting 888 and instead rely on an extensive FAQ section which doesn’t cover such questions as ‘why have you voided my bet?’, ‘why are you staking me; late betting is your fault’ and ‘why have you changed my 10-1 to 1-10; it’s your fault you offered the wrong price’. They may have a few unhappy punters on their hands, but I suppose they’ll never know about it.

VC are definitely a solid Europa League team, not quite in the big 4 like Ladbrokes and Bet365 but they are certainly a Premier League main stay. This is reflected in their sports coverage with core sports, poor sports, bore sports and more sports. If it’s competitive then they’ll have a price on it. Also, they’ll put a price on two computerised virtual football teams which is strangely addictive to bet on (apparently). There are plenty of special markets as well such as mythical matches, a market on El Hadjii Diouf getting more bookings than goals for Doncaster and a bet against Victor Chandler himself in which you must predict how many of his English XI start the first game of Euro 2012. Under 7 is my shout at 6-1 (but the price will probably come in when all of you lump on it).

Sports on offer in play

Same story in play as their traders are working overtime to cover all manner of football, tennis, snooker, handball, bowls, darts, rugby union, rugby league and basketball. All on top of the virtual stuff as well. The wide coverage is impressive but are there enough markets? Over 20 on small football matches isn’t market leading by any means but there should be enough for most people to get their teeth in to. Snooker and tennis betting is fairly uniform as are the lesser traded live sports. Certainly does a good job.

Offers

The sign up offer is a £25 matched bet which is slightly above average. Those already initiated in the VC way of life can get special offers in the way of refunding accas in which only one selection loses, double odds if your first scorer selection also bags the second, refunding tennis bets if your selection loses a final set tie break, refunding if your snooker selection loses but scores a century, settling a losing darts bet as a winner if the player hits a 170 checkout and finally refunding you top batsmen bet if the winning selection is the captain. Plenty of offers but none of them are really that good.

Pricing

According to oddschecker.com analysis, VC offered the best prices on last season’s Premier League fixtures and also offered the best prices most often. High praise indeed. A quick look at next weekend’s fixtures show them going best price on three of the ten favourites so they seem to be keeping up their competitive pricing this season as well.

Site Design

The shadow of big Vic himself looms large over the site as he’s actually put a picture of himself at the top. A fine piece of ego massaging. Apart from that, the site is mightily impressive with an in play tab as well as a flash application for it on the left. Everything you need can be found at the drop of a hat, but you’ll just have to contend with Vic giving you the eye.

Customer Service

Live Chat, tick. Email, tick. Telephone, tick. The bare minimum but at the same time it is almost the maximum of what can be done. The Live Chat works perfectly well and the operators do their job thoroughly so no complaints in this department.

At first glance it appears that Stan and his boys care little for sport as a whole with only very popular sports on offer on the left hand side but on closer inspection there is a ‘show full list’ option. If you press it then it unleashes the full force of Stan James sportsbook, the full cyclo-cross, futsal, beach volley, pool and skiing force of Stan James. Plenty of varying sport and a surprising amount of matches within these sports, some of these sports can sometimes be bare and are just used to give the illusion of them doing loads of sports but Stan is no magician. He is straight up.

Sports on offer in play

The football coverage is fairly sparse with Saturday afternoon being dominated by the Premier League and little else in relative terms. Other sport is good with all televised tournaments beingtraded with darts, snooker, rugby, cricket and American football featuring prominently when they are in season.

Offers

The sign up bonus is a whopping £150 but hold your horses before you start spending your winnings on a nice winter coat. Let me break it down for you. The first bit is simple, £10 matched bet as long as your qualifying bet is on a selection bigger than 1-2. £10 in your pocket, not quite £150 yet. To get your next £20, you must place two bets of £20 on selections of over 1-2. To get the £30, three bets of £30, the £40 will be earned after four bets of £40 (see a pattern here?) and then the final £50 can be claimed be five bets of £50. Phew. It can be done but you’ll need to spend £550 and place 15 bets. Their other promotion is a cricket money back special which is slightly easier to get. Back a player to top score and if he scores a ton (or a 50 in a T20) but doesn’t top score then you’ll get a free bet to the value of your original stake.

Pricing

The Win Draw Win market in football tends to be between 106% and 108% which allows for competitive all round pricing and some best price favourites (though not a bundle load). They have a market leading amount of specials which is good if you have a local club and know a bit more about them than a bookie spending 5 minutes researching them. Take them to the cleaners.

Site Design

The mini player is the best feature on this site with the ability to watch loads of live sport while you bet on it. Plenty of football on it with Serie A being the main draw but there is also basketball and squash to fulfil all of your needs (well, some of your needs).

Customer Service

The normal contact methods are available with the addition of Freephone and local rate numbers if you’re ringing from a landline or a mobile. If you want to post it then stick it on a plane to Gibraltar.

A very healthy selection of matches and sports, would be considered a contender for most brimming sport book for sure.

Sports on offer in play

They are certainly up there with the best in terms of what they trade in play as it is rare to find a football match traded by another firm that Sporting aren’t trading themselves. Football at all hours of the day and from all around the world is what the punters want as there isn’t a minute of a day where some punter from around the world doesn’t fancy a cheeky fiver on the next team to score. Output on other sport is equally impressive but the jewel in the crown is certainly football.

Offers

The sign up bonus is a bumper £50 but my experience of getting it was very annoying. After your initial bet, the free matched bet should show up in your account after 7 days, mine didn’t after 10 so I got on Live Chat and told them but they could tell me was that I had received it, not used is and now it has expired. Very annoying but I presume this does not happen to everybody.

Pricing

Without being disparaging to the good people at Sporting Bet, but I would describe their pricing policy as cowardly. When trading in play, they are consistently worst price, off large over rounds on every market and are normally the longest to stay suspended after a goal has been scored, ie they wait to see what everyone else’s price is before going up with their own. This may be as a result of trading so many games but it still lets them down. For pre match and outrights, there are few if any best priced favourites and they must just rely on the fact that they do so many matches that people won’t look elsewhere for prices. Potentially not the worst policy as they may get a lot of mug money but I would compare it to the only Tesco in town charging more than the corner shop; but Tesco has more goods so it is easier to shop there.

Site Design

Simple design normally goes a long way and Sporting haven’t complicated things too much. Everything is easy to find with a flash in play area which updates automatically, a normal in play area for those without flash and an in play diary to plan your lonely night in with. After being on the site for a few minutes, a pop up appears with a Live Chat operator offering to walk you through the sign up procedure. A bit like walking down Brick Lane, looking at the menu of a curry house and then have one of the waiters attempt to haul you inside. They probably have more success on Brick Lane though

Customer service

As stated earlier, they do have a Live Chat function but my use of it was not particularly enjoyable. In fairness to them, the operator was thorough and polite but when bearing bad news everyone seems less nice than they actually are. Other methods of contact are available in email and phone.

The Irish love a good gamble and Paddy Power are doing their best to get the people of Ireland out of their economic woes by offering them every sport under the sun to bet on. Whether or not this is a sound strategy for hard up people remains to be seen but surely it can’t hurt to have a tenner on some beach soccer, twenty on Aussie Rules and a cheeky pound on a beach volleyball acca.

Sports on offer in play

Equally impressive is their in play section. The Irish government could do much worse than to put a few thousand euros on the next team to score in an Urugauyan under 19 match. What could possibly go wrong? If that fails then they could double their money on a Challenger tennis match, which suffice to say is not a high standard but shows Paddy’s strength in their depth of coverage.

Offers

I’m not sure whether Paddy’s are actually a bookmaker or a charity as surely they can’t actually make any profit with all the offers they have. It starts with a £50 matched sign up bonus with no strings attached and manifests itself with money back offers on loads of sporting events. Famously they’ve done money back offers for certain markets if Barcelona beat Manchester United in last year’s Champions League final. They obviously did and Paddy went off with their tails between their legs. This week alone there are money back offers if Robbie Keane scores last against Estonia, if Fernando Torres scores anytime against Liverpool and they will refund all losing accas if all of your selections were winning at half time. Publicity is a big thing for Paddys and these offers certainly help garner a lot of good publicity.

Pricing

Following on from their generous offers, their pricing is also almost charity like. They will very often have best priced favourites in Premier League matches and don’t hold back on their outright pricing. Again, their love of publicity will sometimes lead to them taking a major stance on a big game or tournament which may lose them money but will gain them customers.

Site Design

A snazzy site but perhaps a bit overloaded and you don’t really know where to look. It becomes obvious where things are but first time users may feel that it is a bit in your face. The ‘Pimp your bet’ section is a novel idea, simply putting the shortest favourites there for people to add to their accas. Good for a laugh and just trying to make punters accas less likely to happen. There is a suggestion box also in the bottom left if you feel the need to get your thinking cap on, another novelty which goes down well.

Customer service

Cracking customer support service with all the methods of communication you would expect. On top of that they also say what the average response time is with email taking 49 minutes, Live Chat 37 seconds and phone 19 seconds. The transparency is welcome and perhaps more firms don’t do it as they don’t have as much to show off about as Paddy Power.

Small things like having prices for the winner Portuguese Super Liga and Belgian Jupiler League make their outright football section a stand out. Few firms will price these up and those that do may only do so before the season starts and then not bother to update it as the season goes on. The rest of the sport section is fairly standard for the market but they do an above average number of matches for most sports.

Sports on offer in play

The Live section is good with plenty of football to choose from and an extensive diary to plan your (if you do this then perhaps sad) life around. The football markets are fairly scarce however with just the standard core markets available. In terms of other sports, there are a many sports but few games in each but I suppose this is to be expected as there are not snooker and darts on 24/7. They will cover the non-mainstream sports that are live on telly.

Offers

The promotions area of the site was surprisingly hard to find for a betting site. They normally just stuff them straight in to your face but I had to go on Live Chat in order to locate them. Why would they hide all their great offers? Probably because they don’t have any great offers. The sign up deal is for £25 but for the loyal punters there is nothing. Well, nothing except a £100 weekly caption competition and a £20 free bet for one person if you can predict the amount of goals on a Saturday afternoon. The tight buggers.

Pricing

While not quite as tight as their promotions policy, BlueSq aren’t giving away too much. They trade to a decent percentage per selection book but don’t have too many best priced favourites across the website.

Site Design

Everything seems in order with plenty of tabs to find what you want and plenty of links to areas of the site that BlueSq want you to find. The one thing that sticks out for me is the blog area or propaganda area as you could call it. This is full of weekend previews for football and has a record of all the tweets they’ve made on Twitter. If a green grocer is telling you that his bananas are good then you can be pretty sure that he wants rid of them. If a bookie blogs about how they think a team will win then he wants to take some money on that team to either even out his book or he thinks they will lose. As seen by the offers, BlueSq don’t like giving away money.

Customer Service

All the gang are on the site with email, phone, mail and Live Chat. The phone number is prominent on the top of the home page so it won’t take you ages to trawl through the site to find. The Live Chat doesn’t keep you waiting long and the operators are fairly quick at responding.

Plenty to offer pre match with all the big sports covered, everything a British person would realistically want to bet on. A fair amount of markets for football matches, with handicaps, goal lines and half markets. Outright wise, they have priced up all the English and Scottish leagues as well as the top division of Spain, Italy, Germany and France. Tennis wise, they just have win prices and set scoring and they appear to price up the bare minimum markets in most other sporting matches. They definitely have above average sport coverage.

Sports on offer in play

A welcome sight on a betting site is an in play tab, basically meaning that they give two hoots about trading matches in play. They offer football, tennis, cricket and bowls in play on top of American sport when it is on. More markets are offered in play than pre match with tennis having set winners, game winners and individual set scores. Football also has many more with a good variation of matches, ie not just your big European matches.

Offers

‘£50 free bet! The only question is… what will you bet on?’ Well, it’s not the only question but thankfully there are not any rubbish answers to the normal terms and conditions questions. The offer is a matched bet of up to £50, qualifying bet must be of odds of evens or greater and free bet must be used within 30 days. Not having to bet through it 10 times to withdraw thankfully. Enhanced odds offers include Goals Galore which is essentially a both teams to score accumulator, Double Delight/Hat Trick heaven which doubles/trebles the odds on the first scorer if he scores a brace/hat trick, and money back specials if specific things happen in a certain match, eg if four or more gaols are scored or if a certain player scores. All very handy if you’re a fan of getting your money’s worth.

Pricing

From Fred Done on the TV adverts, you would expect Betfred to be throwing out best price favourites all over the show. Sadly they don’t, but they are hardly worst price on anything either. Outright markets tell the same story. Fred has Done us.

Site Design

The site design is very good for my money, everything is easy to get to but at the same time you’re not overloaded with things to bet on. The betting highlights section is always on display and will normally have what there is to bet on for that day as well as the goals galore coupon which appears to be easy money to them. It would explain the promotion of such a market.

Customer service

While there is Live Chat for all the other features of Betfred, the sports book has been left out for some reason. You can Live Chat someone to complain about how their roulette tables are rigged but can’t if your bet is voided for little reason. A bit odd but you’ll have to email them or get them on the blower to vent your frustrations.

It seems very apparent from the off that Tote mainly focus on horse racing, which is obvious if you’ve ever been to a day at the races. They cover the big football matches and do the core markets but overall there is a very limited selection. They have most of the English and Scottish leagues but little else from around the world and while not many people like to admit it, we all like a bet on a Czech second division match despite having never heard of either of the teams. They are not catering for the bored people with nothing better to do. They do a small amount of other sports but again, if you want to bet on Ukrainian basketball then you are best looking elsewhere.

Sports on offer in play

All the main football and tennis matches are traded but not too much else. They use the same markets as pre match which is helpful for a punter as there is no need to click in to a new in play event when the match kicks off. They seem to be just trading matches live on TV which leaves them way behind their rivals as Sky don’t cover the Belerusian Cup.

Offers

New account holders can get the (compared to a lot of the market) paltry £10 for just signing up. Imagine a tenner for nothing being a bit rubbish, but in this business there is much more on offer elsewhere. After the sign up bonus, they have weekly offers like enhanced multiples, double delight and hat trick heaven. For the latter two, if the first scorer you back wins and then goes on to get two or three then their first to score price is doubled or trebled respectively.

Pricing

Offer the odd best price on football but rarely are they the sole best price, and even rarer are they best price on a medium favourite. Don’t particularly go out on a limb. Offer around 3-4% per selection as an over round which is a bit bigger than the market and hence slightly worse for the punter.

Site Design

The info bar on the home page showing the best bets is a nice addition but could easily be them trying to get money on the other side of a liabilty. Either way, classy touch. They also have an A-Z bet search tool so finding not being able to find the bet you want is probably harder than finding it. They also have Totesport radio on the site to fill your head with more propaganda to get you to bet how they want. Everything else is immediately obvious to find using sports A-Z.

Customer service

Has all the normal methods a sane person would want to use to contact a betting firm with the notable exception of live chat. This may be due to the fact that most people who use live chat are trying to cheat the betting site out of money and might not have the temerity to do it if they actually have to speak to someone instead of just typing.

An above average amount of sport is on offer, with all manner of weird and wonderful football matches and 32 different sports to bet on. This 32 includes lumping all motor sport in to one category, which adds a few more. But it also includes Big Brother and Politics as sports (could they be argued? Would certainly liven up Prime Ministers Questions throwing a rugby ball in the middle).

Sports on offer in play

Times they are a changing for Ladbrokes in play. Recently, they have doubled their output on in play football matches and hope to be trading 28 thousand matches a year. Add in to this that they have also increased the available markets on each match from under 10 to at least over 30 and normally around 70 then there isn’t going to be a bet on a match that you can’t get on. All the big leagues are covered and most of the small ones that no-one has heard of either are available as well. Other sports are increasing as well with cricket, tennis, volleyball and basketball all well covered. How many things do these people need to bet on?

Offers

Lads will have a different offer each week on display on the home page, this week it is a refund on first scorers if that match goes to extra time. In the past, it has been things like money back on certain markets if Rooney or other certain players score in that match. The introductory offer is a matched free bet of up to £50 which is advertised by Tiziano Crudelli. Doesn’t ring a bell? It wouldn’t really unless you tune in to the Italian version of Soccer Saturday though he is worth a youtube for making Thommo and Merse look like well behaved sensible people.

Pricing

Very competitive within the industry and very often best price on oddschecker for pre match. Have been to known in certain markets to go best price on every selection in order to generate a bit of publicity.

Site Design

The website has a cracking layout with my favourite thing being the search bar. Just type in anything that you want to bet on and if it’s on the website then you’ll find it instantly. No more trawling through eight screens to find what you want. There is also a live betting flash app on the right with all the live sport you can bet on now and all the live sport you can bet on later. The extras section is very handy with results and live scores. Also, they give you a helping hand with a form lad and stats centre. Now if I was in charge of a bookmaker then I would fill those two sections with absolute rubbish and hope people keep backing the outsiders.

Customer Service

All bases are covered here with options to phone, email and live chat your queries or for those who do not embrace change, you can post a letter to the good people at HQ.