I am absolutely certain that this topic has been beaten to death, but just looking for some honest and specific input.
I have been playing poker for way too long, and have been playing online for about 2 years. Ive always used pokerstars, but only because that is the first sight that came around to me.
I really am tired of the bad beats and the lucky fish on pokerstars, and I am wondering what are the better sites out there. Obviously it is all opinion, but most of you have way more online experience than i do. I play almost entirely tournement and sitngo poker (no good rings). Usually $2-$10 buyins.
What site would be most condusive to this sort of structure? any help is greatly appreciated thanks.

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"I feel the same way about disco as i do about herpes"- Hunter S. Thompson

U think its rigged? What good would that do the site? If all u play is tourneys, you pay an entrance fee. What does it matter to poker stars who wins?

nonono, dont get me wrong, i dont think its rigged at all. The only problem i have found is probably that the field is too big and there are too many rookie players who call with garbage hands. I dont blame pokerstars at all, but i am just looking for a site that has a slightly more condusive environment for a tournement player. Unfortunatly pokerstars tourneys at the lower buyins are almost always 1000+ players. Maybe a smaller site is what im looking for. Im not trying to pick any fights with pokerstars fans, just looking for information.

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"I feel the same way about disco as i do about herpes"- Hunter S. Thompson

Though im not saying its true.....(or that i believe it)

An arguement would be:

Poor players would go broke or get frutrated and quit over time.
More players = more rake.
There are many more poor players than skilled.
So if the software favs poor play, then poor player have money/stay interested and site makes more money and even if they chased away the skilled ones the donk fest would still be a money maker.

(just an arguement, but a valid one that answers the 'why' question)

This is bad because....

If you're having problems in large fields, stick to SnG's or get better. The MTT's are big everywhere at the low buy-in's ($1-$10) and when they're not big, it's because it's a small site full of nitty bonus whores and in these online tournaments with these shitty structures, you're gonna need pay-off wizards to build your stack early.

I'd say to go with Ultimate Bet because they have good guaranteed prize pools or the Double Stack tournies on Full Tilt. I think the cheapest Hold 'em DS tournies are $26, but don't quote me on that. These 2 sites have smaller fields in their MTT's, but still give a good payout with UB's guaranteed prize pools and FTP pays a smaller percentage of the field.

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Play higher entry fees, if you can play well.

There's enough bad players in $20s and above still.

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ICM / EV Calculator and other free poker software

No, i do not think poker sites are rigged, but there IS reason for a site to do so.

For example. If u give people a flop in which 1 person has hit a flush draw, 1 has 2 pair, 1 has a straight draw, another has top pair, ur seeing alot more action, this more rake.

Everyone always says what would rigging do for the site, they say it wouldnt do anything, when in actuality it would, and would be profitable for the site

People on the internet suck enough to where they don't need to rig flops to induce action is what I mean when I say there's no reason to do so.

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This post is absolutely 100% accurate....lets look at a business point of view...if you have a shop and people come in for the first time you want them to buy something but more importantly you want them to come back ...the more people you build up clientel wise the better for business so why should these rogues like stars be any different...if you have lets say 500 guys joining your site and have 1500 good players already on it well in an real world 90% of these 500 would go broke in a short period and not come back so it makes perfectly good business sense to keep these 500 players hanging around making them think that theyre good when they suckout cos most people only remember there wiinning hands..

i have had on 3 different occassions joined paddy power poker <tribeca>..now the rules are u cannot withdraw for 3 days ok..i gurantee for the first 2 days you will sweep up and i turned an 100$ load into 1500$..thought f""k i must be the best on this site i cant lose..last 12 hours before i could withdraw i was sucked out on every single pot and eventually lost the lot..2nd time i joined the same won for 2 1/2 days rest couldnt flop a pair but made some cos i left and 3 rd time the same won for 2/1/2 days then nowt..u tel me this is just coincidence??? look at party when i first joined there 2 years ago for the first month i turned an 200$ bankroll into almost $4k..and even at one time thought about giving up work..ever since then it streaks u can go for weeks without anything then go a week where u cant lose and whats the point in all this??? quite simply the softwares so sofisticated to keep people in the site with the knowledge that you think u can win thats it bottom line and only winners are of course the criminals who run this ...

Look at prima you go there and i gurantee that you will see setup afetr setup a place def not to be trusted but still not as bad a sjokerstars where the beats are the worst ive ever seen on such a regular basis..bottom line poker sites need £ staying around and IMHO everything is done by % if u withdraw your % goes way down if you are a fish your % is way up cos sites have statistics on everything you do and would be so simple to manipulate whats goin on...

I wouldnt be surprised at all if any of this is true. I was just playing Party Poker, started with 400 (fake)chips. I had terrible hands until i was down to about 150. Then I won a big pot(450-+ chips) which brought me up to about 550. For about 3 hands after that I had nice cards, but I was beat by stupid beats(I cant remember exactly what they were). After that I was back down to 250 and I quit there.

Pretty much the same thing that everyone else is saying... Oh well, its good practise since the only other people to play with are my sisters - and I can win against them just by bluffing!