Betfair Poker Review

The UK Based company Betfair is originally a sports betting company but being the owner of the Ongame Poker Network there presence in online poker is also notable. As a real British company it is interesting to see also typical UK promotions. This is something that definitely sets them apart from a company like Party which has a much more global scope. An example of this nice piece of patriotism is found at the homepage in the form of a Fish & Chips points race that leads to a London Live package. What is also a nice side effect of their Betting origin is that many real betters are trying a game of poker once a while which makes the tables more loose than most regular poker rooms!

BetFair Promotions

Like stated in the introduction Betfair focuses its promotions at UK poker players. The current Leaderboard promotions are called "Fish & Chips" and all lead to the upcoming poker event in London, the Betfair Poker Live London. This event takes place in the pre-valentine weekend from 12 to 13 of February in London. All qualifications are online at Betfair's leaderboards tournaments.
Besides this special live event Betfair is standardly offering new players a wide selection of welcome bonuses. Because you can choose from 5 different bonuses starting at $50 going up to $2500 we have a separate page explaining these for you!

Poker Tournaments

Because Betfair is operating at the Ongame network there are enough poker players around to play with any time of the day. This enables Betfair to schedule a fair amount of guaranteed daily and weekly tournaments. Every day you will find tournaments guaranteed to have $10k to $40k in price money, but it is the weekly tourneys where it gets real interesting. Every Tuesday you can play a $25k high roller event with an estimated $8k for the winner. Then the weekends it gets even better. On Saturday you can play both a $12k event and a $50k tournament and Sunday is the grand finale with a $100k guaranteed (rebuy) and a $200k Sunday tournament with an anticipated first price of $32k every week!

APAT

Besides online tournaments Betfair is also supporting live games. As the main sponsor of the APAT (Amature Poker Association & Tour) Betfair goes great ways to create goodwill among poker loving players. The APAT tournaments are all located in the United Kingdom with events in Bolton, Mancester, Nottingham, Walsall, Luton, Cardiff (Wales), Dublin (Ireland) and Edinburgh (Scotland). Because of the great sponsorship of Betfair there is no need for APAT to charge their players a registration fee! This makes it very pleasant to play poker. On average about 200 players enter a tournament who pay GPB 75 each, this creates a price pool of 15k with 23% for first price.

Payment methods

Depositing money at Betfair is easy and can be done with all common payment methods. Creditcards like Mastercard, VISA, Delta and Meastro are supported and of course also online wallets like Neteller and Moneybookers are available for use. In case you do run into any problems Betfair is offering pretty decent support through both phone and email so you can always reach them at:
UK: 0844 871 7000
Outside UK: +44 207 074 7272
Email: pokerinfo@betfair

Conclusion

Betfair is a great poker room offering solid promotions and service at the Ongame poker network. Especially when you are from the UK this is a site to check out (with all the UK targeted promotions). They live up to their name by being fair. Another nice example of their fairness is that all tournament fees are limited to $10, so also for the high rollers Betfair is a nice catch, have fun and good luck!