Best Game Variety Poker Sites
Which online poker rooms have the best spread of games online?
While No Limit Texas Holdem remains the game of choice for the majority of poker players, there are generally up to a dozen other formats available at the typical online poker room. Even within No Limit there are a variety of unique formats - full ring, six-max, heads up, capped games and deep stack games, just to name a few.
As with any aspect of an online poker room, some sites have more to offer when it comes to game variety than others. Before we get to ranking the top online poker rooms for game variety, let's talk a bit more about why it's an important topic for players and how you can quickly evaluate the game variety available at any poker site.
Why Does Game Variety Matter?
It certainly matters more to some players than to others, but everyone who plays online poker should at least be aware of the game variety available at their favorite room. More formats means more options, and more options can - for many players - be key to keeping them interested in playing on a regular basis. More formats can also mean more opportunities for profit for players willing to put in the work to develop strategies that exploit other players who are likely just trying the games casually. Finally, more formats gives you the potential to develop into a well-rounded poker player who can excel at whatever game is being played - and that's the best kind of poker player to be.
Online Poker Has Dramatically Overall Game Variety
When you see some esoteric format getting coverage on ESPN during the World Series of Poker like deuce to seven lowball, you probably have online poker to thank. As high-stakes players quickly determined no limit to lack the action their wealthy opponents desired, Pot Limit Omaha and a variety of mixed games entered the picture. The popularity of the games trickled down to the lower stakes and into the tournament lobbies of online poker rooms, and then began to spread through the poker community as a whole.
Lobby Filters Can Help You Quickly Explore Game Variety at an Online Poker Room
There's no need to scan through every game running at an online poker room to get a sense of how much game variety they offer. Any poker room worth your time with have a feature in the lobby (for both cash games and tournaments) that will allow you to quickly filter games by size, type and format. Using these filters - generally available from the main menu or a panel directly abutting the game list - you can quickly get a sense for how wide (or how narrow) the variety of available games at the room actually is.
Top Overall Poker Room for Game Variety: PokerStars
As the largest online poker room in the world by volume of real-money games, it should come as little surprise that PokerStars offers the best variety of game types and formats. In addition, PokerStars has long been something of an innovator in the space; they were the first room to offer mixed games as a format, and their tournament lobby is where entirely new formats are often born. Finally, Stars is perhaps the only room to offer not only a wide spectrum of games but also to support a very broad range of stakes for those games, from the micro-limits to the nosebleeds.
bet365 Poker: Best Game Variety at a UK Online Poker Room
With support for every major UK payment option and the ability to play dozens of games in pounds, bet365 Poker is a clear pick for poker players from the UK looking for game variety at an online poker room. As a bonus, bet365 provides a sort of game variety that PokerStars cannot, with a lineup of hundreds of casino games and in-play sports markets available from the same account you use for poker.
Carbon Poker is Highest-Ranked US Site for Game Variety
US poker players face a unique challenge when seeking out rooms with high game variety, as the remaining US-facing options tend to be mid-tier rooms in terms of overall traffic. As a result, the traffic at any US-friendly online poker room tends to concentrate heavily in no limit games. However, Carbon Poker does offer low-to-mid-stakes players a solid menu of games outside of no limit in their cash game lobby, and also provides tournament players with an exotic option or two daily.
