Ultimate PokerNevada

Ultimate Poker became the first-ever legal online poker site in the United States when it opened its virtual doors in April 2013. Within six months, it already had hosted both live and online tournament series and released a huge software update that added features and gave the software a facelift. Ultimate Poker is nothing if not fast and aggressive.

Ultimate Poker hopes to draw fans from the world's most popular mixed-martial-arts company, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which is owned by parent company Fertitta Entertainment. Fertitta, which runs the Stations Casinos in and around Las Vegas, founded Ultimate Gaming in 2010.

UltimateGaming.com promises "world-class social games" that "entertain, challenge, and evolve to deliver the best possible experience for our players. Our software is battle tested, intuitive, and ideal for the discerning player."

Software

The Ultimate Poker software is homemade, which makes the speed at which it was approved and launched all the more impressive. Players can play multiple tables simultaneously, and they can choose to cascade or tile the tables, as well as resize (maximize or shrink). Players can also choose felt colors, from classic to four-color deck, and can pick an avatar from a few dozen pre-set options. The software is fast and responsive.

The software still needs some items players may be accustomed to — such as hand histories, player notes, and synchronized tournament breaks. However, given how quickly they update their software, it won't likely be long before this home-brewed software has all of the features players have grown to love, along with a unique charm that only an entirely new platform could deliver.

Traffic

The average number of players on Ultimate Poker has increased pretty consistenly since the site's launch, and the site now gets an average of about 230 ring-game players each day, with peaks reaching the 400s pretty consistently (and at around 10 p.m.). As far as tournaments are concerned, generally only the freerolls or $1,000-guaranteed nightly tournaments break into triple digits, entrants-wise. The $1K nightly events pretty frequently have enough entrants to quintuple the guarantee. As for the rest of Ultimate's tournaments, they're mostly comprised of $5 buy-in events, and those can run the gamut between 5-6 entrants to just under 100.

Game Variety

Ultimate Poker offers limit hold'em cash games at stakes ranging from $0.05-$0.10 to $10-$20, and no-limit hold'em from $0.01-$0.02 to $10-$20. Tables are offered in six-handed and nine-handed. Only Texas hold'em is being offered as of yet, but a representative of the site has stated that Omaha, stud, and lowball are coming soon.

For sit-and-gos, players can find tables with buy-ins as low as $0.25 and as high as $1,000, and nine-handed, six-max, and heads-up formats.

The scheduled tournament offerings are sparse for now, mostly geared toward freerolls and other promotional tournaments, as well as a large number of $5 buy-in events (satellites, turbos, and normal-speed events). The real-money tournaments include a $50 buy-in $1,000-guaranteed tournament every day at 8 p.m. PT, a $100 buy-in $2,500-guaranteed tournament every day at 7 p.m., and a $100 buy-in $10K-guaranteed tournament at 6 p.m. PT each Sunday.

Support

Ultimate Poker gives plenty of options for player support, including Web form, support e-mail address, and even a phone number. Players can deposit via the Sightline Ultimate Prepaid Card, MasterCard, eCheck, bank wire, in person at any Stations casino or one of five Peppermill-owned properties in Northern Nevada, or by mailing in a check. For withdrawals, players can either be mailed a check or pick up their money at a Stations and/or Peppermill casino cage.

• Support E-mail: support@ultimatepoker.com
• Support Phone: (702) 751-8810

Hits/Misses

It's exciting to think of the action that could be stirred up by drawing the mixed-martial-arts crowd to the poker world. The traffic is a bit slow for now, although this issue will probably become less of a problem if/when other states join Nevada's player liquidity. As far as the software is concerned, there's not yet a Mac version of the client, hand histories aren't easily obtained, and you cannot write notes for a player within the software. However, considering this is the first legal U.S. entry into online poker, the software is polished and fast, the graphics are crisp, and everything is intuitive.

Closing

Ultimate Poker has launched an excellent first offering for legal U.S. online poker. Depositing is easy, the software is easy to use, and players can jump right in.