Just over a year ago legislation was passed in the U.S. making it illegal to play poker for money on the internet. Well, now you can, and you can do it legally at Pureplay.com. This article will go over why it is legal to play poker at Pureplay.com as a U.S. resident. It will also go over the games that are available to play, and what I have discovered during my time playing there about the quality of poker at Pureplay.com.
Pureplay.com is legal for U.S. residents to play poker online at because you are not technically gambling. You pay the website a fee of $19.99 per month, and then you can play in any of their games you wish. Each game has it’s own entry fee in terms of points. Points are not purchased, instead they are won based on your standings in various tournaments played on Pureplay.com. You have to determine which tournaments you want to enter though because once you spend your member points they are gone. The only way to replenish member points at Pureplay.com is to win them in tournaments.
There are a variety of poker tournaments on Pureplay.com. Some will just award player points, others will award seats to real money tournaments, and others will pay out real money. In general the amount of points to enter a real money tournament are very high, it is much easier to win a seat in one of the qualifiers in which you pay a much lower point entry fee. Usually anywhere from the top five to top ten players in the poker tournament in a qualifier then earn automatic seats into a real money game.
The amount of money paid out in real money games varies based on the game, as do the number of finishing places paid. In general the play is much tighter in the real money games. One of my biggest complaints about Pureplay poker is that in the games for points the level of play is very amateurish. It has earned the nickname “pureplay lotto” from many regulars at the website. This is because some people play so many tournaments they just go all in no matter what they have on the first hand, and if they get knocked out of that tournament they go and play another one. This is one of the major drawbacks of the poker game at Pureplay.com.
Another drawback is the reduction in points they are awarding in recent months. About six months ago, you could win a few thousant points a week easily. These days it is much harder to win even one thousand. They have very large tournaments for the big point prizes with 2000 people in many of them. Honestly, I can see why some have resorted to playing the Pureplay.com lotto style in tournaments due to the time involved not always being worth it. You need to finish in the top 20 or 30 to get any reasonable amount of points, even in a 2000 person tournament which is a little tight of Pureplay.com.
My final comment is on the prize claim system for Pureplay.com. At one time they requested your social security number. Now they have decided instead to request your driver’s liscence to be paid out. Well, at least you have to send a copy of it to them. I am not sure how safe this is in the days of identity theft.
Overall Pureplay.com has some major weaknesses. There are the ones listed above, along with frequent down time for the program, and the trend of making it harder to qualify for the real money tournaments. Honestly, it’s probably not worth the $19.99 a month, but if you want to play fewer tournaments, there are some available for free members. Overall Pureplay.com would only rate five out of ten stars, yet considering it’s one of the only options for U.S. Poker players looking for an online poker game where you can win real money, it’s better than nothing.
