Best Time to Play Poker in USA

Poker has quickly grown from a gritty pastime for middle aged men, and a social game played with family and friends for pocket change, to an international phenomenon. While there are several contributing factors to poker’s unprecedented spike in popularity, it would be hard to argue that any one factor had a greater contribution than the advancement of the internet poker. Many players around during the transition found great riches, taking advantage of the plethora of soft poker sites that accept the US, while many others were left with bad beat stories, or regrets about shot taking opportunities missed or of not learning poker sooner. If you were around during this time, you might recall the many discussions held on poker forums about “when is the best time of day to play online poker in the US”.?
 
You see, during the US poker boom, let’s say 2002-2005 to give it a time frame, moving from site to site, depending what time of the day you were playing, was almost as vital of a poker strategy as using databases (i.e. PokerScope and Poker Table Rankings) is today. Back then the US poker sites were considered soft during nights and weekend hours and tougher during standard US working hours. In order to get on a somewhat normal schedule, and to find softer games, most poker players would head to Cryptologic networked sites where we could play in Euros or GBP against “Euro Fish” during US afternoon hours.
 
These days the strategy of moving from site to site depending on the time of the day is no longer a viable option, and even if it was an option it might not even be advisable. This strategy once worked because US players were allowed to play on European sites, which we no longer are allowed to do, and because while the US poker boom was approaching its peak the Euro poker boom was just getting started. During this era “Euro Fish” might as well appeared in poker glossaries as a term, because its use was common and most of us believed the majority of European players were in fact fish. Of course now the online poker boom has reached or is approaching its peak in many European countries, and the sites are no longer as fishy as they once were.

Are Games Softer Certain Times of the Day?

As far as times of the day go, this is no longer a large contributing factor to game softness. The largest US friendly poker sites Full Tilt and PokerStars are not simply US poker sites, but rather global brands operating in over a dozen languages with a diverse player base. With players accessing from all over the globe spanning dozens of time zones, it no longer matters much what time of the day you play online poker.

While time of the day does not make much of a difference, the day of the week does. On weekends many recreational players like to enjoy online poker. Also, on weekends all the big money tournaments, such as Sunday Millions at PokerStars, are played out. As these tournaments near their ends, many fish have newly found bankrolls and many otherwise skilled players have steam to blow off. The effects big money tournaments have on cash games can not be emphasized enough. If you’re truly looking for the best time to play online from the US, make that time weekend hours, and log those hours at the world’s largest online poker site PokerStars.com.

No matter what time of day you play, US Poker Sites wishes you the best of luck at the virtual poker tables.