There's a new kid in town. CD Poker is the expansion of Club Dice Casino into the online poker market.

Playtech, makers of one the the big two casino packages created CD poker with the Ipoker network. They are here to stay, and know what they are doing.

Playtech have put together a remarkably bug free first release poker client. It's not perfect, no software ever is, but it's already better than some more established rooms' software. The Playtech team make great looking software as well. I'd make some minor layout changes, but most of these are just personal preference, and at least half the people out there would disagree with me. It is a little difficult to multitable at the moment (the tables open up in the same window) and with sounds off, there's little warning for your turn. Trust me, you want sounds off, computerised voices, even the sexy one, announcing every damn action gets to me after a while.

CD Poker only offers Holdem and Omaha (High only and High/Low) but these are easily the most popular games on the net, so this is understandable. It is still relatively small in terms of traffic, but a lot of big-time casinos (several of the top ten) are starting to promote it fairly aggressively, so they will hopefully explode some time soon. This casino focus has made for a soft player base at the moment, with no signs of getting much worse.

The financial backing of a big casino organisation means they have quite a bit of money to throw at promotions like high hand jackpots, wsop packages, freerolls, and generous guaranteed prize-pool tournaments.

Support are great, responding to emails relatively quickly. They are also available 24/7 on the phone (and speak good English, which is always useful). Another very pleasing thing that Ipoker have done is discount the rake for shorthanded games. This is very nice, since I get very frustrated waiting for a table to fill up, and still paying full rates.

CD Poker could very well be set to take off into the big time. To a large extent, a place in the top ten largest rooms in a years time is theirs to lose right now.