Absolute Poker was created at first by poker players in 2003 as a stand-alone site designed to run his own software. Not long after their launch AP team brought in poker pro Mark Seif as an endorser and consultant, and since then they added Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi, who was named Player of the Year in 2006. They have also added a couple more skins within the last year or so, as well as the casino game Blackjack. As of August 2008, Absolute Poker has combined with its longtime sister site, UltimateBet to form the monolithic Cereus Network, instantly the third largest online gaming network in the world.

In general, real money action is concentrated at the Texas Hold’em games on Absolute Poker.

One of the best qualities of AP is their openness to a truly international contingent: namely, that they have remained committed to serving the US market and in so doing have welcomed many ‘refugees’ from other sites that don’t US players.
Absolute Poker is a comprehensive, interactive, easy to use online poker room, providing features such as hand history, stats retrieval, player notes, chat, player search, six table play, and representative image selection to provide the poker player with a great online gaming experience.

Absolute Poker offers the following games: Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo, Razz , H.O.R.S.E and H.O.S.E along with both tournament and ring games for their blackjack casino game.
Absolute Poker’s Texas Hold’em lower Fixed Limit and NL traffic (like $.25/$.50 - $2/$4) is relatively strong at peak hours but keep in mind that the games have a reputation of being fairly tight so it can be a bit hard to clear some of the bonuses. There is a good selection of Texas Hold’em tournaments, with a fair amount of guaranteed prize tournaments offered daily and even a few big guaranteed tourneys offered during the weekends – in total Absolute Poker offers over $1,000,000 every month in Guaranteed prize pools.

They support both re-buy and non re-buy tourneys (turbo tournaments) along with a large selection of satellites if you do not want to invest large amounts in a full buy-in for the bigger tourneys.

They support up to 5 tables at their popular Sit & Go’s and fill-up quickly, especially during peak hours (peak hours vary from site to site, but generally speaking they are between 8 and 12 pm EST for US sites.) Absolute Poker has a wide selection of Heads-Up, and also allows players to create their own tournaments, which is a very popular feature among friends and poker players that get to know each other at the tables.

The Omaha action is better at the lower stakes in both regular Omaha and Hi/Lo. In 7 Card Stud the action is quite limited at any level, and the action for RAZZ is non-existent outside of peak hours.
The VIP program is extremely solid. Players earn Rewards Points every time they play real money cash games and tournaments, and these points can be used to buy into special tourneys or buy merchandise in the AR Store and the exclusive VIP Store. Absolute Poker now supports a 9% interest bearing account through their player store. They offer frequent reload bonuses in the 20-25% range and even higher for VIPs. They have recently changed the bonus clearing schedule and it has become more difficult, but players are still given 60 days to try to clear what they can.

Absolute Poker has many advanced features such as multi-table play (up to 6 ring games) and hand replay, and the software can be integrated with Poker Tracker 3. The software had a reputation of having “bugs” but with the formation of the Cereus network, all of those issues have become things of the past (at least none reported so far).

The dealer speed is average and players have a longer time to act than in most of other poker rooms. It is also more PC-resource intensive to run than many of the other top poker sites platforms.
 
In addition to the past “buggy” reputation, Absolute Poker has also been the focus of jokes for having some of the ugliest tables in the industry. The graphics looked like they were designed by a Nintendo programmer back in 1985. In August 2007, however, Absolute finally released a long overdue update to its software client which introduced a neat look interface at the virtual tables. Two new table views were added, in addition to the “classic” view: a three-quarter view and a second overhead view. “Fold” markers were added so that it is easier to tell who is no longer in the hand, but they tend to be distracting for multi-tablers, especially because they overshadow the dealer button.
 
Sound effects are clear, but the “check” sound makes two rapid clicks that can be misunderstood as two players checking instead of one. A visual “check” graphic has been added to minimize this confusion.
Absolute Poker has done a nice design job with the lobby, which is very simple to navigate. There are separate tabs for Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Stud, Tournaments and Sit & Go’s; and each tab has sub tabs for more detailed searches.
Absolute Poker offers both tournament and ring game Blackjack, but if hitting on soft 17s is not your thing (or if you find it too tempting) the icon can be blocked from view.
 
Absolute Poker has offered a chat feature but you can choose to block anyone from chatting with you. The chat feature is easy to use and can provide some fun, just make sure you keep it clean or you may lose your chat privileges.

Absolute Poker has a number of great features to protect your private data. The client software uses the certificates issued by their own Certificate Authority (CA) to authenticate their servers. Absolute Poker software authenticates their servers by using the industry standard DES combined with AP's custom encryption algorithm. They use 256 bit encryption to ensure the highest level of privacy and confidentiality of data both to and from Absolute Poker's servers, higher encryption that most of the other poker sites.
 
It should be noted that both Absolute Poker and its sister site, UltimateBet, have recently suffered substantial security breaches. Despite these breaches, both sites have been cleared by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and neither has lost much in the way of player traffic.

In addition to the variety of deposit and withdrawal methods, Absolute Poker customers can also transfer funds to and from real money accounts at UltimateBet.com. The accounts may belong to the same player or different players who wish move funds between each other’s poker accounts.

They offer live chat support in addition to e-mail. Their support can be slow at times, but the assistance is usually accurate and helpful.