The Ongame Poker Network was once one of the largest poker networks in the world. Stuffed with players from the huge American and European poker markets, Ongame was consistently ranked in the top five or even top three in terms of their player base. Still very popular in Europe and especially in the UK, Ongame has recovered from the loss of their American player base and currently holds the number 5 spot overall in the poker industry. The Ongame Poker Network is offering 28 different casino and poker room sites their top notch software and promotional services as of this writing.
Location
Ongame is headquartered in Vienna, Austria and runs its gaming servers in Kahnawake, Canada.
History
Founded in 1999 as Ongame e-Solutions, the Ongame Network is now owned by BWin Interactive Entertainment. Internet banking pioneer Patrik Selin took the helm at Ongame as President & CEO in the late 90s, turning a small poker room into an online gaming juggernaut. In 2005, Ongame was voted the “IT Company of the Year” by major Swedish financial magazine Veckans Affarer, beating out huge companies like Apple and Microsoft. Just one year later, Selin would sell his Ongame network to Bwin for €500 million, a huge sum of money for any online industry.
Currently, the Ongame Network occupies a specific niche in the poker network world—the poker provider for big name online sportsbooks who want to provide a poker service to their sports betting customers. More than just a poker network, Ongame also offers online casino games and other gaming products. What Ongame gives its clients is access to many different gaming products through a single account, and thanks to the large number of sports bettors stumbling into their poker rooms, Ongame poker tables are known for very loose play.
Traffic
It has been an up and down year for the Ongame Poker Network. As of this writing, Ongame sits comfortably in the fifth position in terms of active poker player traffic. That’s huge, considering that two of the networks with more players than Ongame are still accepting wagers from American players. If you take the poker networks doing business with the massive American market out of the equation, Ongame is the third most popular network.
Ongame has an average of 3,100 players at any given time over the course of a week of play. That means they are as often above 3,100 as they are below it. At peak traffic times, Ongame can swell to 6- or 7,000 players.
Over the course of the last 180 days, the Ongame Poker Network has remained pretty steady in terms of its traffic, safely occupying the 5th or (at best) the 4th most populous poker network.
Bonuses and Promotions
The Ongame Poker Network allows its skins to offer their own bonuses and promotions to a point. One thing that Ongame does well is their tournament schedule. Ongame advertises more than $14,000,000 in guaranteed tournament winnings every month, with an average of $70,000,000 paid out in other tournaments that appear seemingly at random during the month. A massive tournament schedule like that is its own bonus and a great way to promote your poker network.
Features
When you play at an Ongame poker skin, the first thing you’ll notice is the lobby. Generally, gaming lobbies at top poker networks are all the same, but Ongame mixes it up quite a bit, and they stand out because of it. The gaming lobby at Ongame skins contains an easy to browse list of stats and allows users to filter through multiple options to jump right to a table they like. Admittedly, Ongame isn’t going to wow anyone with their cutting edge graphics, but many poker players don’t give a hoot about that sort of thing, and we find that Ongame skins are easy to read and free of flash and distraction. The inclusion of a chat window that users can both detach and move around and close completely shows that Ongame understands poker players. We don’t all like to chat.
But the most important feature of any skin on the Ongame Poker Network has nothing to do with gimmicks or software—Ongame has probably the largest school of poker fish of any network online. Remember that Ongame offers poker and gaming software to poker rooms built inside of popular sportsbook products. Any time a poker player sees a poker room attached to a pool of sports bettors, the dollar signs light up in their eyes. Ongame is full of loose poker players who are killing time waiting for sports bets to come in. The trick to finding the loose play is to avoid high stakes games, where poker pros like to congregate.
Games Offered
Don’t look to Ongame for bizarre poker variants– 5 Card Draw is the most avant-garde game on the menu. Here are all the games and betting structures offered at Ongame Poker Network skins:
Texas Hold’em: FL, NL, PL
Omaha: FL, NL
Omaha Hi/Lo: FL, NL, PL
7 Card Stud: FL
5 Card Draw: FL, PL
Skins
There are currently 28 online poker skins in the Ongame network.
- Bwin Poker
- Best Poker
- Bet24 Poker
- BetSafe Poker
- Betsson Poker
- Bruce Poker
- Cherry Casino
- Casino Euro
- Coral Poker
- EuroBet Poker
- Euro Poker
- Fonbet Poker
- Gala Poker
- Goal Win Poker
- Hey Poker
- Hollywood Poker
- InterWetten Poker
- Poker.gr
- Poker Idol
- Poker Loco
- PokerRoom
- Prime Poker
- Red Kings Poker
- Scandic Bookmakers Poker
- Stryyke Poker
- TowerGaming
- WhiteBet Poker
- WinAMax Poker
Overall
Though the Ongame network took a big hit after American poker’s UIGEA cut out most of the American poker market, Ongame has managed to expand their European customer base. Rather than just staying afloat, Ongame has managed to completely change their identity and actually gain back most of the ground they lost after American poker money was shut out of their coffers.
Poker players who like low stakes stand a good chance of seeing success at Ongame Poker Network skins thanks to the steady infusion of loose players from member sportsbooks. No flashy animations or high tech software here, just honest poker games undergoing resurgence in the European poker market.
