Update November 10, 2005

According to posts I've seen on a couple of message boards, Pokershare is shutting down all operations. There's a discussion of Pokershare's shutdown at Two plus Two if you're interested.

Update November 2, 2005

Obviously my review of Pokershare is no longer valid or meaningful in any way because of their recent decision to close out North American players from their group. Rather than get into a lot of discussion regarding what's going on with them, I'm going to post links to some discussions around the internet of the situation. I hope the collection of information is helpful to anyone wanting to find out more about the situation with PokerShare.com.

One quick note - a lot of people are looking for information about PokerShare's relationship with Ultimate Bet. Here's the deal, as I understand it. PokerShare is a "skin" of Ultimate Bet; i.e. they use Ultimate Bet's poker software and platform to power their room, but they have different marketing and branding.

It looks like the decision to cut off the North American players came on the UB side of things, but it's hard to say, which is why I'm posting the links to the various forum threads regarding this:

• Poker Affiliate World Discussion of Poker Share - from the affiliates' perspective
• Two plus Two Forum Thread re: PokerShare - from the players' perspective
• Pocket Fives Discussions - more player perspective
• PokerShare.com's Own Forum - I'm posting a link to their forum rather than to a specific post, because it's my understanding that they wiped the entire forum before making the change to the North Americans' status. So most of the posts there should be related to this decision, I would think.

Update November 1, 2005

I just added this review a few days ago, but I need to update it now, because it's been brought to my attention that Pokershare has had a chance of policy and is no longer accepting players from North America. Players with existing accounts at Pokershare who are located in North America have had their accounts frozen and their funds are being withdrawn and sent to them.

So, if you're in North America, you might look elsewhere for a place to play. On the other hand, if you're anywhere else in the world, be sure to take a look at the rest of the review.

Pokershare Review

I just finished writing an article about Ultimate Bet skins, which explained how Excapsa has been expanding their number of poker players by launching or licensing unique, branded skins of their poker software. Pokershare.com is one of these new poker skins, and it has a couple of unique selling points that makes it worthy of its own review here.

First Things First

The first thing I need to point out is that if you already have an account with Ultimate Bet or any of their skins, you cannot open a new account at PokerShare. It wouldn't make sense for them to offer new signup bonuses and perks to existing players besides what they already offer in terms of loyalty rewards, which are pretty doggone good over at UB.

I also need to point out that if you're interested in a review of the software or the gameplay at PokerShare, then please read the review of Ultimate Bet here on this site. It's the same software, and the same poker network, and I love it, as you can tell from my review. But I haven't actually been able to sign up and play at PokerShare myself because I already have the Ultimate Bet account.

What Does PokerShare Offer Me That I Couldn't Get From Just Going Through UltimateBet?

First of all, the initial deposit bonus at PokerShare is excellent. When you deposit between $25 and $250, they'll match your deposit with a bonus of 100% up to $250. Their UltimatePoints program works exactly the same as if you played at Ultimate Bet, so you still get the same frequent player perks you would have received at UB.

The more interesting benefit of playing at PokerShare.com though is their new equity program. This is not a rakeback plan, or a rake rebate. It's something totally different from anything I've seen an online poker room or online poker skin offer before. Here's how it works:

As you play at PokerShare.com, you receive Ultimate Points, just like you would if you were an Ultimate Bet player. (In fact, you ARE an Ultimate Bet player, you're just playing through Poker Share.) For each Ultimate Point you receive, you also get one SharePoint. (There are other ways to earn SharePoints too, explained at Poker Share's website.)

These SharePoints accumulate and entitle you to a percentage of PokerShare's quarterly profits. The "players' share" of Poker Share's profits is 40%, and you get a percentage of the players' share based on how many SharePoints you've accumulated. The percentage of overall SharePoints that you have is equivalent to your stake in PokerShare.com's profits.

For example, if all of the players at PokerShare.com had a total of 100,000 SharePoints between them, and you have 1000 SharePoints, then your percentage is 1%. Every quarter, PokerShare distributes 40% of their profits to the players through the Poker Share Trust. Your percentage of this will rise as you play more.

Poker Share Forum

PokerShare.com also offers a forum where players can interact with each other. This is a nice touch, and I think it adds to the community feel for the site.

This page was last updated on January 5, 2006.