Review: Unibet Poker

Online

Jul 13

Please note: We have not been sponsored for this post, but we have included a refer-a-friend link below. However, this has not influenced our review of Unibet.

Overall: 🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋

Unibet Poker is an arm of Unibet Casino - one of the biggest online casinos, and similarly one of the biggest online poker providers. Unibet casino is the largest part of the behemoth Kindred Group of betting sites.

While Unibet Casino offers everything from sports betting to blackjack - we’re going to concentrate on reviewing their comprehensive poker offering. Spoiler alert: There’s a reason they have 1.5 million users.

Signing up for Unibet Poker

Signing up for Unibet Poker is pretty straightforward. New players are taken through a step-by-step process to give their personal details. Before new players are able to play Unibet Poker games, they will need to send some form of identification verification.

It can take up to 24 hours for Unibet to confirm identification, but this usually happens much faster. For us, it took less than 2 hours.

Depositing funds to Unibet

Unibet allows players to deposit funds using 6 methods, these are:

Debit card
Paysafecard
PayPal
Neteller
Bank Transfer
Skrill

All of the funds deposited into Unibet are protected in a client account separate to company funds, meaning that all players’ funds are protected in the case of Unibet’s insolvency.

Unibet Sign up Bonus

Unibet poker has one of the biggest sign up bonuses you’ll find online, which they call “£20 extra to play with” when you make your first deposit. This isn’t just an extra £20 into your Unibet balance, however, and is actually made up of 5 free poker tickets worth €24 (or £20).

These free tickets are comprised of:

1 x €8 Cash Game Ticket
4 x €5 Unibet UK Tour tournament tickets

New players also receive entry into 4 new player freerolls each with a €500 prize pool.

    Rake requirement
    Level
    Bonus Value
  


    €2
    1
    €1
  

    €10
    2
    €4
  

    €50
    3
    €15
  

    €150
    4
    €40
  

    €550
    5
    €140
  

    €1,638
    6
    €400
  

This table shows the amount of money you will need to rake in order to clear the full €500 bonus. It comes out to €2,400 in rake paid and roughly 21% in rakeback. As the system is tiered it should suit players of all levels really well. All of this is on top of your standard rakeback rate.

Unibet Poker Software

The Unibet software is proprietary and does not use a network like iPoker for its games. Make note that HUDs are banned - in fact Unibet is the site that led the way in ridding online poker of such software.

Unibet’s interface is very easy to navigate and runs identically on any device. The software is unique but intuitive and easy to use.

Note that Unibet takes a very different approach to their offering than any other poker site. Some things they do differently are:

No HUDs - Unibet were the first to make this move in an attempt to make the game friendlier to recreational players
Less Rake Is Better - Unibet rake is the lowest you will find in the lower stakes. This is designed to keep worse players around for longer, thereby giving better value for money
Limited Multi-tabling - To keep regs from propagating throughout the games, Unibet has capped the number of tables you may play at a time to four 4NL tables at once, or 8 of any other game
No Table Observing - You cannot watch a table before joining, this is to prevent good players from bum hunting the fish
Aliases - You may change your identity up to 3 times a day in order to remain anonymous
Rakeback Scheme - A points-based rakeback scheme which relies on events that happen during normal play, making the whole process more exciting for recreational players

Playing Unibet Hexapro SNGs

Unibet’s answer to Jackpot sit ‘n’ gos are Hexapro SNG tournaments. These are three-person Hyper Turbo games with a randomly generated prize pool.

In a slight twist on the SNG format, higher prize pools mean longer levels. We think this is a positive move by Unibet because if you’re lucky enough to be playing for €5,000, you certainly don’t want to be playing 2 minute levels.

In 2020, Unibet introduced their newest Hexapro variant, Hexapro Banzai. Hexapro Banzai is still a three-player sit ‘n’ go with a prize pool generated by an RNG. However, in Hexapro Banzai players start with 15 big blind stacks and the action is far quicker. These SNGs are often over in 4 minutes or less.

Playing Unibet Poker Tournaments

Tournaments at Unibet have pretty good structures with starting stacks always above 100bb (although rarely, if ever, above 200bb). Tournament level lengths sit between 3 and 10 minutes - with the average around 5 or 6. Unibet tournaments sit at the turbo end of the online poker spectrum.

Occasionally they will have events such as the Unibet Online Series (UOS) they follow the Low, Medium, High format adopted by many sites these days and have large guarantees and much slower structures.

Playing Unibet Poker Cash Games

Unibet offers cash games in a range of stakes from 4NL up to 400NL in a range of game variants. The game variants on offer are No limit Hold ‘em, Pot Limit Omaha and Banzai.

All Hold ‘em and Omaha cash games have a max buyin of 100bb and play a maximum of 6 handed tables. Rake is extremely low (but more on that in the rake section).

The Unibet software will allow you to play a maximum of four 4NL tables and eight of any other stake. You can mix and match stakes to achieve a higher total number of tables open.

Be warned: without HUDs it’s tough to keep up with multiple tables. Unibet also has a ban on auto rebuy to max - something which might seem trivial but can be annoying when you have to keep topping up manually across several screens.

The banning of HUDs, restriction of auto top up, and limited multi-tabling options are necessary evils as Unibet aims to be the most beginner friendly poker site around.

Unibet does a good job of attracting beginners, which becomes very apparent when you discover the incredibly fishy players. At Unibet, it’s not uncommon to achieve 5x - 10x your buy-in stacks against the right players.

Rake at Unibet

You can see how Unibet rake stacks up against other sites at our online rake comparison. However, the table below really speaks for itself. The rake at Unibet is as low as 2% in the lowest stakes and has a very reasonable cap of €0.50.

The rake at Unibet does rise as you go past 50NL and is less competitive than other sites for these stakes, but this simply is not Unibet’s market. They want to capitalise on maintaining a friendly atmosphere for weaker, lower stakes players.

For tournaments, rake sits at roughly 10% across the board - although knockout tournaments only rake the prize pool section of the buy-in, and some very low buy-in tournaments (€0.25 and €0.50) are completely rake free.

Unibet Rake Back

The rakeback scheme at Unibet is like nothing else on the market. The rakeback percentage varies and it is impossible to give an exact number - but it’s very good for low stakes players and decent for higher stake players, too.

In each game mode at Unibet poker, players are given challenges to complete. You will have a major challenge and a minor challenge at any given time. Every time you complete a challenge you will receive challenge points which go towards unlocking reward tiers. These challenge points reset every 3 months.

Some of these reward tiers give players Bonus Points which you can spend in the Bonus Shop. Each point is worth €0.01. Players can buy cash or tournament tickets with their points, and can also earn playthrough bonuses which release funds based on the rake you pay. Bonus Points expire if you do not log in to Unibet for 6 months.

In addition to these rewards, players will receive additional “missions” to complete each month, such as “Play 10 cash game hands” or “Change your identity”. The rewards for completing all of these missions is usually around €20 in various tickets and bonus points.

Player Pool at Unibet

As previously mentioned, the player pool at Unibet is very soft. Unibet has worked hard to make the site as beginner friendly as possible.

In its attempt to make the site more welcoming to beginners, Unibet does make it difficult for more experienced players to achieve their maximum possible win rate, but in reality, it’s sites like Unibet that keep the poker economy wheels turning.

Is Unibet Poker safe?

Unibet poker is closely regulated and monitored for compliance by the UK Gambling Commission and the Government of Gibraltar. As one of the biggest names in gambling - especially across western and central Europe, you won’t find a safer place to play poker in terms of financial compliance and potential for scamming.

Unibet has also voluntarily signed up to a number of organisations that promote integrity and responsibility in the gambling industry such as the RGA and International Betting Integrity Association. They’ve repeatedly shown their commitment to ethical gambling practices, and were even named Socially Responsible Operator of 2016 by the IGA and EGR.

In short, if your number one concern when it comes to online poker is integrity and safety, you won’t go wrong with Unibet.

Unibet Summary

In our opinion Unibet is one of, if not the best place to play poker online. It has a soft player base and exceptionally low rake. Their customer service is amazing and in our experience will even reactivate tournament or cash game tickets that you have let expire.

It would be nice to see a larger range of games available and some of Unibet’s recreational player friendly features may go a little too far (auto rebuy to max, for example) but these are just some of the things we have to deal with in order to keep poker alive in 2020.

If you’re a poker player and haven't already signed up to Unibet, you have to check it out. You can do so by clicking here or following the link below. (It helps us out if you do, and you’ll receive £30 in bonuses too.)

https://www.unibet.co.uk/stan/campaign.do?cmpId=2429178&affiliateId=46&recruiterId=MTU5NjgwNg==