Summary:   B +
Paradise Poker was once the crown jewel of the burgeoning online poker empire, but ceded its spot as the industry Goliath to an aggressive Party Poker marketing blitzkrieg.  Today, Paradise remains one of the top few sites online, but trails in player volume behind the likes of Party, Poker Stars, Absolute Poker, and Poker Room.  In addition to qualifying tournaments for World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour events, Paradise offers several unique tournaments, such as an annual $1 Million Freeroll, which has been widely touted in a national advertising campaign.  Their software is also among our favorites, rivaling that found at Ultimate Bet and Poker Room.  Despite not being the industry behemoth it once was, Paradise remains a rather attractive destination for online players.

Sign-up Bonus
Paradise has provided Law School Poker with a customized sign-up bonus code for our readers.  Enter LSPBONUS in Paradise’s new account registration window and receive a 25% match of your first deposit up to $50 in bonus money. See detailed instructions for this bonus on our Law School Poker Bonus Codes page.

Software:   A
Paradise Poker is considered to have some of the slicker software around: the soft color scheme and intuitive button placement make for a very user-friendly interface.  Some Law School Poker readers with older computers have reported that the Paradise software runs slowly on their machines, but such comments have been sparse.

Caliber of competition:   A -
The typical skill of the Paradise competition has ebbed and flowed erratically since the site’s 1999 inception.  Prior to 2002 it was rife with fish, but its reputation for extremely soft competition was swiftly eroded with Party Poker’s dramatic explosion into the online poker scene.  The novices that had once flocked to Paradise in droves chose to instead populate the Party tables, resulting in tight and dry competition across the board.  In recent years, however, Paradise has regained a strong market foothold, in part due to their introduction of both blackjack and a popular sports book.  The low to middle-limit tables for most hold’em and stud games are again considered to be quite soft, assuming the player is willing to undertake some careful table selection.  Paradise’s guaranteed-prize-pool tournaments also frequently feature attractive overlays.

Customer service:   B +
Emails are typically answered promptly and politely, although we would have hoped that a site that helped usher in the online poker boom would have by this point realized the value in providing customer phone support (an unfortunate shortcoming of many online poker sites.)  Several Law School Poker readers have also lamented replies they perceived to be unsatisfactory, and poorly written.  Cashouts, however, are refreshingly quick in our experience.