888poker Review
Standalone / 888 Network · 8 ambassadors · Last updated April 2026
The recreational-first old guard: softer pools, simpler software, 20+ years of trust
888poker has been running since 2002 - longer than most of its current competitors have existed. What it has built over that time is a standalone network deliberately engineered around casual players: soft cash game fields, affordable tournament series with $500K guarantees, and a room that has never tried to be GGPoker or PokerStars. That is either a limitation or a feature, depending on who you are.
Visit 888poker →01 The signings that matter
Vivian Saliba
Saliba has been the face of 888poker since 2017 - longer than any current team member. A WSOP bracelet winner (2024 WSOPE, €2,000 PLO), five WSOP final tables, and $1.27M in live earnings. She is the room's most credible tournament representative and the strongest argument that 888poker's softer field narrative holds at the highest level too. Brazilian by origin, she brings genuine reach into Latin American markets where the room is actively growing.
Profile →Ian Simpson
Simpson is the British face of the brand and one of the most active live ambassadors in the team's history. A former biology teacher who won the 2013 Irish Open outright for $339,604 and the WPT Five Diamond in 2014, he returned to form spectacularly in 2025 with three live titles including the 888poker LIVE Madrid Main Event. His streaming presence on Twitch and relaxed personality are well-matched to 888poker's recreational-first positioning.
Profile →
Iñaki Angulo
Inaki Angulo is Spain's most-subscribed Real Madrid YouTube journalist with over 2.1M followers across platforms - and a genuine recreational poker story in progress. Signed as a content partner in late 2024, he competed in 888poker LIVE Madrid and Barcelona 2025, and won the Noche de Poker All-Star invitational in 2025. He is not a professional player, and that is precisely the point: 888poker is using him to recruit from football and sports media audiences who have never deposited anywhere.
Profile →Andrew Barone
Barone is the North American anchor of 888poker's Stream Team and the room's most visible MTT grinder online. A Canadian player who crossed $1,000,000 in online MTT profit after joining 888poker's team, he is also a coach at Upswing Poker. His public argument that 888poker's smaller MTT fields produce less variance - and better results for skilled regulars - is the clearest articulation of the room's edge proposition for intermediate players.
Profile →Lucia Navarro
Navarro joined in November 2022 as 888poker's Spanish cash game representative, the only woman on the Spanish national poker circuit to hold two CNP Main Event titles. She brings an active YouTube and TikTok presence that targets recreational and aspiring players in Spain and Portugal - markets where 888poker holds a local license and competes directly for recreational deposits against PokerStars. Her background is cash game first, which reinforces the room's credibility beyond the tournament schedule.
Profile →Claim the Deposit $1000 Get $1000 888poker welcome bonus with code NEWBONUS
New players at 888poker can claim a 100% first deposit match up to $1,000 using promo code NEWBONUS at signup. The bonus releases in $10 increments as you generate rake, giving steady value across your first 90 days. Use the code NEWBONUS to ensure the full offer is activated - it will not apply automatically without it.
02 At a glance
03 What 888poker actually is in 2026
888poker launched in 2002 as Pacific Poker - the brand 888 Holdings acquired from Paradise Poker and rebuilt into its flagship product. By the mid-2000s it was genuinely one of the two or three biggest online poker rooms in the world. Black Friday did not directly hit 888poker (it had already exited the US in 2006), but the broader post-boom contraction hit every operator. In 2024, 888 Holdings completed a rebranding to Evoke plc, absorbing William Hill and Mr Green into a broader gambling group. The poker room itself operates unchanged under the 888poker brand, licensed in Gibraltar.
The important structural fact is that 888poker runs entirely on its own proprietary network - the Poker8 client - with no shared liquidity with external skins or networks. It is not part of iPoker, GGNetwork, or any third-party sharing arrangement. That means the player pool you see at 888poker is exclusively 888poker players, which limits peak concurrent totals compared to the big networks but also means the player composition is entirely within the room's control. The room has consciously skewed that composition toward recreational players through marketing, bonus structures, and cross-promotion from 888casino and 888sport.
The result in 2025-2026 is a room with roughly 600 to 1,500 concurrent cash game players globally at peak EU evening hours - smaller than GGPoker or PokerStars, but adequate at micro and low stakes, and considerably softer at those levels than the traffic leaders. The room added $10/$20 and $25/$50 NLHE in late 2024, with a hard $5 rake cap per hand, as part of a push to recapture serious cash game players at mid-to-high stakes.
04 Software: Poker8 client, built-in HUD, and what works
The Poker8 client runs on Windows, macOS, and as a no-download browser version, and there is a full-featured mobile app for iOS and Android. The interface is clean and relatively simple - more menu-driven than GGPoker's feature-dense lobby, which suits recreational players who find big-network lobbies overwhelming. Table customization is limited compared to PokerStars, but the core experience is stable and the mobile client handles multi-table play well up to around four tables.
The built-in HUD launched in January 2025 is a meaningful product update. It shows VPIP, PFR, 3-bet percentage, and overall win rate for any player at your table, drawn from the shared hand history of all players who have ever been seated with you. It is not as deep as a full PokerTracker database - it only shows data from hands you have personally observed - but for recreational players it levels the information asymmetry that has historically favoured regulars with paid tracker subscriptions.
SNAP Poker is 888poker's fast-fold cash game format - equivalent to Rush & Cash on GGPoker or Zoom on PokerStars. The SNAP pool is smaller than the traffic leaders, which can cause wait times at stakes above $0.50/$1.00 during off-peak hours. At micro stakes the pool is adequate for continuous action. Push or Fold is a unique high-variance format where every decision is either a shove or a fold, running at blinds from $10/$20 to $100/$200 - popular with action-seeking players and a genuine differentiator from bigger rooms.
05 Rake: what you actually pay at 888poker
888poker uses the weighted contributed rake method, meaning only players who put money in the pot contribute rake. Rake is charged post-flop, not preflop - a difference from GGPoker that matters for 3-bet-heavy styles. The standard cash game rake is 5% at most stakes, dropping slightly at micro levels and rising to 6.25% at $0.01/$0.02.
Tournament rake runs at approximately 10% for low-to-mid buy-ins and drops to around 5% for higher-stakes events. The flagship XL Series Main Events - typically $250 buy-in with $500,000 guaranteed - are increasingly run as fully rakeless events, with every dollar of buy-in going directly into the prize pool. That is a genuine player-friendly policy and one that makes the XL Main Event one of the better value flagship events in the market relative to guarantee.
888poker NLHE cash game rake structure
| Stakes | Rake % | Cap (2 players) | Cap (3+ players) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.01/$0.02 | 6.25% | $0.50 | $0.50 |
| $0.02/$0.05 | 5.88% | $1.00 | $1.00 |
| $0.05/$0.10 | 5% | $1.00 | $2.00 |
| $0.10/$0.25 - $1/$2 | 5% | $1.00 | $4.00 |
| $2/$5 | 5% | $1.00 | $4.00 |
| $5/$10 - $25/$50 | 5% | $2.50 | $5.00 |
| $10/$20+ (high-stakes) | 5% | $5.00 hard cap | $5.00 hard cap |
The $5 hard rake cap at $10/$20 and above - introduced December 2024 - is competitive in the high-stakes segment and was a deliberate move to attract serious cash game players who had left the room for GGPoker or PokerStars. For regular $5/$10 and below players, the standard 5% structure with a $5 cap is in line with market norms and not a reason to avoid the room.
06 888poker Club: the loyalty program, honestly assessed
The 888poker Club replaced the old VIP points system in 2016. Players earn Club Points through play and by completing weekly challenges, then level up through over 2,000 total levels - a structure designed to feel progressive but which realistically means most players stay in the lower tiers indefinitely. Each level-up awards Gold Tokens redeemable for cash, tournament tickets, or merchandise at 1 token = $0.01.
The practical effective rakeback for a typical recreational player generating $50-$200 in rake per month is 4-10%, factoring in Club Points, Gold Tokens, and promotional overlays. For the specific player that 888poker is targeting - someone who came over from 888casino, plays two sessions a week, and cares more about the tournament schedule than rakeback percentages - this is fine. For a multi-tabling cash game pro trying to maximize hourly EV, it is not competitive with GGPoker's Ocean Rewards or ACR's fixed rakeback structure.
888poker cash game weekly cashback tiers (separate from Club)
| Weekly rake generated | Cashback rate |
|---|---|
| $50 - $499 | 20% |
| $500 - $999 | 35% |
| $1,000+ | 50% |
07 Tournaments: XL Series, BLAST, and the formats worth your time
888poker runs four major XL Series events per year - Winter (January), Spring (May), Summer, and Autumn (September) - each with over $1.5 million in guarantees and a flagship $250 buy-in Mystery Bounty Main Event guaranteed at $500,000. Since late 2025 the Main Events have run as fully rakeless events, meaning the entire $250 goes into the prize pool. For a mid-stakes recreational player, a $500K GTD event at $250 with no rake is legitimately good value and compares favourably to equivalent events on PokerStars or GGPoker at similar buy-ins.
BLAST is 888poker's jackpot SNG format - a three-player hyper-turbo where the prize pool multiplier (from 2x to 10,000x the buy-in) is drawn at random before the first hand. Buy-ins range from $0.10 to $50. The top jackpot of 10,000x means a $1 BLAST can pay up to $10,000 and a $50 BLAST up to $500,000 in prize pool. Rake runs from 6.77% to 10% depending on buy-in, which is high relative to cash games but in line with jackpot SNG formats industry-wide. BLAST is recreationally very appealing and contributes meaningfully to 888poker's retention of casual players.
Daily tournament traffic is smaller than on GGPoker or PokerStars. Expect fields of 200-800 in $10-$55 daily tournaments during EU peak hours and fields of 50-300 in equivalent US-window events. Mystery Bounty is the dominant format on 888poker as of 2025-2026, appearing across nearly every price point in the XL Series and in the daily schedule. Progressive knockout (PKO) and classic freezeout structures also run regularly. PKO Rumble is the weekly high-traffic bounty event, typically $109 buy-in with a $40,000+ guarantee on Sundays.
08 Who 888poker is actually good for
Recreational players who want to play real poker without sitting down against seven regulars with 100-hand tracker databases on every opponent: 888poker is built for you. The player pool skews casual, the HUD ban was never in place here (external HUDs have always been allowed), and the in-built January 2025 HUD puts basic stats in front of everyone equally. The XL Series Main Events give you genuine shots at five-figure prizes for $250 or less.
Tournament grinders looking for soft MTT fields: conditionally yes. 888poker's fields are softer than GGPoker's or PokerStars' at comparable buy-ins, and the XL Series draws recreational recreational crossover traffic from casino and sports betting. Andrew Barone's argument from his public interviews - that smaller 888poker fields reduce variance and let skilled players realize their edge faster - is backed by his own $1M+ online MTT profit chart. The catch is that daily traffic outside XL Series weeks is thin, and you will run out of games above $109 buy-in on most weekdays.
Cash game regulars: depends heavily on volume requirements. Micro-stakes players ($0.01/$0.02 to $0.10/$0.25) will find enough traffic to play full sessions, and the softer pool composition is a genuine edge. Regular mid-stakes cash players ($1/$2 and above) will find adequate peak-hour traffic but thin off-peak tables. High-volume professional grinders who need 20%+ effective rakeback and deep multi-table volume should look at GGPoker, ACR, or Natural8 instead - 888poker's reward structure does not support that use case.
09 Quick facts
10 Full 888poker ambassador roster (8)
Top 5 by lifetime earnings
| Ambassador | Country | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| Ian Simpson | United Kingdom | $1.6M |
| Vivian Saliba | Brazil | $1.3M |
| Iñaki Angulo | Spain | $500K |
| Lucia Navarro | Spain | $73K |
| Andrew Barone | Canada | $60K |
Full roster
Vivian Saliba
888poker
Ian Simpson
888poker
Lucia Navarro
888poker
Iñaki Angulo
888poker
Nick Eastwood
888poker
Andrew Barone
888poker
Paulo Bortolucci
888poker
Aaron Barone
888poker
Inside 888poker
