BGRoom Review | Summary of BG Room features

BGRoom (or BG room) review

Date of review: 10.04.2007

BGRoom exists since 2006, while its server location is Cyprus.

On the main lobby they show a huge number of players logged on almost all the time, but where it says there shall be over 500 players logged on, you can find only about 20 – 30 players in the real money section. Even if the numbers were accurate, it would mean, about 95% of all games there are played for play money.

They do not accept US players from several states, no players from Cyprus and they have an additional paragraph in their terms saying it is up to the players to make sure they are allowed to play there.

BGroom software is a downloadable client, which installs and updates automatically, available in several languages. They named their software a beta version, according to their support they have a lot of things in development, but other than a few changes in the design of some buttons there haven´t been any software upgrades for several months.
The client software and connection to the server appears stable upon fast connections such as DSL, dialup connections get frequently disconnected.

Window updates such as refreshing the list of games in progress are very fast, upon the small amount of active players they have, the server does easy to handle the small load; speed of game play is very fast as well.

Graphics on BGroom are 3D and well designed, yet the colors are sometimes a bit too dark, at least it takes a few games to get used to it; no skins to choose, no option for 2D view.

Options during game play are limited to left and right click and drag and drop plus optional auto roll and auto bear off. The software has sound effects, for players and kibitzers.
You can kibitz other players, and even chat with the players at the tables; a neat feature is the option to silence specific players. Every time a kibitz joins or leaves a table a notification is displayed in the chat box.
The software automatically saves a match history including win/loss statistics, but no log files, you can´t replay games.

BG Room have lobby chat and table chat as well, where the lobby chat is mostly abused by players swearing at each other and the table chat is limited to a tiny window, where any halfway long sentence will already exceed the size of the window; system messages are mixed into the chat, meaning most of the time you won´t even notice when your opponent tries to tell you something.
No private messaging, no forum.

There is one room for real money play and half a dozen rooms for play money play. While they have only so few players it wouldn´t make sense to split them up further anyway.

They have a rating but hidden, meaning everyone can see only his own rating.
The rating used to be linear, meaning every win you would gain or lose same much, which had the effect that players who won over 50% of their games would keep increasing their rating to the sky, regardless of skill. Recently they have changed something in this system, it now depends on rating differences, meaning you lose more than you win in case your opponent´s rating is lower, but since BGroom didn´t reset the existing ratings, the overall result is still meaningless.

They offer play for real money as well as play money, a wide range of possible deposit and withdrawal options, including credit card, bank wire, Neteller, Moneybookers and several others.
Processing time is average, once identity verification is complete, deposits are usually instant and withdrawals take about a week. They keep adding additional deposit and withdrawal methods, but they seem to always have problems getting it right. While deposit options usually work fine, withdrawal options are often not listed on the withdrawal page but have to be claimed through their support and even then they often mess up and send your money to the wrong address or through the wrong method.

On top of the rake they charge a withdrawal fee, depending on withdrawal method, which indirectly increases the rake.

Software downloads and usage, signups, deposits and play for play money are free of charge, but they charge an additional idle fee for real money players who don´t play any games in over 180 days.

The rake structure is a flat fee depending on type of game and cube value or match length, it is very complicated to overview.
In general they charge a rake “per player”, but winner pays both, which means all rakes are for the winner twice as much as the page shows.

Lowest rate of 4.9% (per player) they charge in money games where the cube value reaches 8, upon lower cube value and in matches the rake increases up to 17.8% in long matches over 18 points and on top of that they charge a minimum of 25 cents per game upon small stakes. In long matches for minimum stakes this minimum leads to the rake exceeding the stakes or in other words, in a 5 point match for $1 you pay 100% rake.

Over all this is by far the highest rake on the web, even the most greedy progressive rakes on average don´t reach this high level.
Recently they have invented a VIP club, where members can get up to 25% of the paid rake back, depending on how many games they play per month, but even upon highest possible rake back offer, their average rake still exceeds any other server.

BGroom offer a wide range of possible stakes to play for, from $1 to $500, but the vast majority of games are played for stakes under $3 and limited to a cube value below 8, which grants them an average rake of approximately 14%.

They have been announcing they would implement tournaments for over 6 months, but so far they don´t offer any.

They pay some big bonuses, such as a $5 welcome bonus and a $100 first deposit bonus, which has the effect that they basically finance all the action on their server themselves. Players sign up, make a deposit, claim their bonus, play the required amount of games to cash out and disappear.
I have no clue where this shall lead to, but I would not recommend keeping much money in an account on this server. They are halfway new on the market and their strategy is still in a stage of investing more and more money, but while their success is obviously limited to a handful of bonus hunters, I can´t see how they would survive in the long run. A lot of players have tried to give them advice, point out how senseless huge money giveaways are, but they appear advice resistant.

They offer a live support via chat, and a dozen different mail addresses for all kind of inquiries, but nothing of all that works smooth.
They have some nice people in live support, but except for a few minor things those do not have permission for any kind of decision. Most chat sessions in live support end with: “I will forward this to our manager”, which usually means you won´t hear from them again. Same as any mail you send them, anything their live supports forwards to the management seems to get lost in cyberspace. From my experience it takes at least several repeated requests for support before you get a problem solved.