Below you’ll find everything you need to know about Hollywood Poker. The info available here was checked and verified in order to provide you with the most accurate and up-to-date coverage of this popular Mac-friendly poker site.

New! A unique Hollywood Poker bonus page! Get the best and most up-to-date signup and reload bonuses, on the Hollywood Poker bonus page, dedicated exclusively to the MacPoker101 players.

Quick Facts

Hollywood Poker was launched on November 2004.

Hollywood Poker is operated by the same company that owns and runs PokerRoom.com - the world's 3rd largest online poker site.

Hollywood Poker is 100% Mac friendly, offering a smooth, fully-featured no-download Java solution that enables Mac users to enjoy the online poker experience to the fullest. 

Hollywood Poker offers a first-time deposit bonus of 500% up to $1000 - one of the best on the Internet 

Hollywood Poker is growing fast - According to Alexa.com, its reach-per-million-users 3 month change is up   83%

Traffic: Around 9,000 online players during peak hours. 

Available Games: Texas Hold'em (by far the most popular poker variant on Hollywood Poker and anywhere else), Omaha, 7-card-stud, and 5 Card Draw. 

The glam Factor: Hollywood Poker enables its players to play online poker with Hollywood celebs like James Woods, Vince Van Patten, Mimi Rogers, and Ricki Lake.

Meet the Parents: Ongame

Ongame is a leading company in the international online gaming market. Through its Costa Rica-based subsidiary, SafePay Int. SRL, Ongame owns PokerRoom and  Hollywood Poker, one of the fastest growing poker sites on the Net.  

Hollywood Poker not only utilizes the same Ongame software and poker platform that we know from PokerRoom, but also features the same user base. If you log in to Hollywood Poker you can explore and join all the active poker tables and tourneys that are available for the PokerRoom users.  

 
Software

Hollywood Poker's robust poker software is available in 2 versions:

1. Downloadable client (Windows only)
2. Fully featured Java applet (Mac, Linux, Windows)

Both versions are equally stable, well-designed and user friendly. 

Hollywood Poker & Macintosh

Hollywood Poker is a 100% Mac-friendly poker room, offering a truly great online-poker experience for Mac users.  

Mac OS 

The software works with Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later, together with Safari 1.0.2 or later, or Mozilla 1.5 or later.

No special settings are required for Mac OS X.

OS9.x  

To ensure that the Hollywood Poker software runs properly you'll need the Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ) 2.2.5 installed on your computer. If you don't already have it you can download it from Apple. Your browser should be configured to use the MRJ to run Java applets. This is done from the "Java" controls in the "Settings".

Games

Hollywood Poker offers the following game variety: Texas Hold'em  (fixed limit, no-limit and pot-limit) Omaha and 7-Card Stud (high & high-low), 5-Card Stud (pot-limit & fixed limit), and the newest addition - the classic poker variant, 5-card draw.  

Rake                   

Like most of the major poker rooms, Hollywood Poker's house rake is calculated as 5% of the matched bets in the pot, up to a maximum of $3. This rule also applies to play-money games in order to give them a realistic feel. The maximum rake varies depending on the number of players. The fewer the players, the lower the rake. 

Tournaments (AKA tourneys) are played by a group of participants, all paying a fixed buy-in and fee to a pool. This pool is used to pay the winner/s. All participants receive the same number of chips and play until their last chip. The winner is the player who finishes the tourney with all the participants' chips in her/his possession. 

Unlike traditional ring games, the risk in tournament play is limited to the initial sign-up fee. 

           

Multi-Table Tournaments - Tournaments are played on multiple tables simultaneously. When participants are knocked-out of the tournament, players are moved to other tables. When enough seats are free a whole table will be removed, until only one table remains. 

Buy in and Fee - To enter a tournament the player must pay the buy-in (The player's contribution to the prize pool) and a fee (the combined fees go to Hollywood Poker for hosting of the tournament). There is no rake in tournament hands.

Starting Chips - Each player receives the same amount of chips at the start of the tournament. 

Satellites - For the chance to win the big prizes, players can enter the bigger tournaments through qualifier satellites. This option enables players to join high stakes tournaments for just a few bucks. 

In the qualifier tournament, instead of cash prizes, the winner is awarded a ticket to another tournament. The ticket is valid as a buy-in, and no additional fee is required.

Scheduled Tournaments - Scheduled tournaments have a fixed starting time. When the tournament time approaches, all registered players will participate. 
 

Sit & Go - Single table tournaments with (usually) 10 players. A Sit & Go tourney will start once all the seats are filled and the prize pool is fixed.

Re-buy and Add-on - During a tournament, when a player runs out of chips, he/she is usually knocked out of the game. In some tournaments, however, the players are allowed to post another buy-in to get more chips. 

Freerolls - A free-roll tournament is a tournament with prize money, which is absolutely free to join. 

Free-rolls are extremely popular. You should be quick to register if you want to make it to one of them. 

Newest Tourney: Celebrity Classic

The Hollywood Poker Celebrity Classic is the newest addition to the weekly lineup of star-powered tournaments. Offering similar features to the Michael Woods Celebrity Invitational, this  $10+1 tourney is scheduled every Sunday at 2 pm EST. 

Bonus Policy

A deposit bonus is an extra cash bonus a player gets the first time he/she deposits money to his/her Hollywood Poker account. 

Hollywood Poker offers you a choice between 3 deposit bonuses, enabling you to decide which deposit bonus fits your playing style.

New! A special Hollywood Poker bonus page! Get the top and most up-to-date signup and reload bonuses, on the Hollywood Poker bonus page, dedicated exclusively to the MacPoker101 players.

• The bonus of choice of tournament players
• Michael Woods Invitational tournament ticket, or a Hollywood Poker Celebrity Classic ticket
• Celebrity bounties to be won
• $500 added to the tournament prize pool
• Free Red Carpet ticket upon deposit

• The right bonus for low to mid stakes players
• 25% up to $50
• Free Red Carpet tournament ticket upon deposit

• Suitable for mid to high stakes players
• 500% up to $1000
• Free Red Carpet tournament ticket upon deposit

The Glam Factor

Hollywood Poker lives up to its name and enables players to occasionally play online poker with stars and celebrities like actor James Woods, World Poker Tour commentator Vince Van Patten (both have a stake in the venture), Mimi Rogers, and Ricki Lake. 

The Hollywood Poker Girls Model Search 

During the past months many Hollywood Poker players has taken part in the 2006 Hollywood Poker Girls Model Search. Tens of thousands of votes were cast for the 50  contestants. 12 of these ladies will be selected to grace the pages of the 2006 Hollywood Poker Girls Calendar. 

The Hollywood Poker judges are currently tallying the votes to see who were chosen as the favorite Hollywood Poker Girls. The 12 finalists will be announced shortly.

Promotions

Invite a Friend -  This is a cool way to benefit from promoting Hollywood Poker among your friends. The $100 bonus split into two increments of $50 and you and your friend will each receive $25 each time your friend meets the requirements. 

Royal Money - If you hit a Royal Straight Flush on any Texas Holdem Real Money ring game, Hollywood Poker will give you a special Royal Money bonus -- a nice payout equal to 100 times the big blind of the table where you got your Royal Flush!


Community

The Green Room is the official gathering place of the Hollywood Poker Community.

The Green Room is where you can chill out, make friends with other players and improve your game. Hollywood Poker members automatically become Community members, but non-members can join, too.

In The Green Room you can discuss strategy for Texas Holdem and other poker variants, poker psychology, rules & etiquette, and more. 


Credibility & Integrity

Utilizing the software, servers and poker platform of PokerRoom.com, and being owned by the same parent company, enables Hollywood Poker to offer very high standards of fairness and integrity.  

Hollywood Poker uses thawte SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Certificates, which offers secure communications by encrypting all data to and from the site. 

Third party auditors check Hollywood Poker's games routinely, examining its poker software and approving that:

There is no statistical bias in the dealt pocket cards.

There is no statistical bias in cards dealt to any of the board positions.

The shuffling algorithms and the random number generator, have been designed to ensure a completely random and unpredictable shuffle. 

Security

All communications between the Hollywood Poker servers and the client program running on your computer are encrypted. 

The player's name and credit card information is always scrambled when processed by the Hollywood Poker systems, using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. 

This means that the player's cards, name, address, credit card number, and password are fully protected.

Each player's cards are sent exclusively to that particular player's computer. None of the other computers know what your hidden cards are. 

Hollywood Poker uses the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol that encrypts all data. The credit card processing at Hollywood Poker is handled by Montreal-based SureFire Commerce, a publicly traded company, which currently processes over $1 billion of consumer payments annually. 

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