Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

On this page, you’ll find a collection of the most common questions we receive about Beat The Fish, from background information about the website to our personal experience levels. If you cannot find the answer to your question here, please feel free to contact us directly.

Josh H launched Beat The Fish in 2005 after playing online poker semi-professionally for several years.

In poker lore, a “fish” has traditionally referred to an inexperienced or inept player. Naturally, they would be the prey of experienced “sharks”. During the explosion of poker and, specifically, online poker in the early 2000s, tables were filled with more fish than ever. Their hallmark unpredictability gave traditional skilled players fits. I developed a system to consistently “beat the fish” in those wild online poker games. Along with honest reviews at online poker rooms I had played at, that guide became the core of Beat The Fish.

Prior to launching Beat The Fish, Josh had played in millions of online poker hands. Along with a lifelong fascination with gambling and organizing poker games at a young age, Josh became consumed by poker in the early 2000s. After poker sessions at local cardrooms, he further honed his skills by private sessions with old-school professional players. He continues to bet daily, whether it’s multi-tabling hundreds of poker hands per hour, betting on every type of sports event, or checking out the latest casino game developments. Each member of the small team that is trusted to write for Beat The Fish has at least 10 years of poker-playing expertise.

Although Josh doesn’t play full time, he has used poker and sports betting to supplement his income for more than 20 years. All members of the news and review team also play poker in some capacity. Current Beat The Fish team members have all been playing poker for more than 10 years each.

What you might find at many online poker review and news sites is a team of writers who don’t really know anything about poker or the iGaming industry. They’re largely a bunch of SEO-first specialists who have never played at an online casino in their lives. That’s not the case here. At Beat The Fish, we personally vet all contributors, reviewing other content that they have written about the gaming industry and ensuring that they at least stay active enough the community to be able to write relevant and informative reviews.

Beat The Fish has received numerous certifications that can only be obtained by honest coverage. The most notable is Google News certification, which means you’ll see news articles from Beat The Fish alongside the largest media outlets in the world. Beat The Fish has also received the Seal of Approval from the Gambling Portal Webmasters Association. To receive that, beatthefish.com was manually reviewed by senior members of the GPWA to confirm that Beat The Fish is operated independently of any of the sites we review and provides readers with genuinely useful information. Ongoing monitoring also occurs to ensure that we stick to these codes of conduct.

No, we do not accept guest posts or any type of sponsored post. In fact, we do not accept payment of any kind for the content we post on Beat The Fish.

No. No gambling or gaming of any kind has ever or will ever take place at Beat The Fish. We do not host or facilitate games of any type.

No. None of the content at Beat The Fish should be considered financial or legal advice. None of the team at Beat The Fish are attorneys or financial advisors. Everything you’ll read at Beat The Fish is for educational or informational purposes.

Although members of the Beat The Fish team have been asked to, we do not currently offer personal poker coaching. We’d much rather provide free advice to a wider audience via our strategy articles and ebooks rather than be paid to help individual players.

No, we do accept payment from our visitors for any type of service. All of our content is free, including our reviews and strategy articles. You can also receive all of our private strategy advice and ebooks by signing up for our free newsletter.

Yes, Beat The Fish: A Step-by-Step Guide to Start Dominating Online Poker Games was written by Josh H, the owner of Beat The Fish. It is currently available at Amazon, Goodreads, or as a free bonus for subscribing to our newsletter. We have multiple other poker strategy ebooks being developed at the moment, which will be released shortly. You can find dozens of our useful poker strategy advice for free in our strategy section.

Between the Beat The Fish team collectively, we have reviewed over 100 online poker sites, online casinos, and online sports betting sites. We’ve also written more than 80 poker strategy articles.

Over the years, we’ve perfected our recipe for poker reviews, casino reviews, and sportsbook reviews. It requires plenty of detail, covering all of the bonuses, banking methods, wagering requirements, poker variants, stakes, and every other aspect that affects the player. We want to give readers a real and honest idea of what they can expect from the time they first visit the site to when they receive their withdrawal in their bank account or crypto wallet. Our philosophy is to cover a gambling site is more detail than you need in order to reach bettors with different priorities.

We don’t believe it’s possible to write a full poker review without signing up to the site and making a deposit. When we write reviews at Beat The Fish, we do everything that an actual player would do on the site, including playing at the tables, claiming bonuses, and withdrawing.

There are a few tell-tale signs that a poker site isn’t worth joining: Not having licensing information readily available, slow payouts, removing cashier options, banning players without good reason, allowing player HUDs to run unfettered, and only having email customer support are some of the easiest red flags to identify.

As experienced bettors, the Beat The Fish team really knows what makes a good online gaming site. If an operator is missing something important, has slow payouts or offers a substandard mobile experience, you’ll hear about it. We play on every single site that we review - depositing, wagering and withdrawing – so there’s no room for subjectivity.

The Fish Rating is an element of our poker reviews that can only be determined by actually playing at a poker site’s cash games and tournaments. The more we judge a site to have poor players, the higher Fish Rating it will receive. All of our review ratings are on a 5-star scale. The Fish Rating is graded on a curve against its current competitors. If we deem a poker site to be have looser games (higher flop percentages, average pots, anecdotal evidence from gameplay) than every poker site in its market, it would receive a 5 Fish Rating. Average games would receive a 2.5 and extremely tight games could go all the way down to 0.5.

You’re welcome to vent to us about a bad beat, slow payout, or other operational issue with your gaming account. We’ll take it into consideration when we rate the poker site, casino, or sportsbook. However, please be aware that we have no power to make any changes to your account.

None of the Beat The Fish team are employees at any gaming site. In fact, we won’t allow a gaming site employee to be a part of the Beat The Fish team. That means we can’t make any adjustments to your account, including issues relating to bonuses or payouts. You’ll need to contact the operator directly using their support methods for help with anything related to your account.

If you have a question that wasn’t covered on this page or want to give us feedback or other comments, feel free to get in touch with us directly. You can find all of our contact methods on our contact page.