A new online poker site opened up a few months ago, called UFC Poker. It’s a room owned by the UFC fighting organization, but only offers free poker right now. Real money players will need to play elsewhere. If you like tournaments and the UFC, the UFC Poker site offers play money tournaments with points as prizes. With enough earned points, players can trade them for various UFC Poker swag, like hoodies or beanie hats.

After a quick trip around the lobby and poker tables, I noticed also that ring games are not available. If you’re looking to play ring games rather than tournaments, UFC Poker is the wrong room for you. If you’re just looking to hang out with like-minded players, then the room serves that purpose.

I’m hoping that at some point in the future that UFC Poker will grow into a real, full-fledged poker site. With some ring games and real-money play, the UFC has a great audience to market to. Since the majority of the UFC crowd is young men, and the poker market is also mostly young men, it seems to reason that an eventual progression into a more serious room is in the cards, pardon the pun.

The software at UFC Poker needs some work too. While it’s ok for a site to goof around on, no serious poker players will be able to deal with the archaic graphics and buttons. The buttons are difficult to use, and the graphics are about 10 years behind the rest of the industry. Again, the room is brand new, so I don’t want to be too hard on them. So, if you’re looking for a place to have a little fun, try UFC Poker. If you take your online poker more seriously, keep looking around.