Cake poker has been around for a couple years now.  After taking their original software and using it to form the Cake Poker network, Cake (and it's networks members) are looking to become a major player in the online poker room.

Cash games go as low as 2/4c NL to $50/100, or $100/200 Fixed limit.  However, because the site is still relatively small, you won't find the high stakes tables terribly populated too often.  On the bright side, a small player pool means reads you form on one player are likely to benefit you much more in the long run, as you are more likely to run into him/her again.

Cake has a fairly wide variety of tournaments as well.  Starting as low as 10c rebuy tournaments, and going up to $320 buy ins (with satellites, of course), players at Cake are sure to find a buy-in that suits their bankroll.  Besides their wide range of buy-ins, Cake does offer some interesting tournament variations as well - such as their kamikaze tournaments, where players are forced to go all in every hand.  Even more popular, Cake has bounty tournaments available, where a portion of your buy in goes towards a bounty on your head (thus making it possible to win money despite finishing "outside the money" of the standard payout structure).

The rewards system at Cake is rather unique as well.  To begin, "Gold Cards" are awarded to players at random when a specified rake is reached at a given cash table.  These cards can then be used to exchange for cash.  The downside to these is the required rake is set rather high - so if you're a micro or low stakes player, don't expect to be dealt one any time soon.

In addition to the Gold Cards are "Gold Chips".  Gold Chips are given whenever you reach a certain number of Frequent Player Points (FPPs).  These can be used as buy-ins for satellite tournaments, as well as for use in the Cake Poker store.  Once again, these are a bit weak, as even if you gain chips at the best rate possible (1 chip/70FPP after your 5th chip is gained each month), you will have to earn a ridiculous number of FPPs in order to buy anything useful.

Depositing at Cake is fairly easy.  They accept Visa/Mastercard ($50 minimum), UseMyWallet ($25 minimum), and ewalletXpress ($25 minimum).  For Americans, a Visa gift card (available in most shopping centers) will work just fine (although there usually is an activation fee of 10% on the gift card).

There are only two downsides worth truly noting at Cake.  At times, the site may lag a little bit - presumably because their servers are handling a larger load, given their newfound network status.  Hopefully, this will be fixed over time, as they should be able to upgrade their hardware soon.  Additionally, they don't offer any stud games, so mixed games such as HORSE are out of the question as well (again, this is something that their software team should be working on to fix soon).

Cake may not have everything right now, but they are certainly on the right track.

Click here to download Cake through 7-High Forums.