Online poker
Poker is a card game, the most popular of a class of games called vying games, in which players with fully or partially concealed cards make wagers into a central pot, which is awarded to the player or players with the best combination of cards or to the player who makes an uncalled bet.
Traditional venues for playing poker, such as casinos and poker rooms, may be intimidating for novice players and are located in geographically disparate locations. Casinos are also reluctant to promote poker because it is difficult for them to profit from it. They make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines. Online venues, by contrast, are dramatically cheaper because they have much smaller overhead costs. For example, adding another table does not take up valuable space. Online poker rooms tend to be viewed as more player-friendly. For example you could visit
PartyPoker (the most popular poker website in the U.S),
VCpoker and
William Hill to have a look at user friendly poker rooms.
There are substantial differences between online poker gaming and conventional, in-person gaming. One obvious difference is that players do not sit right across from each other, removing any ability to observe others' reactions and body language. Instead, online poker players learn to focus more keenly on betting patterns, reaction time and other behavior tells that are not physical in nature. Since poker is a game that requires adaptability, successful online players learn to master the new frontiers of their surroundings.
Another less obvious difference is the rate of play. In brick and mortar casinos the dealer has to collect the cards, then shuffle and deal them after every hand. Due to this and other delays common in offline casinos, the average rate of play is around thirty hands per hour. Online casinos, however, do not have these delays; the dealing and shuffling are instant, there are no delays relating to counting chips (for a split pot), and on average the play is faster due to "auto-action" buttons (where the player selects his action before his turn). It is not uncommon for an online poker table to average sixty to eighty hands per hour.
This large difference in rate of play has created another effect among online poker players. In the brick and mortar casino, the only real way to increase your earnings is to increase your limit. In the online world players have another option, play more tables. Unlike a physical casino where it would be nearly impossible to play multiple tables at once, most online poker rooms allow this. Depending on the site, a player might play from 4 to 10 tables at the same time, viewing them each in a separate window on the computer display. PartyPoker is definately one such site.
Another important change results from the fact that online poker rooms, in some cases, offer online poker schools that teach the basics and significantly speed up the learning curve for novices. Many online poker rooms also provide free money play so that players may practice these skills in various poker games and limits without the risk of losing real money. People who previously had no way to learn and improve because they had no one to play with now have the ability to learn the game much more quickly and gain invaluable experience from free money play
The major online poker sites offer varying features to entice new players. One common feature is to offer tournaments called satellites by which the winners gain entry to real-life poker tournaments. It was through one such tournament on PokerStars that Chris Moneymaker won his entry to the 2003 World Series of Poker. He went on to win the main event causing shock in the poker world. The 2004 World Series featured triple the number of players over the 2003 turnout. At least four players in the WSOP final table won their entry through an online cardroom.
Typically, online poker rooms make the bulk of their revenue via three methods. First is the rake. Rake is collected from most real money ring game pots. The rake is capped at some maximum fee, usually $3, beyond which the pot can continue to grow without being subject to additional rake being taken. Second, pre-scheduled multi-table and sit-and-go tournaments are not raked; rather, but rather an entry fee, often around ten percent, is taken by the house. Third, some online poker sites also offer games like black jack where the player plays against "the house" for real money. The odds are in the house's favor in these games, thus producing a profit for the house.
Online poker is legal and regulated in many countries including several nations in and around the Caribbean Sea, and most notably the United Kingdom. In June 2005, PartyGaming, the parent company of the largest online cardroom, PartyPoker, went public on the London Stock Exchange, achieving an initial public offering market value in excess of $8 billion dollars. At the time of the IPO, ninety-two percent of Party Gaming's income came from poker operations.
Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud, especially collusion between players. However, they also have collusion detection abilities that do not exist in casinos. For example, online poker room security employees can look at the "hand history" of the cards previously played by any player on the site, making patterns of behavior easier to detect than in a casino where colluding players can simply fold their hands without anyone ever knowing the strength of their holding. Online poker rooms also check player's IP addresses in order to prevent players at the same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables.
Reliable and well known websites that offer various poker games as well as related articles include
PartyPoker ,
VCpoker,
Eurobet and
William Hill
.