Online Poker

Online poker is the game of poker that is play over the internet. The game works the same as in live events and casinos worldwide. On the internet the game is faster and the option to choose between different games is huge, some of these games are known as Texas Holdem, Omaha7-card, Stud 5-card, Stud Triple, Draw, Crazy Pineapple, Draw and Razz.

Texas Holdem is by far the most popular online poker game, and it´s just growing stronger. Many TV-shows have even been created from the huge popular poker game and as more people start playing poker every day the TV-shows often is sponsored by different poker rooms. The shows are most of the part made with famous poker players who play with a lot of money, even called High Stakes Poker.

For players that play online poker it´s easy to find their level of money they want to play with, almost all poker rooms have the blinds from $0, 01-$0, 02 to $200-$400, and they who want to play for free can choose to play For Fun or Play Money.

To reach out to new players, online poker rooms give away different types of bonuses. Bonuses like 100% up to $500, which means if the player make a first deposit into the poker room of $500 they will get $500 more. Normally the player has to play poker to get the $500. Most of the rooms have a point system or a VIP program and every hand the player plays they will get an amount of points. These points normally gets the bonus back to the player, 600 points might mean $5.

Poker rooms profits
To generate revenue the online poker rooms have four methods. First out and most known by players is the rake. Rake is collected from most real money ring game pots. The rake is normally calculated as a percentage of the pot, and has a maximum fee; at most of the poker rooms the maximum amount of rake is $3 in one hand played.

Second, hands that´s played in a tournament or a sit and go tournament are not raked, instead a fee around five to ten percent of the buy-in amount is added to the entry cost of the tournament. For example if the entry fee is $20+$2, the $20 goes in to the prize pool and $2 goes to the poker room.

Third method is that the poker sites offer games like blackjack or other side bets like roulette or slot machines. The odds of these games are in the house's favor. Even some poker sites open online casinos in the same name as the poker site, to increase the profit.

Fourth and not so suspected method is that the poker sites invest the money that the players deposit.

Poker differences
The big different between online poker gaming and real-life is the ability to read poker face, body language and reactions from the other online players. Instead online poker players learn to focus more on betting patterns, reaction time, speed of play and many more ways.

Another different is that in an online poker room the hands is dealt faster and can reach up to 100 hands an hour. And the opportunity to play at many tables at the same time increases the different; almost every online poker sites permit this.

Online poker security
The security of online poker is a huge matter for the rooms and for the players. To provide an eventually fraud in the poker room, they have security employees to make sure everything works correctly. They have the ability to look at the hand history of every cards previously played by any player on the site, even to provide that players cheat they constantly have an overview of the tables. The poker rooms also check players´ IP addresses in order to prevent that not more than one account from the same household or at known open proxy servers plays at the same table.

Tournaments
The major online poker sites offers new and old players’ tournaments called satellites which the winners gain entry to real-life tournaments. It was through an online poker room that Chris Moneymaker won his entry to the 2003 World Series of Poker. For only a few dollars he won the satellite to soon be the winner of the whole event.