Online Poker Tournaments
PokerGo8 What is Online Poker? Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partially responsible for a huge increase in the amount of poker players worldwide. Christiansen Capital Advisors stated online poker earnings grew from $82.7 million in 2001 to $2.4 billion in 2005, though a survey performed by DrKW and Global Betting and Gaming Consultants asserted online poker revenues in 2004 were at $1.4 billion. In a testimony before the United States Senate regarding Internet Gaming, Grant Eve, a Certified Public Accountant representing the US Accounting Firm Joseph Eve, Certified Public Accountants, estimated that one in every four dollars gambled is gambled online. Difference Between Traditional Poker and Online Poker Traditional (or "brick and mortar", B&M, live, land-based) venues for playing poker, like casinos and poker rooms, could be intimidating for novice players and are frequently found in geographically disparate locations. Additionally, brick and mortar casinos are somewhat hesitant to promote poker because it's hard for them to gain from it. Although the rake, or time charge, of traditional casinos is often high, the opportunity costs of running a poker room are even higher. Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines - for example, figures by the Gambling Enforcement Firm Joseph Eve estimate that poker accounts for 1% of brick and mortar casino revenues. Online venues, by contrast, are dramatically cheaper because they have much smaller overhead costs. For instance, adding another table doesn't take up valuable space as it would for a brick and mortar casino. Internet poker rooms also permit the players to play low stakes (as low as 1cents/2pennies) and often offer poker freeroll tournaments (in which there isn't any entrance fee), attracting beginners and/or less affluent clientele. Online venues may be more vulnerable to particular types of fraud, especially collusion between players. But they have collusion detection abilities that do not exist in physical casinos. For instance, 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 the holding. Online poker rooms also assess players' IP addresses in order to prevent players in the exact same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables. Digital device fingerprinting also permits poker websites to recognize and block players who create new accounts
in attempts to bypass prior account bans, restrictions and closures. History of Internet Poker Free poker online has been played as early as the late 1990s in the form of IRC poker. Planet Poker was the first online card area to provide real cash games in 1998. The initial real money poker game was dealt on January 1, 1998. Writer Mike Caro became the "face" of Planet Poker at October 1999. The significant online poker sites offer varying features to entice new players. 1 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 moved on to win the primary event, causing shock in the poker world, and starting the poker boom. The 2004 World Series featured three times as many players as in 2003. At least four players in the WSOP final table won their entry through an online cardroom. Like Moneymaker, 2004 winner Greg Raymer also won his entry at the PokerStars online cardroom. Four Ways online poker rooms gain Normally, internet poker rooms generate the majority of their earnings through four methods. First, there is the rake. Like the vig paid to a bookie, the rake is a fee paid into the home for hosting the game. Rake is collected from most real money ring game decals. The rake is generally calculated as a percentage of the pot according to a sliding scale and capped at some maximum fee. Each online poker room decides its own rake structure. Since the costs for conducting an online poker table are smaller than those for running a live poker table, rake in the majority of online poker rooms is much more compact than its brick and mortar counterpart. Second, hands played in pre-scheduled multi-table and impromptu sit-and-go tournaments aren't raked, but rather an entry fee approximately five to ten percent of this championship buy-in is added to the entry price of this tournament. These two are generally specified at the championship particulars as, e.g., $20+$2 ($20 represents the buy-in that goes into the prize pool and $2 represents the entrance fee, de facto rake). Unlike actual casino tournaments, online tournaments don't deduct trader tips and other expenses from the prize pool. Third, some online poker websites also offer side games like blackjack, roulettes unwanted stakes on poker hands in which the player plays "the house" for real cash. The chances are in your house's favor in these games, so producing a gain for your house. Some websites go as far as becoming affiliated with online casinos, or even integrating them in the poker room program. Fourth, like virtually all institutions which hold cash, online poker websites invest the money that players deposit. Regulations in most jurisdictions exist in an effort to restrict the sort of dangers websites can take with their customers' cash. However, as the websites do not need to pay attention on players' bankrolls even low-risk investments can be a significant source of earnings. Situs PokerGo8