Internet Poker
PokerGo8 What is Online Poker? Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It's been partly 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 claimed 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 that the US Enforcement Business 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, such as casinos and poker rooms, may be intimidating for novice players and are often located in geographically remote locations. Additionally, brick and mortar casinos are somewhat hesitant to promote poker as it's hard for them to gain from it. Though the rake, or time charge, of traditional casinos is often high, the opportunity costs of running a poker room are even greater. Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines for example, figures from the Gaming Enforcement Firm Joseph Eve estimate that poker accounts for 1% of brick and mortar casino earnings. Online venues, by contrast, are dramatically cheaper because they have much smaller overhead costs. By way of example, adding another table doesn't take up valuable space as it would for a brick and mortar casino. Online poker rooms also permit the players to play for low stakes (as low as 1cents/2cents) and frequently offer poker freeroll tournaments (where there isn't any entrance fee), attracting novices or less wealthy clientele. Online venues may be more vulnerable to particular kinds of fraud, especially collusion between players. But they've collusion detection abilities that don't exist in brick and mortar casinos. For example, internet poker room security employees can examine the 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 anybody ever knowing the strength of the holding. Online poker rooms also check players' IP addresses in order to prevent players at the exact same home or at known open proxy servers from playing on the very same tables. Digital apparatus fingerprinting also allows poker websites to recognize and prevent players who make new accounts in efforts to circumvent prior account bans, restrictions and closures.
History of Online Poker Free poker online has been performed as early as the late 1990s in the kind of IRC poker. Planet Poker was the first online card room to offer real cash games in 1998. The first real money poker match was dealt on January 1, 1998. Writer Mike Caro became the "face" of Planet Poker in October 1999. The major internet poker sites offer varying features to entice new players. One common feature is to offer tournaments called satellites by which the winners gain access to real-life poker tournaments. It was through one such tournament on PokerStars that Chris Moneymaker won his entry to the 2003 World collection of Poker. He went 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 in the PokerStars online cardroom. Four Ways online poker rooms profit Normally, online poker rooms generate the majority of their revenue via four methods. First, there's the rake. Similar to the vig paid to a bookie, the rake is a fee paid to the house for hosting the game. Rake is accumulated from most real money ring game decals. The rake is normally calculated as a percentage of the pot according to a sliding scale and capped at a maximum fee. Each online poker area determines its own rake structure. Since the expenses for running an internet poker table are bigger than those for running a live poker desk, rake in the majority of online poker rooms is a lot smaller compared to its brick and mortar counterpart. Second, hands played in pre-scheduled multi-table and impromptu sit-and-go championships are not raked, but instead an entry fee around five to ten percent of this tournament buy-in is added to the entry price of the tournament. These two are generally specified at the championship details as, e.g., $20+$2 ($20 signifies the buy-in that goes into the prize pool and $2 signifies the entrance fee, de facto rake). Unlike actual casino tournaments, online tournaments do not deduct trader tips and other expenses from the prize pool. Third, a few online poker sites also supply side games like blackjack, roulettes , or side stakes on poker hands in which the player plays against "the home" for real money. The chances are in your house's favor in these matches, so producing a profit for the home. Some sites go so far as becoming affiliated with internet casinos, or perhaps integrating them into the poker room software. Fourth, like virtually all institutions that hold cash, online poker sites invest the cash that gamers deposit. Regulations in many jurisdictions exist in an effort to restrict the sort of risks sites can take with their customers' money. But as the websites do not have to pay attention on gamers' bankrolls even low-risk investments can be a significant source of earnings. Agen PokerGo8