Internet Poker
Domino QQ What is Online Poker? Internet poker is your 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 revenues grew from $82.7 million in 2001 to $2.4 billion in 2005, while a survey carried out by DrKW and Global Betting and Gaming Consultants claimed online poker earnings in 2004 were at $1.4 billion. In a testimony before the United States Senate regarding Internet Gambling, 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, reside, land-based) venues for playing poker, like casinos and poker rooms, may be intimidating for novice players and are frequently located in geographically remote locations. Additionally, brick and mortar stores are somewhat reluctant to promote poker as it is difficult 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 greater. Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines for instance, figures from the Gambling Accounting 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 does not take up valuable space like it would for a brick and mortar casino. Internet poker rooms also allow the players to play low stakes (as low as 1pennies/2cents) and often provide poker freeroll tournaments (in which there is no entry fee), attracting beginners and/or less wealthy clientele. Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain kinds of fraud, especially collusion between players. However, they've collusion detection abilities that do not exist in brick and mortar casinos. By way of instance, online poker room security employees can look at 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 in the same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables. Digital device fingerprinting also permits poker websites to recognize and prevent players who make new accounts in efforts to circumvent prior account bans, limitations and closures. History of Online Poker Free poker online was performed as early as the late 1990s in the form of IRC poker. Planet Poker was the first online card room to offer real money games from 1998. The first real money poker game was dealt on January 1, 1998. Writer Mike Caro became the "face" of Planet Poker in 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 beginning 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. Like the vig paid into a bookie, the rake is a charge paid to the house for hosting the game. Rake is collected from most real money ring game pots. The rake is generally calculated as a proportion of the pot based on a sliding scale and capped at some maximum fee. Each online poker room determines its own rake structure. Considering that the expenses for conducting an online poker table are bigger than those for running a live poker table, rake in most online poker rooms is much smaller compared to its brick and mortar counterpart. Second, palms played in pre-scheduled multi-table and impromptu sit-and-go tournaments aren't raked, but instead an entrance fee approximately five to ten percent of this championship 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 which goes into the prize pool and $2 signifies the entry fee, de facto rake). Unlike actual casino tournaments, online tournaments don't deduct dealer tips and other expenses from the prize pool. Third, a few online poker websites also offer side games like blackjack, roulettes , or side bets on poker hands in which the player plays against "the house" for real cash. The chances are in your house's favor in these types of matches, so producing a gain for the home. Some sites go so far as getting affiliated with internet casinos, or even integrating them in the poker room program. Fourth, like almost all institutions which hold cash, online poker sites invest the money that gamers deposit. Regulations in most jurisdictions exist in an effort to limit the sort of risks websites can take together with their clients' money. But as the sites don't need to pay attention on players' bankrolls even low-risk investments can be a substantial source of revenue. QQ Poker