Online Poker – A Virtual Game
Internet has seen the world of online poker for some time now. The dramatic increase of poker players across the world has been partly attributed to the online poker. Revenues from online poker in 2005 were estimated at US$ 200 million monthly.
Tradition Poker Venues
Traditional venues for playing poker like poker rooms and casinos may not be very comfortable for beginners and are very often situated in geographically dissimilar locations. These casinos are unenthusiastic towards promote poker as its tough for them to make profits out of it. This is despite the fact that the rake, or time charge is often high in these casinos; nonetheless to counter that there are opportunity costs involved in running a poker room which are even higher. Money is often made by these casinos by removing poker rooms and addition of more slot machines.
Comparison of Traditional Poker venues with online poker rooms
In comparison to these traditional casinos and poker rooms, online poker venues are radically cheaper due to their smaller overhead costs, as an example if there is addition of another table in online poker room there is no valuable space being taken. Furthermore online poker rooms allow the players to play for low stakes and also offer free roll tournaments which are a big attraction for beginners.
Vulnerability of online poker rooms to certain types of fraud is certainly higher in comparison to the traditional poker rooms. Like for instance in online poker security employees can look at the previously played hand history of the cards by any player and easily detect behavioural pattern.
Facts of Online Poker rooms
Late 1990’s: Free poker online was played in the form of IRC poker. The first online cardroom to offer real money games was Planet Poker. One of the founders and the “face” of Planet Poker was Author Mike Caro.
Some of the major online poker sites offer different features for enticing beginner poker players. Satellites – a tournament is one of the common offerings by these online sites and with this the winners gain entry to real-life poker tournaments. Chris Moneymaker won his entry to the 2003 World Series of Poker through one such tournament on PokerStars. 2004 winner Greg “Fossilman” Raymer also won his entry through poker stars. In comparison to 2003 World Series the one held in 2004 featured three times as many players. It was through online poker that at least four players in the WSOP final table won their entry.
The acquisition of Paradise Poker.com was done in October 2004 by Sporting bet Plc (the world’s largest publicly traded online gaming company (SBT.L). This acquisition marked the first time an online poker room was owned by a public company. Ever since many other online poker rooms have gone public.
Playing online poker
You need to download software and install it on your computer to be able to play online poker. Setting a budget aside is a good idea when planning to play on-line poker as it would be useful in avoiding unnecessary expenses. So the basic is to learn money management; a good way to develop your skills as online poker player.
