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Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. Poker is a type of Card game in which players bet on the value of the card combination (" hand " in their possession by placing a bet into The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide. In 2005, revenues from online poker were estimated at US$ 200 million per month. The United States dollar ( sign: $; code: USD) is the unit of Currency of the United States; it has also been [1]

Contents

Overview

Traditional (or "brick and mortar", B&M, live) venues for playing poker, such as casinos and poker rooms, may be intimidating for novice players and are often located in geographically disparate locations. Brick and mortar (B&M refers to a company which possesses a building for operations A casino is in the modern sense of the word a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of Gambling activities Also, brick and mortar casinos are reluctant to promote poker because it is difficult for them to profit from it. Though the rake, or time charge, of traditional casinos is often high, the opportunity costs of running a poker room are even higher. Rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a Cardroom operating a Poker game Opportunity cost or economic opportunity loss is the value of a product forgone to produce or obtain Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines. A slot machine ( American) fruit machine ( British) or poker machine ( Australian) is a Casino gambling machine with three

Online venues, by contrast, are dramatically cheaper because they have much smaller overhead costs. For example, adding another table does not take up valuable space like it would for a brick and mortar casino. Online poker rooms also allow the players to play for low stakes (as low as 2¢)[2] and often offer poker freeroll tournaments (where there is no entry fee), attracting beginners. In Poker, a freeroll has two distinct meanings One applies to the play of a single hand and the other describes an entire Poker tournament.

Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud, especially collusion between players. In the broadest sense a fraud is a Deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual Collusion is an agreement usually secretive which occurs between two or more persons to deceive mislead or defraud others of their legal rights or to obtain an objective forbidden However, they have collusion detection abilities that do not exist in brick and mortar casinos. For example, 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 their holding. A hand history is a record of the action in an Online poker hand Online poker rooms also check players' IP addresses in order to prevent players at the same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables. An Internet Protocol ( IP) address is a numerical identification ( Logical address) that is assigned to devices participating in a Computer network An open proxy is a Proxy server which is accessible by any Internet user

Free poker online was played as early as the late 1990s in the form of IRC poker. IRC poker was a form of poker played over the IRC chat network before the surge in popularity of Online poker in the early 2000's Shortly thereafter Planet Poker was the first online cardroom to offer real money games. Author Mike Caro was one of the founders and the "face" of Planet Poker. Mike Caro (born May 16, 1944 in Joplin MO is a professional Poker player pioneer poker theorist and author of poker books

The major online poker sites offer varying features to entice new players. One 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. PokerStars is the largest online poker cardroom in the world PokerStars' satellite tournaments produced the 2003 World Series of Poker champion Christopher Bryan Moneymaker (born November 21, 1975 in Atlanta Georgia) is an American Poker player who won the main event World Series of Poker (WSOP is the largest set of Poker tournaments in the world He went on to win the main event causing shock in the poker world. 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 "Fossilman" Raymer also won his entry at the PokerStars online cardroom. Gregory Raymer (born June 25, 1964 in Minot, North Dakota) is a professional Poker player PokerStars is the largest online poker cardroom in the world PokerStars' satellite tournaments produced the 2003 World Series of Poker champion

In October 2004, Sportingbet Plc, at the time the world's largest publicly traded online gaming company (SBT. Sportingbet PLC is a British e-gaming operator traded on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM (symbol SBT L), announced the acquisition of ParadisePoker.com, one of the online poker industry's first and largest cardrooms. Sportingbet PLC is a British e-gaming operator traded on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM (symbol SBT The $340 million dollar acquisition marked the first time an online cardroom was owned by a public company. Since then, several other cardroom parent companies have gone public.

In June 2005, PartyGaming, the parent company of the then largest online cardroom, PartyPoker, went public on the London Stock Exchange, achieving an initial public offering market value in excess of $8 billion dollars. PartyGaming Plc ( is an Online gambling company best known for its Online poker room PartyPoker The London Stock Exchange or LSE is a Stock exchange located in London, England. Initial public offering (IPO, also referred to simply as a "public offering" is when a company issues Common stock or shares to the public for the first At the time of the IPO, ninety-two percent of Party Gaming's income came from poker operations.

The market appears to be currently in a consolidation phase. In early 2006, PartyGaming moved to acquire EmpirePoker. com from Empire Online. Empire Online is an investment company established by Arnon Katz and Noam Lanir which is traded on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol EOL Later in the year, bwin, an Austrian based online gambling company, acquired PokerRoom. bwin Interactive Entertainment AG ( formerly Betandwincom (until 2006 is an Austrian based Online gaming company com. Other poker rooms such as PokerStars and Poker. PokerStars is the largest online poker cardroom in the world PokerStars' satellite tournaments produced the 2003 World Series of Poker champion com that were rumored to be exploring initial public offerings[3] have postponed them.

As of March 2008, there are fewer than forty stand-alone cardrooms and poker networks with detectable levels of traffic. There are more than 600 independant doorways into the group of network sites. [4]

Legality

From a legal perspective, online poker may differ in some ways from online casino gambling. However, many of the same issues do apply. For a discussion of the legality of online gambling in general, see online gambling. Online gambling is a general term for Gambling using the Internet

Online poker is legal and regulated in many countries including several nations in and around the Caribbean Sea, and most notably the United Kingdom. For the region see Caribbean. The Caribbean Sea (kəˈrɪbiən or /ˌkærɨˈbiːən/ is a tropical Sea in the Western Hemisphere The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located

In the United States, the North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill in February 2005 to legalize and regulate online poker and online poker cardroom operators in the state. North Dakota ( is a state located in the Midwestern and Western regions of the United States of America. The legislation required that online poker operations would have to physically locate their entire operations in the state. Testifying before the state Senate Judiciary committee, Nigel Payne, CEO of Sportingbet and owner of Paradise Poker, pledged to relocate to the state if the bill became law. [5]

The measure, however, was defeated by the State Senate in March 2005 after the U. S. Department of Justice sent a letter to North Dakota attorney general Wayne Stenehjem stating that online gaming "may" be illegal, and that the pending legislation "might" violate the federal Wire Act. Wayne Stenehjem (b February 5 1953, Mohall North Dakota) is a lawyer and politician from the U The Interstate Wire Act of 1961 often called the Federal Wire Act, is a United States federal law prohibiting the operation of certain types of betting businesses However, many legal experts dispute the DOJ's claim. Online gambling is a general term for Gambling using the Internet

North Dakota Rep. Jim Kasper (R-Fargo), the author of the legalization bill, has vowed to continue his efforts. He states that he is "not putting away the idea of getting into Internet gaming licenses in North Dakota" and that the "revenue we missed is too great to pass up. " Kasper has also stated that he will introduce the legislation in the 2007 session of the North Dakota legislature.

In response to this and other claims by the DOJ regarding the legality of online poker, many of the major online poker sites stopped advertising their "dot-com" sites in American media. Instead, they created "dot-net" sites that are virtually identical but offer no real money wagering. The sites advertise as poker schools or ways to learn the game for free, and feature words to the effect of "this is not a gambling website. " Televised ads still feature the dot-net conceit but print ads have been trending back toward advertising the dot-coms directly.

In July 2006, United States federal agents, citing the Wire Act, arrested BetOnSports CEO David Carruthers in Dallas, Texas while he was changing planes. BetonSports plc is a British Online gambling company founded by Gary Kaplan in 1995 A chief executive officer ( CEO) or chief executive is typically the highest-ranking corporate officer ( executive) or administrator David Carruthers (born September 1957 in Edinburgh, Scotland) was the CEO and a board member of Online gambling company BETonSPORTS He was traveling between Costa Rica and the United Kingdom; in both jurisdictions online gaming and poker are legal and regulated. Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( Spanish: Costa Rica or República de Costa Rica,) is a Country in The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located [6]

Later in the year a similar event happened in France, where Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner, the CEO's of bwin,[7] were giving a press conference. bwin Interactive Entertainment AG ( formerly Betandwincom (until 2006 is an Austrian based Online gaming company The arrest was made due to offenses against the French gambling laws.

Since many banks and credit card companies will not allow direct money transfers to online poker sites, electronic money transfer businesses provide online “e-wallets” that players can load from a bank account, then transfer the funds directly to the poker site. Electronic money (also known as e-money, electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency The advantage of these services is that it makes it easy for people to transfer money between different poker sites without the money going back to their bank accounts. Prepaid debit cards and virtual credit cards (cards issued for online use, as a card number, expiration date and CVC code) have also emerged as a method of payment for poker sites. These function much in the same way as an "e-wallet" since money deposited into the card account is not connected to the user's bank account.

On October 13, 2006, President Bush officially signed into law the Safe Port Act, a bill aimed at enhancing security at U. Events 54 - Nero ascends to the Roman throne 409 - Vandals and Alans crossed the Pyrenees George Walker Bush ( born July 6 1946 is the forty-third and current President of the United States. The Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006 (or SAFE Port Act,) was an Act of Congress in the United States covering Port security For other uses see Bill. A bill is a proposed new law introduced within a Legislature that has not been ratified, adopted S. ports. [8] Attached to the Safe Port Act was a provision known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). According to the UIGEA, "unlawful internet gambling" means to place, receive, or otherwise knowingly transmit a bet or wager by means of the internet where such bet is unlawful under any law in the State in which the bet is initiated, received, or otherwise made. Thus, the UIGEA prohibits online gambling sites from performing transactions with American financial institutions. As a result of the bill, several large publicly traded poker gaming sites such as PartyPoker. com, PacificPoker.com and bwin closed down their US facing operations. 888 Holdings plc ( is a company which operates several high-profile Gambling websites Some operations have not closed and it is still possible for some American players to play online for real money and even sign up for new accounts. The UIGEA has had a devastating effect on the stock value of these companies. [9]

Following passage of UIGEA, former U. S. Senator Al D'Amato joined the Poker Players Alliance (PPA). Alfonse Marcello D'Amato (born August 1 1937 is a former New York Politician. The Poker Players Alliance (PPA is an American Nonprofit Interest group formed to "to speak with one voice to promote Poker, and to Part of the PPA's mission is to protect and to advocate for the right of poker players to play online. Sen. D'Amato's responsibilities include Congressional lobbying. The PPA has over 900,000 members as of March 2008. [10]

On April 26, 2007, Rep. Events 1467 - The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appear in Genazzano, Italy. Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced HR 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (IGREA). Barnett "Barney" Frank (born March 31, 1940) is an American Politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives IGREA would modify the UIGEA by providing a provision for licensing of Internet gambling facilities by the Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. On June 8, 2007, the House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Rep. The United States House Committee on Financial Services (or House Banking Committee) oversees the entire financial services industry including the securities insurance banking Frank, held a hearing entitled, "Can Internet Gambling Be Effectively Regulated to Protect Consumers and the Payments System?". Details of the meeting, including the archived webcast, are available on the House Financial Services Committee website. [11] Expert witnesses at the hearing testified that Internet gambling can be effectively regulated for age verification, money laundering issues, facilitation of state and federal tax collection, and for issues relating to compulsive gambling. As of March 2008, IGREA has 47 cosponsors. [12]

On May 3, 2007 Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) introduced HR 2140, the Internet Gambling Study Act. Rochelle "Shelley" Berkley (born Rochelle Levine January 20, 1951) is an American politician and has been a Democratic This bill "provide(s) for a study by the National Academy of Sciences to identify the proper response of the United States to the growth of Internet gambling. "[13] As of December 2007, IGSA has 68 cosponsors.

On June 7, 2007, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) introduced HR 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act. Robert Wexler (born January 2, 1961) is an American politician from the U This act would legalize Internet poker, bridge, chess, and other games of skill. Also on June 7, 2007, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced H. For the illustrator see Jim McDermott (illustrator. James Adelbert "Jim" McDermott (born December 28 1936 R. 2607, the Internet Gambling Tax Act. The IGTA would legislate Internet gambling tax collection requirements.

How online poker rooms profit

Typically, online poker rooms generate the bulk of their revenue via four methods. First, there is the rake. Rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a Cardroom operating a Poker game Rake is collected from most real money ring game pots. Ring games, also called cash games or live action games, are Poker games played with "real" chips and money at stake usually with The rake is normally calculated as a percentage of the pot based on a sliding scale and capped at some maximum fee. Each online poker room determines its own rake structure.

Second, pre-scheduled multi-table and impromptu sit-and-go tournaments are not raked, but rather an entry fee around ten percent of the tournament entry fee is added to the cost of the tournament. A poker tournament is a Tournament in which the winners are decided by playing Poker, usually a particular style of poker

Third, some online poker sites also offer games like black jack or side bets on poker hands where the player plays against "the house" for real money. The odds are in the house's favor in these games, thus producing a profit for the house.

Fourth, like almost all institutions that hold money, online poker sites invest the money that players deposit. Since the sites do not have to pay interest on players' bankrolls, this method can be a significant source of revenue.

The first three methods are also the primary methods brick and mortar casinos use to derive profits from operating poker tables. A casino is in the modern sense of the word a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of Gambling activities

Integrity and fairness

As with other forms of online gambling, many critics question whether the operators of such games—especially those located in jurisdictions separate from most of their players—might be engaging in fraud themselves.

Internet discussion forums are rife with allegations of non-random card dealing, possibly to favour house-employed players or "bots" (poker-playing software disguised as a human opponent), or to give multiple players good hands thus increasing the bets and the rake, or simply to prevent new players from losing so quickly that they become discouraged. A bot, most prominently in the First person shooter PC game types (FPS is a robotic computer controlled entity that simulates an Online or LAN However, there is little more than anecdotal evidence to support such claims, and others argue that the rake is sufficiently large that such abuses would be unnecessary and foolish. The expression anecdotal evidence has two quite distinct meanings Many claim to see lots of "bad beats" with large hands pitted against others all too often at a rate that seems to be a lot more common than in live games. This might actually be caused by the fact that online cardrooms deal more hands per hour. Since online players get to see more hands, their likelihood of seeing more improbable bad beats or randomly large pots is also increased.

Many online poker sites are certified by bodies such as the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and other major auditing firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers to review the fairness of the random number generator[14] shuffle,[15] and payouts for some sites. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is an organisation that licenses a large number of Online casinos and Online poker rooms PricewaterhouseCoopers (or PwC is one of the world's largest Professional services firms A random number generator (often abbreviated as RNG is a computational or physical device designed to generate a sequence of Numbers or symbols that lack any Shuffling is a procedure used to randomize a deck of Playing cards to provide an element of chance in Card games Shuffling is often followed by a

A confirmed incident of cheating by a person or persons involved in running a major online poker room came to light in October 2007, when Absolute Poker acknowledged that its integrity had been breached by an employee with trusted access to the system, who had then been able to play at high stakes whilst viewing his opponents' hidden "hole" cards. Tokwiro Enterprises is a private company that owns two Online poker cardrooms Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. [16]

Also in 2007, PokerStars disqualified TheV0id, the winner of the main event of the World Championship of Online Poker for abuse of multiple accounts. PokerStars is the largest online poker cardroom in the world PokerStars' satellite tournaments produced the 2003 World Series of Poker champion Mark Teltscher is an English Poker player based in London, England. The World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP is an Online poker tournament series sponsored by PokerStars. [17]

Differences compared to conventional poker

There are substantial differences between online poker gaming and conventional, in-person gaming.

One obvious difference is that players do not sit right across from each other, removing any ability to observe others' reactions and body language. Body language is a term for Communication using Body movements or Gestures instead of or in addition to sounds verbal language or other communication Instead, online poker players learn to focus more keenly on betting patterns, reaction time, speed of play, use of check boxes/auto plays, opponents' fold/flop percentages, chat box, waiting for the big blind, beginners' tells, and other behavior tells that are not physical in nature. A tell in Poker is a subtle but detectable change in a player's behavior or demeanor that gives clues to that player's assessment of his hand Since poker is a game that requires adaptability, successful online players learn to master the new frontiers of their surroundings.

Another less obvious difference is the rate of play. In brick and mortar casinos the dealer has to collect the cards, shuffle, and deal them after every hand. Due to this and other delays common in offline casinos, the average rate of play is around thirty hands per hour. However, online casinos do not have these delays. The dealing and shuffling are instant, there are no delays relating to counting chips (for a split pot), and on average the play is faster due to "auto-action" buttons (where the player selects his action before his turn). It is not uncommon for an online poker table to average ninety to one hundred hands per hour.

This large difference in rate of play has created another effect among online poker players. In the brick and mortar casino, the only real way to increase your earnings is to increase your limit. In the online world players have another option, play more tables. Unlike a physical casino where it would be impossible to play multiple tables at once, most online poker rooms allow this. Depending on the site, a player might play from four to ten tables at the same time, viewing them each in a separate window on the computer display. For example, a winning player may make around $10 per 100 hands at a low-limit game. In a casino, this would earn them under $4 an hour. After dealer tips, the winning player would probably barely break even. In an online poker room, the same player with the same win rate could play four tables at once, which at 60 hands per hour each would result in an earning of $24/hour. Some online players even play eight or more tables at once, in an effort to increase their winnings.

Another important difference results from the fact that some online poker rooms offer online poker schools that teach the basics and significantly speed up the learning curve for novices. Many online poker rooms also provide free money play so that players may practice these skills in various poker games and limits without the risk of losing real money, and generally offer the hand history of played hands for analysis and discussion using a poker hand converter. Poker tools are a variety of Software or web-based applications that allow the statistical analysis of Poker players games or tournaments. People who previously had no way to learn and improve because they had no one to play with now have the ability to learn the game much quicker and gain experience from free-money play.

Finally, the limits associated with online poker are much less than the table limits at a traditional casino. On gambling sites, players can find limits as low as $. 01/$. 02. However, at most brick and mortar establishments the lowest limits are often $1/$2.

Bonuses

Many online poker sites offer incentives to players in the form of bonuses. [18][19] Usually the bonuses are given after a certain number of raked hands are played. Rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a Cardroom operating a Poker game For example, a site may offer a player who deposits $100 a bonus of $50 once he plays 500 raked hands. A poker player who can at least break even can become a long-term winner by playing with poker bonuses. A winning poker player can add to their winnings with the use of bonuses. [20]

In addition, several online cardrooms employ VIP Managers to develop VIP programs to reward regular players and additional bonuses exist for players who wish to top-up their accounts. These are known as reload bonuses.

See the online casino article for more on general information on bonuses. Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or internet casinos, are online versions of traditional (" Brick and mortar " Casinos

Compatibility

Online poker rooms typically operate through a separate piece of software. This may be cross-platform, for example using a Java Applet, allowing the program to run equally well on various computer systems such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS. A Java applet is an Applet delivered in the form of Java bytecode. Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks Mac OS is the trademarked name for a series of Graphical user interface -based Operating systems developed by Apple Inc However, many online poker rooms offer downloadable programs designed only for Microsoft Windows which require a compatibility layer such as Wine to run on Macintosh or Linux computers. Wine is a free Software application which aims to allow Unix-like computer Operating systems on the X86 architecture to execute Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks Some sites do make available clients that run natively on Mac or Linux.

Some mobile content providers have started offering poker on portable devices (mobile phones, PDAs). The functionality of mobile online poker software is much the same as computer-based clients, albeit adapted to the interface of mobile devices. The player must be able to receive a cell phone signal in order to play.

Online poker portals and forums

Online poker portals are websites offering poker-related content. Examples of such content could be news, tournament results, strategy articles, poker software, or reviews of online poker cardrooms. Some portals have a considerable amount of content, while others attempt to act as mere conduits to other sites, where actual gambling games are offered. Poker forums exist that discuss poker strategy, cardroom information, gambling news, and other topics.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Digital Journal
  2. ^ PokerStars.com: Poker room betting limits
  3. ^ Pokerstars reveals hand with plans for £1bn float The Times
  4. ^ Pokerscout.com: Online poker industry overview
  5. ^ Bismarck Tribune
  6. ^ CBS News: 11 Charged In Web Gambling Crackdown
  7. ^ Online gambling bosses arrested in France (Guardian article)
  8. ^ Forbes: Bush Signs Safe Port Act
  9. ^ WhichPoker: UIGEA Safe Port Act Legislation effect on Online Poker Rooms
  10. ^ Poker Players Alliance
  11. ^ Can Internet Gambling Be Effectively Regulated to Protect Consumers and the Payments System?
  12. ^ The Library of Congress: H.R.2046
  13. ^ H.R. 2140
  14. ^ Random number generator analysis,
  15. ^ Shuffling review
  16. ^ MSNBC: Online poker cheating blamed on employee
  17. ^ Card Player Magazine
  18. ^ PartyPoker.com Bonus Code Disclaimer
  19. ^ Pokerstars.com Poker Deposit Bonuses from PokerStars
  20. ^ TightPoker.com: Poker Bonus Hunting - A Step by Step Guide

External links

Methods are being developed to at least approximate perfect poker strategy from the Game theory perspective in the heads-up (two player game and increasingly good systems are being created The Times is a daily national Newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.
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