What is online poker and where can I play?
As the name suggests, online poker is poker that is played over the internet. The advent of online poker has caused a major explosion in the number of poker players all over the world. Online poker first came into being in the late 1990s, although it is only in the last decade that it has skyrocketed in both popularity and accessibility. Online poker is actually illegal in the United States, but legal in many other countries and the great majority of such sites are governed by various organisations such as the Kahnawake Gaming Commission in Canada.
There are considerable differences between online poker and the game as played in the real world. Perhaps the most significant difference is the loss of human interaction, which removes the player’s individual ability to read another player’s body language – often a major factor in determining the credibility of another’s players bet. Online poker games usually go significantly quicker than their real life alternative as well, due to the lack of having a real deck of cards to shuffle and deal, etc. Online poker can be considerably cheaper to play than the real thing as well, making it much more accessible to the average person who has to have nothing more than a computer with an internet connection and however much money he or she wishes to bet within the game, with no other upfront fees. Some online poker rooms even offer new players special rooms where they can learn how to play poker, even providing ‘free money’, so that they can pick up the game and make mistakes without it actually costing them anything. New players can learn and improve their game playing tactics before putting down any real money in a game.