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Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. 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.[1] For the domestic fireplace tool, see fireplace poker. ...
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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. 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. Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines. Brick and Mortar refer to companies that have a physical presence and offer face-to-face consumer experiences, as apposed to an internet only presence. ...
This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...
Opportunity cost is a central concept of microeconomics. ...
Slot machines in the Trump Taj Mahal A slot machine (American English), fruit machine (British English), or poker machine (Australian English) is a certain type of casino game. ...
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 1¢) and often offer poker freerolls (where there is no entry fee), attracting beginners. In poker, a freeroll has two distinct meanings. ...
Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud, especially collusion between players. 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. 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. Look up collusion in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
A hand history is a record of the action in an online poker hand. ...
An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that certain electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP)—in simpler terms, a computer address. ...
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. 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. IRC poker was a form of poker played over the IRC chat network before the surge in popularity of online poker in the early 2000s. ...
Mike Mad Genius Caro (born May 16, 1944) 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. He went on to win the main event causing shock in the poker world. The 2004 World Series featured three times as many players than 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. Screenshot of the Pokerstars GUI at a real-money table game. ...
Christopher Bryan Moneymaker (born November 21, 1975 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American poker player who won the main event at the 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP). ...
The WSOP logo The World Series of Poker is the most prestigious set of poker tournaments in the world. ...
Gregory Raymer (born on June 25, 1964) [1] is a professional poker player. ...
Screenshot of the Pokerstars GUI at a real-money table game. ...
In October 2004, Sportingbet Plc, at the time the world's largest publicly traded online gaming company (SBT.L), announced the acquisition of ParadisePoker.com, one of the online poker industry's first and largest cardrooms. 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. Sportingbet PLC is one of the worlds largest egaming operators. ...
Sportingbet PLC is one of the worlds largest egaming operators. ...
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. At the time of the IPO, ninety-two percent of Party Gaming's income came from poker operations. PartyGaming Plc (LSE: PRTY) is an online gambling company, best known for its online poker room PartyPoker. ...
The Source by Greyworld, in the new LSE building Paternoster Square. ...
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The market appears to be currently in a consolidation phase. In early 2006, PartyGaming moved to acquire EmpirePoker.com from Empire Online. Later in the year, bwin, an Austrian based online gambling company, acquired PokerRoom.com. Other poker rooms such as PokerStars and Poker.com that were rumored to be exploring initial public offerings[2] have postponed them. Empire Online is an online marketing company traded on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol EOL. The company promotes multiple online casino, poker, and bingo properties. ...
bwin Interactive Entertainment AG (WBAG: BWIN), formerly Betandwin. ...
Screenshot of the Pokerstars GUI at a real-money table game. ...
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. Map of Central America and the Caribbean The Caribbean Sea (pronounced or ) is a tropical sea in the Western Hemisphere, part of the Atlantic Ocean, southeast of the Gulf of Mexico. ...
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. 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.[3] Official language(s) English Capital Bismarck Largest city Fargo Area Ranked 19th - Total 70,762 sq mi (183,272 km²) - Width 210 miles (340 km) - Length 340 miles (545 km) - % water 2. ...
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. However, many legal experts dispute the DOJ's claim. Wayne Stenehjem is a lawyer and politician from the U.S. state of North Dakota. ...
The Interstate Wire Act of 1961, often called the Federal Wire Act, is a law prohibiting the operation of certain types of betting businesses in the United States. ...
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. He was traveling between Costa Rica and the United Kingdom; in both jurisdictions online gaming and poker are legal and regulated.[4] The BetonSports website logo BetonSports plc is a British online gambling company. ...
“Chief executive†redirects here. ...
David Carruthers (born September, 1957 in Edinburgh, Scotland) was the CEO and a board member of BETonSPORTS Plc, an internet gambling company from July 2000 until July 24th, 2006, and is an advocate of online gambling regulation. ...
Dallas redirects here. ...
Later in the year a similar event happened in France, where Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner, the CEO's of bwin, [5] were giving a press conference. The arrest was made due to offenses against the French gambling laws. bwin Interactive Entertainment AG (WBAG: BWIN), formerly Betandwin. ...
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. 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. Electronic money (also known as electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) refers to money or scrip which is exchanged only electronically. ...
On October 13, 2006, President Bush officially signed into law the Safe Port Act, a bill aimed at enhancing security at U.S. ports.[6] 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. 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.[7] is the 286th day of the year (287th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the forty-third and current President of the United States of America, originally inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ...
The Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006 (or SAFE Port Act, Pub. ...
A bill is a proposed new law introduced within a legislature that has not been ratified, adopted, or received assent. ...
Cassava Enterprises Logo Cassava Enterprises (Gibraltar) Ltd. ...
Following passage of UIGEA, former U.S. Senator Al D'Amato joined the Poker Players Alliance (PPA). 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 650,000 members as of August 2007.[8] Alfonse Marcello DAmato (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, ensure its integrity, and, most importantly, to protect the players rights. ...
On April 26, 2007, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced HR 2046, the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (IGREA). 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. 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 [9]. 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 August 2007, IGREA has 35 cosponsors. [10] is the 116th day of the year (117th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Barnett Barney Frank (born March 31, 1940) is an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives. ...
Meeting of the House Financial Services Committee The United States House Committee on Financial Services (or House Banking Committee) oversees the entire financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries. ...
On May 3, 2007 Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) introduced HR 2140, the Internet Gambling Study Act. 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."[11] As of August 26, 2007, IGSA has 64 cosponsors. Portrait of Congresswoman Shelley Berkley. ...
On June 7, 2007, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) introduced HR 2610, the Skill Game Protection Act. 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.R. 2607, the Internet Gambling Tax Act. The IGTA would legislate Internet gambling tax collection requirements. Rep. ...
James Adelbert Bagdhad Jim McDermott (born December 28, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois) is the current U.S. Representative for Washingtons 7th congressional district. ...
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 collected from most real money ring game pots. 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. The rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a casino operating a poker game. ...
Ring games, also called cash games, are live poker games played with real chips and money on the line, usually with no predetermined end time. ...
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. An amateur poker tournament in progress. ...
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.
Finally, 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. [citation needed]
The first three methods are also the primary methods brick and mortar casinos use to derive profits from operating poker tables. This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...
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. 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. 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. Contrast with aimbot, a type of software that is used to cheat in multiplayer games 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 multiplayer human deathmatch opponent, team deathmatch opponent or a cooperative...
Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote, or hearsay. ...
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[12], shuffle[13], and payouts for some sites. The Kahnawake Mohawk Territory (Kahnawá:ke) is an Indian reserve on the south shore of the St. ...
A former PwC office building (Southwark Towers) in London, England. ...
A random number generator is a computational or physical device designed to generate a sequence of elements (usually numbers), such that the sequence can be used as a random one. ...
The riffle Shuffling is a procedure used to randomize a deck of playing cards to provide an element of chance in card games. ...
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.[14] Absolute Poker is one of the worlds largest online poker card rooms. ...
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. 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. Since poker is a game that requires adaptability, successful online players learn to master the new frontiers of their surroundings. For other uses, see Body language (disambiguation). ...
In poker, a tell is a detectable change in a players behavior or demeanor that gives clues to that players assessment of his hand. ...
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 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 4 to 10 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. 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. Poker tools are a variety of software or web-based applications that allow the statistical analysis of poker players, games or tournaments. ...
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 While the practice of comping players with free meals, hotel rooms, and merchandise is quite common in B&M casinos, online poker rooms have needed to develop new ways to reward faithful customers. The most common way of doing this is through deposit bonuses, where the player is given a bonus code to enter when placing money into an account. The bonus code adds either a percentage or a set amount of chips to the value of the deposit. One should be aware that these are not up-front payments. The bonus is released in a piecemeal manner in accordance with the number of raked hands played. 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.
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. However, many online poker rooms offer downloadable programmes designed only for Microsoft Windows which require a compatibility layer such as Wine to run on Macintosh or Linux computers. Some sites do make available clients that run natively on Mac or Linux. Java language redirects here. ...
A Java applet is an applet delivered in the form of Java bytecode. ...
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This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ...
This article relates to both the original Classic Mac OS as well as Mac OS X, Apples more recent operating system. ...
Wine is a project which aims to allow a PC with an x86 architecture processor running a Unix-like operating system and the X Window System to execute programs that were originally written for Microsoft Windows. ...
For other uses, see Macintosh (disambiguation) and Mac. ...
This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ...
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. Look up Personal digital assistant in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
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. [citation needed]
See also The game of poker (or at least most of the variants) is considered to be computationally unsolvable. ...
References - ^ Digital Journal
- ^ Pokerstars reveals hand with plans for £1bn float The Times
- ^ Bismarck Tribune
- ^ CBS News: 11 Charged In Web Gambling Crackdown
- ^ Online gambling bosses arrested in France (Guardian article)
- ^ Forbes: Bush Signs Safe Port Act
- ^ WhichPoker: UIGEA Safe Port Act Legislation effect on Online Poker Rooms
- ^ Poker Players Alliance News and Articles -- Weekly Actions
- ^ http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/ht060807.shtml
- ^ The Library of Congress: H.R.2046
- ^ http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h2140:
- ^ Random number generator analysis
- ^ Shuffling review
- ^ MSNBC: Online poker cheating blamed on employee
The Times is a national newspaper published daily in the United Kingdom (and the Kingdom of Great Britain before the United Kingdom existed) since 1788 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register. ...
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