History of Poker Online

Online Poker Advantages

With twice as many hands being dealt per hour online than in a bricks & mortar cardroom, the speed of play is a huge advantage to online poker; the opportunity to see more cards per session provides a greater chance to profit. Another similar advantage is your ability to be playing mutiple games of poker online; by playing a few tables at a time and seeing twice as many cards per hour as offline poker, it's fair to say an online poker player could see 8 times as many cards as an offline player. It took the now seasoned pro poker players like Doyle Brunson 40 years to learn the game, the learning curve is significantly quicker nowadays, it might only take a few years to see as many cards as the veterans saw in a decade.

The old time players had to travel for miles to find a worthy game of Texas Holdem, nowadays the right game is just a double click away; it only takes a few minutes to find a game that's suitable for your skill level and bankroll. Waiting times are greatly reduced because of the abundance of games to choose from; if you can't find a game to sit straight into, it only takes a matter of minutes to sign up to join 10 or 20 tables and usually a few minutes more before the invites come flooding back.

Travel costs are a thing of the past, it costs nothing to fire up your PC and load the cardroom of your choice. An offline player might have to travel for miles, incurring petrol, parking, eating and drinking expenses in the process; all this before a penny has been wagered. An offline player is literally committing themselves to playing poker, they would'nt make such efforts only to change their mind as they step into the cardroom; an online player has much greater control over their time, they can choose to play as little or as much as they like. An offline player might have to drive for miles to find another game if the waiting list is too long at the cardroom he frequents, an online poker player simply logs out of one site and onto another in the time it takes to click a mouse.

The poker room rake is much lower online than in bricks & mortar cardrooms making it easier to profit from your hard work, you don't have to tip the dealer everytime you win a pot, infact you don't even have to thank cyber dealers despite the fact they will never misdeal to you nor miscalculate the rake.

You don't have to dress up in order to play online, whereas you may have to adhere to a stringent dress code at your local casino poker room. Add to that, there are no time limits imposed on you online, no matter what the time is, there will always be a well populated game just round the corner at all hours of the day. You have much greater control over your environment when playing online too; it does'nt matter if the player seated next to you has'nt bathed in days, whether they smoke or simply look funny, your environment does not change. On the flip side, you are free to wear what you like, smell how you like and literally do what you like in the comfort of your own home.

A beginner may be conscious of giving away tells or making mecanical mistakes such as acting out of turn in an offline poker game, the online game treats novice players much more fairly. Physical tells are'nt even a consideration when playing online and the poker software minimises the chance of you ever making a mistake by dealing with most processes, such as posting the blinds, on your behalf.

With technology on your side, online poker can be enjoyed via mobile phones and PDA's, your online poker options are likely to grow as further technological advancements are made.

Online Poker Integrity

Some players argue that it is impossible to prove the integrity of online poker and that offline poker is a safer option. The reality of the situation is that while cheating occurs in both formats, it's much harder to cheat in an online environment than offline; there are many reasons why this is the case.

The data that travels between the poker servers and our PC's uses a high level of encryption, typically between 128-bit and 1024-bit encryption which is virtually impossible to crack within any reasonable timeframe.

Online, the cards are shuffled and dealt using cryptographic algorithms, random number generators, entropy pool technology and secure socket layer technology to ensure that the cards are shuffled in a totally random and unpredictable way.

Another factor worthy of consideration is that the online cardrooms use sophisticated methods of collusion detection on their site, making collusion easier to detect as they can see everybodies folded hands, their hand history, their IP addresses aswell as a number of other techniques that make spotting patterns in peoples play considerably easier and much more accurate. Bricks & mortar cardrooms just don't have the same capability in ensuring the integrity of their games.