Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet online. It has been responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide. The venues for playing pokers are such as casinos and poker rooms. The Brick and mortar casinos are also reluctant to promote poker because it is very difficult for them to profit from it. Though the rake, or time charge, of traditional casinos is often very 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. The Online venues are 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 tend to be viewed as more player-friendly. Integrity and fairness:As with the 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 is the forums which are rife with unproven allegations of non-random card dealing, possibly to favor 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 card rooms deal more hands per hour: online players get to see more hands, so their likelihood of seeing more improbable bad beats or randomly large pots is also increased.