Online Poker Gambling Canada

by Jerry "Jet" Whittaker
Aug 30, 2006


Online poker gambling in short:

Generally online gambling is a term used for gambling using the Internet. The online poker rooms commonly offer a variety of games such as the Texas hold’ em, the seven-card stud and Omaha both in the tournament and ring structures. The players play against each other rather than against the house. The card room makes the money through the rake and the tournament fees. One advantage of the online poker due to the much smaller overhead costs as compared to the traditional poker rooms and casinos. They are also viewed as more player friendly. Also the online poker rooms allow the players to play for very low stakes, as low as 1cents. Very often these also offer free rolls where there is no entry fee. Thus they act as the center point of attraction especially for the beginners.

Present scenario of online poker in Canada:

At present times Canada has one of the largest concentrations of publicly traded Internet betting companies in the world. Many companies like the Crypto Logic, a Toronto firm that has become the largest supplier of casino games and electronic commerce software to online casinos, dominate the industry among the others.  Although the majority of them conduct their transactions through computer servers based elsewhere, at tax havens in the Caribbean and Central America, for fear of prosecution in North America. According to the Canadian law, only the provinces and some charities can run gambling operations, although none of them are currently online. However the Canadian government allows the provinces could run their own computer-based betting if they wanted to, but neither they nor the federal government can authorize anyone else to do so. Also the Supreme Court of Canada has denied the right to run large-scale gambling operations on native soil without government approval. It may be illegal in Canada to place a bet or offer betting to Canadians even if Internet gambling operations are run offshore.

Integrity of online poker:

Even though the major online poker sites offer varying features to entice new players these venues may also be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud especially collusion between players. For these reasons most of the online poker rooms are provided with collusion detection abilities which is a rare feature in brick and mortar casinos. This facility enables the online poker room security employees to look at the hand history of the cards previously played by any player on the site. This makes the 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. Sometimes they also check player's IP addresses in order to prevent players at the same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables.  
 

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