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Online poker has been around long enough to almost acheive status as a mature internet industry. The only thing really stopping it is the US government and it's attempts to block funding of online gambling sites. Of course that's as much a futile exercise as it is for the French to try to block English phrases from entering the French language. But, just as the French are determined to try, so is the US Congress.
Recently they've had success. The government isn't actively going after poker sites, they are going after online sports books. There is fallout from that though. The funding methods for bettors is the same for online sports betting sites as it is for online poker sites. So the US governments attempts to disrupt the ability to fund online sports betting accounts also has disrupted the ability to fund online poker accounts. There is some risk to playing online. There is of course the risk of cheats being in your game, and there's a risk of a cardroom going broke and taking your deposits with it. I'll talk more about the issue of online cheats in another essay, and for now I'll just say that the risk of a cardroom going broke is small and managable. Some have gone broke, and some players have lost in the five figures, but the industry has gotten mature enough so that the player risks are visible and controllable. Some of the established online cardrooms have made some serious marketing mistakes. It's caused some to go broke and some to lose significant market share. Some rooms just don't have a strong core of regular players and aren't able to maintain 24 hour games. I'm not saying you shouldn't play on such sites, sometimes they offer good promotions and sometimes the games are very good on the smaller sites. But, I am suggesting you shouldn't keep large deposits on such sites. Playing online can be fun and it can be profitable. I play online. I recommend it. I'm just saying you should be careful. GamesThe online cardrooms offer a wide variaty of games. Limit, pot limit, no limit, draw, hold 'em, pinapple, triple draw loball, seven card stud, hi/lo split games, Omaha, and others can be found and new ones are being added. There is one site with demands special notice. WPEX is a loss leader offered by the sports book, WSEX. The WPEX site was originally a typical poker site, raked like all of the other sites. But WSEX decided to offer rake free poker. Every monday they refund all rake collected the prior week. It's the only rake free site on the internet. Since they don't advertise it, there isn't a huge crowd and sometimes there aren't many games available. But no rake is hard to pass up.
PromotionsThe online cardrooms offer a wide variety of promotional enducements. They offer cash signup bonuses, Bonuses on initial deposits, on re-deposits. They have cash prizes for high hand of the hour, or for bad beats. They offer free entry tournaments with cash prizes. Some of the promotional awards are in playable cash. Some are in promo bucks that require you to play a certain number of raked hands in cash games.
Account funding and payoutsAs I write this (March 2007) funding and payout mechanisms are undergoing a major transition. It's not as simple and straightforward as it once was. There really isn't a solid industry wide standard for US players at the moment.
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