About Poker - How Did It Become So Popular

So, hundreds of online poker rooms can be found across the internet today, just when did they come about? Well in the latter part of 1998, the first online poker room, Planet Poker was born. Surprisingly, although Planet Poker was the first, it is considered today to be a pretty small online poker room.

Rake schedules at internet poker sites have stayed pretty much standard across the board since the introduction of online poker. Planet Poker set their rake at 5% up to a $3 maximum rake per hand dealt, and you can still find this rake schedule in use at most major internet poker rooms, with a few variations here and there.

As poker began growing seriously in popularity, both online and offline, we began to see more internet poker sites enter the industry, such as Paradise Poker, which was established in the earlier part of 1999.

Internet poker has grown from its humble beginnings to a $3.3 billion a year industry. Despite efforts to curtail the growth from the U.S., the industry is still prospering. New gaming features have brought casino style poker right into your living room and new software has made it a safe, reliable and an exciting place to play poker.

No one is certain why poker in general exploded as it did, but today, poker players are able to find a game of internet poker any time, day or night, just by logging on. The poker rooms today have some of the best software available, including the small poker sites.

Playing Poker Online

If you are just getting started, and in search of an internet poker room, InternetPoker.com provides several reviews of online poker rooms for you to choose from.

The following internet poker rooms are preferred by Internet Poker UK:

1 www.bodog.com
3 www.Poker.com
4 www.Ladbrokes Poker
5 www.williamhill.com
6 www.fulltilt.com
7 www.betfred.com
8 www.bet365.com

Once you have read the reviews and are ready to choose an Internet Poker Rooms, you will need to download and install the internet poker rooms software, this usually just takes a minute or two on a cable or DSL connection, if you are still using good old dial up, expect to wait at least a half hour or so before playing that first hand of internet poker.

Once the software is open, you will have several options available to you. The first option is to play with "play" money or to deposit and play real money. It's not a bad idea to check out a few play money games to get yourself acquainted with the particular poker sites software and features.

Many online poker sites also offer play money tournaments, as well as freerolls which you will find at almost any internet poker site. In play money tournaments, players win more funny money, quite the same as the play money ring tables, the freerolls tend to fill up very quickly and the frequency of freerolls varies depending on the poker site, however, freeroll winners win real money.

Should you run out of play money before you are ready to deposit, not to worry, free money can usually be replaced by a quick visit to the cashier, after a specified waiting period.

Once you have gotten a general feel for your new internet poker site, and are ready to make your first deposit you will need to make a visit to the cashier to fund your player account with real money. The funding options at most internet poker websites are generally very similar, with the most popular methods being; are NETeller, FirePay and Click2Pay.

You can also opt to fund your internet poker account using your Visa or MasterCard, as well as other credit cards offered by your poker room of choice, however do keep in mind when using this option that these companies often decline transactions from internet gambling venues regardless of your available funds.

Another thing to take note of when using credit cards to fund your account is that many poker sites are not able to deposit your winnings back to your card; therefore you will have to choose another funding option for withdrawals.

The most preferred option by most internet poker players are the afore mentioned e-wallet programs such as NETeller, these programs act as a go between from your bank to the internet poker site, protecting your financial information with the utmost care and technologically advanced methods of internet security.

Once you have decided on a financial services company and have registered an account with them, the next step is to transfer money from your bank to the preferred e-wallet. This process can be instant or take 24 - 48 hours depending on the type of transfer you chose. From there using special account numbers and passwords, you transfer money to and from the internet poker sites using these financial services companies. Transferring money back into your bank is also fast and reliable and usually the process take about 24 48 hours.

Once you have successfully funded your real player account you will be able to choose from a variety of game options in the internet poker rooms lobby, including several versions of poker, such as Texas Holdem, 7 Card Stud,Omaha, pineapple, 5 card draw and most recently, Blackjack this is just a short sampling of the internet poker games you will be able to play online, there are in fact many more.

In addition to game versions, you have the option of playing limit, no limit, and pot limit versions of your game of choice. Once the game has been chosen, you will need to decide which stakes you would like to play at, games stakes can range from a penny, to upwards of $200, and become even higher when playing poker tournaments.

Getting used to a new poker rooms software can be a little bit daunting, however once you have a few hands under your belt, you should be playing cards like an internet pro in no time!

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