The World Of Internet Poker
An Overview of The Industry For The Apprehensive First-Time
Player
Written By: John
As I am sure most of the readers know, poker
has become one of the fastest growing games in the world
over the last few years. The broadcast of tournaments such
as the WPT (World Poker Tour) and
WSOP (World Series Of
Poker) have drawn thousands upon thousands of players into
the world of poker. Along with the buzz came the need to
expand the market and the Internet proved to be the next
logical step. Currently there are thousands of gambling
websites spread across hundreds of networks from Costa Rica
to Gibraltar. This can be very intimidating and shady
looking to new players looking to learn about and possibly
play poker on the Internet. The focus of this article is to
hopefully alleviate some of those fears and let you know
exactly what to look for to ensure that you will be playing
at a reputable site. We will begin by looking at the major
concerns of licensing, financial security, fairness and
support.
Simply put, all of the poker rooms on the Internet need to
be licensed. A regulated gaming commission who grant the
site a gaming license enables them to legally conduct their
operation on the Internet. The most commonly used licensee
is the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, located in the province
of Quebeq in Canada. This gaming commission is empowered to
regulate and control gaming and gaming related activities
conducted within and from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake
in accordance with the highest principles of honesty and
integrity. Their website www.kahnawake.com/gamingcommission
features a list of Internet gambling related sites whom they
license. Whenever looking at a new site, make sure to find
out whom they are licensed by. As well, it is a good idea to
see if that gaming commission has a complaints department,
as this helps maintain transparency and accountability
between the site and its players. This is the first step to
picking a reputable poker room but definitely is not the
only consideration. Next we will look at financial security
and different methods of adding and withdrawing funds from
poker sites.
Financial security seems to be the number one concern of
people considering using the Internet or any online
transaction, let alone poker. Needless to say millions of
dollars pass over the Internet each day in complete
financial security, but nevertheless it is always good
policy to make sure you are conducting your financial
transactions with a reputable processor. Specific to
Internet poker rooms, the most popular and secure methods of
putting funds into your poker account would be by credit
card or via Neteller account and in some countries you can
even use paypal to play
poker. Credit card deposits are
generally self-explanatory and are a very secure way to fund
your account. All the transactions from the poker room
cashiers are encrypted and can only be seen by the payment
processor and the site. Although credit cards may be the
most convenient method, many banks do no allow credit card
use on online gaming sites. This is both a combination of
social responsibility and liability for gambling debts (Yes,
someone successfully sued a credit card company and didn’t
have to pay off their gambling transactions). The most
popular and safest alternative to credit card would be to
open a Neteller account. This is a free service to Canadian
and American consumers and basically acts as an offshore
bank account (completely legal, they have various offices in
North America). Neteller allows its consumer to fund their
account via credit card, EFT (Electronic funds transfer) and
Instacash (An immediate EFT). The transfers are made from
your bank account into your Neteller account and this may be
done once you have verified your account details. After
funding the account, clients can make instant transfers to a
merchant such as a poker site. This is a convenient
alternative to credit cards and is safe and easy to set up.
More information can be found at www.neteller.com. We will
now examine fairness and equity in poker rooms online and
examine how this is achieved.
Most people who have ever played online have heard someone
complaining that the cards are rigged or that the site is
out to get them. Simply put, this is a falsity and there are
a couple reasons why. Firstly and most importantly, when you
are playing poker online you are seeing a much higher volume
of hands when compared to a live or offline game. Whereas a
game at home with friends may have 30-40 hands played an
hour, a single table cash game online could have upwards of
100+. This is important as it may seem to some that certain
so-called “bad beats” or suck outs are occurring much to
often when in reality it is just a reflection of the
increased number of hands being seen. Secondly, all card
rooms employ RNG technologies. RNG stands for Random Number
Generator and is the technology that essentially shuffles
the cards in the poker room and ensures that random cards
are dealt to everyone at the table. More information on
random number generation can be found at www.random.org.
Lastly, all poker rooms use some form of anti-collusion and
fraud detections on their site. This software monitors
player activities across the poker network to sniff out any
suspicious behaviour. It can detect players working together
on a table or working against a single player and helps to
maintain the overall integrity of the games. All of these
factors are important in selecting a new poker site to make
sure that you are always getting a fair game. A reputable
poker site will have information on anti-fraud and
collusions and their use of RNG technologies. To finish off,
we are now going to discuss support features at poker sites
and how they can be a determining factor on the
respectability of the site.
The last aspect of poker room selection that I believe is
vital is support. Support at all the poker rooms is your
lifeline to the site. They will deal with you directly
answering all questions, concerns or suggestions you may
have in regards to the site and are your main source of
information. The most important factor when looking at
support services is availability. You want to pick a site
with lots of support staff that will answer your questions
promptly. The best way to ensure this is to join a site that
offers live 24/7 support. This feature will ensure that you
can contact the site at anytime you wish. Although live
support is the best tool for contact, some sites do not
offer it. This does not mean they are not respectable but
rather that they have a huge volume of inquiries. The
biggest poker sites respond to thousands of emails a day and
having live support is just not feasible. The general rule
of thumb for email-based support is a policy that guarantees
a reply within 24 hours of your email. If you are still
feeling sceptical of the website you are researching it
never hurts to write an email to support asking them about
the poker room and see how long it take them to respond.
This will help you in determining their dedication to their
customers.
Well I hope that this article has given some insight into
the online gaming industry and helped some of the sceptics
gain a better understanding of its workings. Whenever you
are thinking of joining a
poker site please do some research
and see what people are saying about it. As well always
remember that the top sites on the Internet have gained
their success through reputation and work hard to earn their
customers loyalty. Happy hunting!!
