The poker world has changed dramatically after the apparition of the Internet. Poker games were usually being held by a casino, in most of the times. The tournaments gathered, like nowadays, players from distant parts of the country in which they were held. Rarely there were some foreign players that participated. It required also a big place to host them, since 200 players required at least 20 large tables to play on. Usually poker was also played between friends at home just for pleasure or for insignificant amounts of money. That also required a place where to be held. But that changed once the Internet poker rooms appeared. They gave the opportunity to host tournaments with an enormous number of participants (up to 20000 players) from all over the world. The principle is quite simple. Every player is required to deposit a minimum amount of money into their poker account at a poker room. That sum of money can be used to play at tables against different players, pay the entering fee of a tournament or play at a sit and go mini tournament.

A great advantage the Internet poker rooms has is play money, which gives inexperienced players the opportunity to develop their poker skills without paying real money. The play money are practice money (usually 1500 chips) that players get free of charge at every poker room. With them, the novice player can exercise his skills on all the types of poker games, including tournaments, play money tables, sit and go tournaments. Some poker rooms even have special offers that include play money. They allow the player to enter, with a large amount of play money, into real money tournaments, giving the players the possibility to earn their first real life money. Another important difference between real life poker and Internet poker rooms is the organization of the tournaments. Usually the real life poker tournament has several days of competition with different stages. In an Internet poker tournament the maximum break for players is around 1 hour. The tournament has only one day of competition at the end of which the winners are announced.

In real life poker, by observing the reactions and the typos of a certain player you could anticipate his moves, action that the Internet poker clearly doesn’t have. The need for such an interaction and the technology available gave birth to certain poker rooms that deliver their client in a 3D manner, giving the avatar a lot of options for expressing the feelings, a lot of gestures, and predefined lines. Another good thing the Internet poker brought was raising poker’s popularity. Before the apparition of Internet poker, the poker was known as a game usually played by rich people, as gambling for earning fast, easy money. Since the Internet poker developed, it gave the possibility for many to play into a legal-safe environment.

By stickystebee
www.betfred.com/poker/index.asp