HISTORY OF ONLINE POKER
Other types of online gambling sites were launched before the first online poker room. Online sports books were introduced in the mid 1990’s which was also the time of online casinos sprouting up around the web. It wasn’t until 1998 that the first online poker forum was launched. Planet Poker, which has since become a relatively small poker room, enjoyed the status as the sole online poker forum for a short period of time. Other online sites entered the fray soon after. Paradise Poker was
launched in 1999 and would soon become the industry leader. Today, there are many, many sites to choose from. A search for the most popular sites for online poker show over 1,000 matches, and a Google search gives over 50 million matches for references to online poker sites. The major sites include Poker Stars, Party Poker, Full Tilt Poker, Pacific Poker, and Bodog Poker. Many offer the chance to play with “fake money” or real money. You can accumulate points at some sites that can be redeemed for merchandise bearing the site’s name. Another feature with most sites includes the offer of bonus cash with a real money deposit. Often, you can receive a code that matches the amount of your deposit up to a certain amount. For example, make a $50 real money deposit into your Party Poker account and you will receive $50 free making your total bankroll $100. It’s a matter of personal preference as to which site is best. We will remain objective in this book and will not be able to tell you which site to go to. Each one has its distinct features that appeal to the everyday player. Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud, especially collusion between players. However, they also have collusion detection abilities that do not exist in brick and mortar casinos. For example, online poker room security employees can look at the "hand history" of the cards previously played by any player on the site, making 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. Online poker rooms also sometimes 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
The biggest challenge with online poker is you don’t have the advantage of trying to “read” your fellow players. A basic knowledge of the game, of course, is the first step to good play. While we would like to assume you already know the basics, you might not, so our next section looks at general terms used in poker as well as hand rankings. It’s always good to have this information at hand!
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