Texas Holdem Poker - Today
The Texas Holdem poker phenomenon has taken the country by storm. There are reportedly over 100 million active poker players worldwide. Poker’s popularity is largely the byproduct of technology and several recent trends: 1) online gaming, where players engage and socialize in real-time over the Internet, and 2) the broad publicity created by high profile TV shows like the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and World Poker Tour (WPT). With all the poker-mania, there’s a modern day "gold rush" underway today. Analyst estimates are a bit sketchy, but some estimate that people will spend up to $4.5 billion U.S. in 2005 on poker-related items of every kind, including: * Online poker room play * Poker tournaments * Online poker room financial brokers (e.g., Firepay, NetTeller, Citadel and others) * Casino poker rooms * Game units for your TV * Poker chip sets and dealer buttons (you can even get "collector" edition dealer buttons signed by the pros - got some as Christmas presents this year!) * Poker tables and instructions for how to build poker tables * Poker software (poker odds calculators, poker games, home tournament organizers, tournament director kits) * Texas holdem poker rule and starting hand cards * Poker schools and training courses * Poker books and strategy e-books * Poker hats, shirts and clothing items * Local poker clubs * Free Texas Holdem poker stuff of every kind imaginable. To give you an idea of how many people are now playing with real-money online, have a look at PokerPulse.com. PokerPulse keeps tabs on the top online poker rooms and tracks how many real-money poker games are running at any point in time. Some estimates based upon these statistics suggest that online poker room companies are turning over in excess of $110 million U.S. every 24 hours, with hundreds of thousands of online players active any given evening. So, with the worldwide inertia that poker has today, how far can it go? Will it be like the CB Radio - a brief flash in the pan and then suddenly - poof! Will it be just another fad and memory, with occasional reminders like Smokey and the Bandit? Hard to say for sure, but with the momentum, advertising and so many young people, including many teenagers and children playing across the Internet, it could be that the poker big bang has occured and its expansion has only really begun... As with many new, controversial phenomenon such as poker, there's the social morality aspect and question: Is playing poker gambling? Is it really just a game of skill? The question of whether online poker rooms are just as much about gambling as traditional casino games and online bookie operations is certainly one that is shaping some industries, and creating some others. Before we look for the answers to those questions, let's explore what the actions of certain parties might lead us to believe. For example, the traditional credit card processors (MC, VISA, AMEX, PayPal, and others) decided to discontinue use of their credit card services to fund player's online poker accounts. Today, there's a whole cottage industry that has sprung up to fill the enormous demand for transferring funds between bank accounts and online poker room accounts, processing untold millions of dollars each day. Try advertising a poker-related item through Google's AdWords or the Yahoo/MSN equivalent (Overture) and you'll quickly find they have a category known as "Gambling URL" that'll come into play. Any website that could be related to online poker rooms is considered a "gambling" site and advertising services are thereby refused. So, what happened as a result? Well, aside from these companies losing advertising revenues, it's forced the poker industry into fierce competition for the poker-related search "namespaces". Try searching for something using keywords like "Texas Holdem poker" and see what you find. It's amazing at how clogged up the search engine namespace has become, with every search engine optimization (SEO) technique and trick known to man being used by poker website owners in an attempt to gain visibility, page ranking and routing of more visitor traffic to their websites. In my opinion, the answer to the question "Is playing poker gambling?" is - it depends. It depends on the player's skill level. If you're a highly-skilled player, then IMHO it's not gambling - it's playing a sophisticated game like chess, where you not only must defeat the opponents but you must also use strategy and play the odds in order to win. You beat the odds by playing only certain starting hands from given positions at the table, adjusting your play based upon the game situation, understanding other players' styles, and by developing a strategy for winning, throwing your weight (chip stack) around at the right times, and by sitting out at other times. No, it's far from gambling for many of us. However, for those who don't possess the requisite skills, it is gambling more often than it's not, since skill is much less of a factor for such players. Since the basic rules are deceptively simple, people often have no idea why they're beaten. What makes it very different from traditional casino gambling games, though, is that you're not playing against the house. The online poker room takes a "rake", a percentage of the money that's in play (e.g., 10% or so), which is how the online poker room generates revenues. It doesn't really matter who wins or loses, since the poker operator always gets paid for hosting the game. I'll cover popular online poker rooms in a future article in more detail, but suffice it to say, there's gold in them there hills and the claims have been staked by the market leaders, who are raking in fortunes providing their sophisticated online service businesses to millions of eager players worldwide. Since these business aren't allowed to operate within U.S. borders, they're virtually unregulated (at least by U.S. standards) and new ones continue to pop up every month. Now I don't want to make it sound like everyone who plays online is playing with real money - quite the contrary. There's an enormous number of players who just use "play money" and have a real blast playing and socializing via the use of instant messaging and interactions through the online poker room site. So, is the poker phenomenon a trend or just another fad that's destined to take it's place in our video library, beside Smokey and the Bandit and that CB radio wave that crested in the 1970's? Hard to say for sure. One thing is for certain. A lot of people are having fun playing in online poker rooms, at traditional casinos and in their own home games - while an army of others are supplying that demand, and making a boatload of money in the process. Until next time - Good Luck! Rick Rick Braddy is an avid writer, Texas Holdem poker player and professional software developer and marketer for over 25 years. His websites and Texas Holdem poker software helps people become better players. If you're a poker player, be sure to visit his Texas Holdem poker websites and learn how you can play better Texas Holdem poker, too. |
Other Poker Site Articles
Poker Calculator Report: Hold'em Indicator, A New Standard If you have ever read my review of Poker Indicator, you will know that I thought it had great potential, save for a few important draw backs that kept it from competing with the market leaders in this category. Holdem Indicator now succeeds Poker Indicator and not only that, has zoomed to the top of the class of empirical poker calculators marke ...Vegas News and Notes Promises are made to be broken.That appears to be the stance of 2006 World Series of Poker champion Jamie Gold, who is being sued for half his $12 million winnings.While he admits to having a verbal agreement with Bruce Crispin Leyser to share his winnings, Gold seems to be backpedaling on certain aspects of it, although Leyser has ...The Day I Decided To Stop Gambling With Gamblers Anonymous Everything was going perfect for me in life. Good job, good home, good life and good friends. Until one day some friends asked if I wanted to go to the casino. By the time I realized it, three years of my life were gone and I was in debt. It was time to quit.The day I decided to stop gambling I was depressed and relieved at the same time. ...Who Wins With Poker Promotions? Over the last few years, the card game of poker has turned into its own sport, with championship and world series games that are shown on television and covered in magazines. It would seem that a sport such as this which has so much media attention would not necessarily need promotional material, and yet there are a great number of poker promot ...Roulette Strategy – 10 Simple Tips To Win and Win Big You will see a lot of vendors selling their roulette strategy on the net and most of them frankly are a waste of money and you can easily do it for yourselfThe roulette strategy below gives you as much chance of winning as any other player and are totally FREE.It’s proven mathematically this roulette strategy cannot be bettered, so ...Online Poker Is Not A Practice Run Poker has been around for a long time but the truth of realising that champions of the World Series of Poker were conceived virtually changed the game beyond expectation. Texas Hold’em became the game to play any time the heart had a twitch for it and not just in a boozy Friday night session. The online explosion means there is a game to be foun ...Play Internet Poker If you’re tired of watching reruns on TV and the only thing that seems to hold your interest is televised poker games, maybe its time you get in on the game yourself. Why not switch off the TV, boot up the computer and play Internet poker. This great pastime has come to be one of the most popular activities on the internet. There are lots of opt ...The History of Backgammon - Now and Then Backgammon is the oldest game in history. Also known as the “wee battle,” backgammon began in Mesopotamia (now known as Iraq) about 5000 years ago. However, Egyptians called backgammon “Senat,” which was a similar form of the current game played today. Centuries ago, only people in power, the prevailing figures of royalty like Egyptian pharaohs ...The Ranking Of Poker Hands Poker is becoming increasingly popular with more and more people not only playing the game but also watching television programs like the world series of poker. In this article, I describe the order in which poker hands are ranked, starting with the highest and also the probability that players have of being dealt that particular hand.A s ...Turning 16 and Getting a Car After reading this account, I am sure that most parents will have second thoughts about allowing a 16-year-old to have a car. I am not proud of some of the things I have done or the close calls I have had, but I did learn a lot from those experiences. I only had a real car for less than a year before I left home leaving the car behind. I don' ...Using An Online Gambling Site With today’s computers, you have two options for betting at an online casino. You can either play a Java game, which allows you to bet or play almost immediately. The second option is to download the software from the site and install it on your computer. This second method will provide you with better sound and sharper graphics. However, either ...Let it Ride Poker - Betting To Win Let it ride poker is fun and the ability to let your bet ride means that you have the thrill of making some big money to and this article is all about betting to winThe tips below can help you win the big pots you desire.We will now consider what to do (bet) after you receive the first three cards, and follow up what to do when you ...Enterprise RSS Series - Think Like a Publisher Enterprise RSS is a system to distribute content across the web. The viewpoint to take is that of a savvy publisher, not a builder of static web pages expecting your audiences to remember to come back to your site.RSS allows the user to subscribe to your feed without having to remember to return to your site to check things out. Even if t ...Online Texas Holdem Poker Strategy: Maintain Focus at the Poker Table There’s no doubt about it, some people are just better at poker than others. They appear to win consistently and seemingly at will. So this leaves many with a few questions which linger on the mind.Could it be that poker is only a game of chance with no other forces to play upon besides the fickle Lady Luck?What makes a good poker ...Online Cardroom If you enjoy poker, but are bored of playing the regular Monday night poker with your buddies, there is another option you should know about. This new option is an online cardroom. These are rooms where you can go and play a variety of different games of poker. There are rooms that offer Holdem poker, Stud poker, Omaha poker, and a variety of ot ...The Advantages of Online Gambling If you’re looking for the thrill of a casino, but you can’t get to Vegas or Jersey, why not try online gambling? Since its beginnings in the 1990s, the online gambling community has evolved to become a major slice of the gambling pie. Millions of fun seekers turn to online gambling as a safe and fun way to spend a few bucks, and a chance to get ...A Review of Online Casino Gambling I have been participating in online casino gambling since its inception. It began right around the time that the Internet became a household fixture. Like all gamblers, I've had some great sessions that I'll remember for a long time. You know what I mean, the dealer is busting left and right, I'm drawing five-card 21s, and the stack of chips i ...Time To Use Really Simple Syndication Feeds RSS is rapidly replacing email marketing and even newsletters. Your competitor most likely is using rss feeds to present visitors with related, rich and automated content. RSS is mostly called Really Simple Syndication and serves as a way to place a feed on websites that can read RSS from a directory.RSS is an XML-based file-application with spe ...Choose your Gambling Niche Some people believe that being good in something is all about talent. This is not the case always since there are those who work hard at it and are able to establish a reputation. In gambling, there are those who excel in one game than the other games available in the casino. This takes time to figure one and when the player discovers that, then ...High Quality Poker Lessons Have you ever dreamed of playing poker with the professionals you see on TV? Maybe your wish is to learn absolutely everything about poker but you simply don't know where to get instructions from. It's best if you consider taking some poker lessons. Not only would it be a fun experience, but it will also provide you with all the information you ...Playing Multiple Bingo Cards Many players wish to know the advantages and disadvantages of playing multiple Bingo cards. Some of the common questions asked are " What is the optimal number of cards that should be played? Or "Does it give you a better chance of winning?" There are different ways to look at multiple card play. From the cost perspective, the more cards you pur ...Online Gambling Causing Credit Card Debt It is the latest craze at the moment and everyone seems to be enjoying gambling at home with the increase of poker sites on the internet, but its not good news if you are running up debts on your credit card. I don’t know about you but it seems that I have a misconceived perception of time when I am sitting at my computer; time just seems to fly ...Deuces Wild Video Poker – How to Win BIG You are playing the game on a machine, your sole objective is to get the best-paying hand.You have no opponents to worry about like in table poker, just the machine and to win all you need is the correct strategy.In deuces wild as in all video poker games You can keep or throw away as many cards as you want when playing the machine ...Online Virtual Poker Everyone who has a computer, or even just has access to one, knows just how popular online virtual poker has become. We’re all constantly inundated with emails, ads, and pop-ups advertising online virtual poker sites offering unbelievable money giveaways and prizes. Though a lot of this may sound like hype, there are places that actually do give ...How to Choose a Sportsbook The savvy bettor will expect the most out of his mate: demanding availability just prior to Monday nights kickoff-this is just one of several requirements. On Sunday morning your sportsbook MUST be on call to serve your every need. A matter of fact, this is to be expected 24/7 and even the 12 months a year.Many bettors have now stumbled u ...
|
