Which online poker sites are safe bets?
Almost 2 million people played online poker last month, translating to big money for the sites that host the virtual tables. Here's how to make sure the game is fair.
By Jennifer Mulrean
When Chris Moneymaker won the televised 2003 World Series of Poker after first wagering $39 in an online tournament, wannabe pro gamblers across the country turned to their own computers in hopes of repeating history. Greg "Fossilman" Raymer did just that in the 2004 championship game. Like Moneymaker, Raymer earned his ticket to the big time -- and millions in winnings -- by entering an online tournament. In fact, four of the top 10 finishers in the 2004 series were players from PokerStars.com.
If you play online, you could be going up against the likes of Moneymaker. Despite turning pro and writing a book about his experience, he says he still plays at least once a week at PokerStars. "I generally look for the games with the highest average pots and choose those," he says.
Luckily for you, more typical competitors are Darren and Hilary, online poker players who favor low-stakes games and have yet to score major winnings despite playing for a couple years: Hilary says she's about broken even, while Darren says he's lost all of the money he's wagered so far. But he considers it money well spent.
"I've probably logged a couple hundred hours and spent a couple hundred bucks," Darren says. "A buck an hour is pretty good entertainment for the money in my book."
A boost from televised poker
The fact that online gambling is generally considered illegal in the United States isn't dampening affection for the game among players like Hilary. Televised poker is now regularly broadcast during prime time on The Travel Channel, ESPN and Bravo, among other networks. An estimated 1.88 million people played online in February 2005 -- a 264% increase from a year earlier, according to Dennis Boyko, who tracks industry statistics at PokerPulse.com. And while growth seems to be leveling off, Boyko still thinks 100% year-over-year growth is possible from 2004 to 2005. Don't let retirement
sneak up on you.
Create a perfect plan.
Like Darren, many players are drawn by the convenience of playing online. But the illegality and increasing number of sites to choose from have implications for the average player.
No guarantees
The poker Web sites are run from offshore locations such as Gibraltar or Costa Rica. Any regulation that does occur is mostly industry-driven, says Glenn McDonald, author of "Deal Me In! Online Cardrooms, Big Time Tournaments, and The New Poker." The trade organization Interactive Gaming Council (IGC), for example, has a code of conduct for member sites such as PartyPoker and PacificPoker but it can do little more than yank a site's membership.
"For the new player, there's nothing much in the way of traditional guarantees," says McDonald. "When you (play) online, you're putting your trust in the capital markets system. But it's in (the poker sites') best interest to treat you right and they generally do, in my experience." The risks of gambling
The increased popularity of poker has people like Keith Whyte concerned. As the executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, he's seen the number of calls to their national hotline increase by 25% in 2004 alone. He attributes at least some of the increase to the televised poker games, which he thinks glamorize gambling and fail to provide adequate information of the potential downsides such as addiction and financial ruin.
With poker in particular, Whyte says, people "think their skill is going to trump the random outcome of the game, and that is a very dangerous thing."
"The less able they are to understand odds or randomness, or the more control you believe you have over random events, the more likely you are to have a problem gambling," he says.
In the United States, gamblers lost $2.8 million in Internet gambling in 2003 (the most recent data available), according to Christiansen Capital Advisors. That's just a drop in the bucket compared to the $72.8 million lost to all forms of gambling in the same year. But playing online in particular comes with its own set of risks, Whyte says, because playing with credit or virtual money can distance the player from the sense that their actions have very real consequences. It can also be hidden from others more easily since it's done in the privacy of one's own home.
If you think you have a problem, you can take the NCPG's self test here. For the vast majority of people, Whyte acknowledges, gambling will not become a problem. But you can up your odds of keeping it in perspective by following the tips, below.
Tips for playing responsibly:
The NCPG offers these tips for gambling responsibly:
Set a dollar limit and stick to it.
Don't gamble on credit or borrow money to gamble.
Treat losses as the cost of entertainment, and winnings as bonuses.
Don't chase lost money by betting more to try to make up your losses with a big win.
Set a time limit and take frequent breaks.
You can read more tips here.
Should something go wrong, your best bet is to try to work it out with the poker site, McDonald says. If that doesn't work, you can contact the IGC for help, provided the site you're on is a member (you can search for members, here). ECogra is another industry organization that claims to help resolve disputes between players and sites. Neither organization has any real enforcement muscle, such as the ability to impose fines, but they do provide an alternative to kissing your losses goodbye should the poker site prove unresponsive to your complaints.
Go to the well-established sites
Even if you're not wary of the lack of regulation and you've decided to try your luck online, it can be difficult figuring out where to play. There are more than 250 poker sites to choose from. What's more, Web sites purporting to rank online poker rooms are often affiliated with those on their list, McDonald says.
Playing at well-known, established Web sites can be a good strategy, then. Moneymaker says he generally looks for the most populated sites, which tend to be PartyPoker and PokerStars. PokerPulse.com's home page shows where people are playing on an almost real-time basis. The big five at the time of this writing were: PartyPoker (2,394 real money, or "ring" games), PokerStars (628 ring games), PrimaPoker (340), ParadisePoker (365) and PokerRoom (331). (While we've shown how many games were active at that given point in time, the rankings are based on 24-hour averages. You can read more here.)
Look for safeguards
Most major sites will have policies that aim to protect the player. But no matter where you play, you should check for the following:
24/7 customer support: At minimum, these should include e-mail and toll-free numbers, the IGC recommends. You should confirm that you can actually reach someone at the site within 24 hours of trying before betting any money with them.
Policies to guard against collusion: Obviously, players working together have a distinct advantage over others at the table. Many sites, such as PlanetPoker, use software to track how often two players are in the same game, unusually high win rates and other "suspicious" playing patterns. Anyone caught colluding at PlanetPoker is barred from the site for life. Generally, if you suspect someone of cheating, you should record the hand number and contact the site immediately. Oh, and make sure you get out of a game where people are cheating as quickly as possible.
Disconnection protection policies: What will the site do if you lose your Internet connection in the middle of a game? Policies can differ depending not only on which site you're on but also which table you're on. If you're disconnected, some sites will always consider you "all in," meaning you're betting all your remaining chips on the hand, and give you time to reconnect and rejoin the game. This way, you're not forfeiting all the chips you've bet up until your disconnection. But because some players take advantage of this, sites often limit the number of times you can use the disconnection protection. And some tables may force you to fold if you lose your Internet connection. This happens fairly often to Darren, but he says he's successfully had resulting losses credited back to his account on PacificPoker.
Payout policies: Do you have to meet a minimum level of winnings before you can cash out? How long and what form will the payment take? Some sites will issue a paper check once your winnings hit $50, McDonald says. (He notes that none he's received have ever bounced.) The IGC says you should expect to receive any wire payments within 10 days.
How it works
Once you've picked a site you trust, it's generally a good idea to sample their "play for free" games, which don't require real cash bets. This will help you get used to the way the site works, though it likely won't help you improve your poker skills. This is because people generally play fast and loose in the non-cash games.
"When I first started doing it with play money, people played pretty recklessly," Hilary says. "People started raising and re-raising and re-raising and it just became a game of trying to out-bluff the other players."
Darren has experienced the same thing, and even sees it with very low-limit games. But McDonald still recommends it as a first step to getting used to how a site works. Once you're comfortable, you can move on to playing for cash.
In order to do so, you'll need to fund your account. Most major credit cards no longer allow you to fund a poker account with their cards, McDonald says. Instead, you'll likely need to use a third-party payment service such as NeTeller. You can fund a NeTeller account with a Visa credit card, wire transfer or electronic check from your bank and then fund your poker account from your NeTeller account. Darren has gone one step further by setting up a separate, low-dollar checking account to fund his third-party payment service. This way, if someone finds a way to compromise his account, he can contain the damage.
Many sites offer bonuses to lure new players. If you deposit $100 in your poker account, a site offering a 25% bonus will give you $25, for example. But don't forget to read the fine print. Many sites require you to play a certain number of hands before granting you your bonus.
Once you're set up, you can choose from games that are tournaments, where you pay one set amount at the beginning and play multiple hands until your chips are gone (or you've won), or ring games, where you place minimum bets with each hand. A 50-cent/$1 game means the first person obligated to bet (called the "blind") has to bet a minimum of 50 cents, and the second blind has to bet $1. These very low-stakes games can be a good way to test the waters before venturing into a $4/$8 game, for example.
Sites make money by skimming a little off each pot. This is called the "rake," and a typical amount is probably 5%, McDonald says. So if you win a $40 pot at a site with a 5% rake, your payout would be $38. You can see PartyPoker's rake schedule here.
How playing online differs from offline
Playing poker online differs from playing in brick-and-mortar poker rooms in a few ways. Moneymaker points out that playing online can be a lot less intimidating than a real-world casino, where the smallest limits are often $3/$6. The biggest problem he sees is players who try to sit at tables where the stakes are too high for their cash flow.
"I'd tell a new player to just play your bankroll," he says. "That's generally 40 times the big blind." So at the $3/$6 table, that would mean having around $240 to play.
Even high rollers don't need to tip the online dealer, something that's common practice when you win in a real-world casino. But the main difference everyone agrees on has to do with sitting thousands of miles from your opponents, rather than across a short expanse of green felt. "The No. 1 weakness of the online game is you can't physically assess the other players," McDonald says. "You can't look for tells and play the player in that sense."
While this is generally true, Darren and Hilary have both spotted a few tricks that, if nothing else, attempt to compensate for the lack of physical clues:
Slow bets: While the hands tend to be played more quickly online, some players will take the full amount of time to place a bet no matter what. When Hilary found herself playing against such laggards she often bailed on the hand. Darren says he's occasionally guilty of such stalling: If he has a good hand and he wants to lure other people into betting more money, he'll bet slowly to make it seem like his hand is weaker than it is.
Extremely fast bets: These are often used to project confidence. Darren says he'll bet quickly on less-than-stellar hands to make it seem like his hand is better than it is.
Odd betting amounts: Betting an odd dollar amount can require the use of several different colors of chips. Darren says he thinks people use this trick to make their bets appear bigger.
But in general, McDonald says, poker translates remarkably well to the online medium. "It's the same game with the same cards and the same rules.
"Your best bet is to play by-the-book poker. Play very conservatively and play smart, disciplined poker . . . that's the way to win right now in the low-stakes online game."
Almost 2 million people played online poker last month, translating to big money for the sites that host the virtual tables. Here's how to make sure the game is fair.
By Jennifer Mulrean
When Chris Moneymaker won the televised 2003 World Series of Poker after first wagering $39 in an online tournament, wannabe pro gamblers across the country turned to their own computers in hopes of repeating history. Greg "Fossilman" Raymer did just that in the 2004 championship game. Like Moneymaker, Raymer earned his ticket to the big time -- and millions in winnings -- by entering an online tournament. In fact, four of the top 10 finishers in the 2004 series were players from PokerStars.com.
If you play online, you could be going up against the likes of Moneymaker. Despite turning pro and writing a book about his experience, he says he still plays at least once a week at PokerStars. "I generally look for the games with the highest average pots and choose those," he says.
Luckily for you, more typical competitors are Darren and Hilary, online poker players who favor low-stakes games and have yet to score major winnings despite playing for a couple years: Hilary says she's about broken even, while Darren says he's lost all of the money he's wagered so far. But he considers it money well spent.
"I've probably logged a couple hundred hours and spent a couple hundred bucks," Darren says. "A buck an hour is pretty good entertainment for the money in my book."
A boost from televised poker
The fact that online gambling is generally considered illegal in the United States isn't dampening affection for the game among players like Hilary. Televised poker is now regularly broadcast during prime time on The Travel Channel, ESPN and Bravo, among other networks. An estimated 1.88 million people played online in February 2005 -- a 264% increase from a year earlier, according to Dennis Boyko, who tracks industry statistics at PokerPulse.com. And while growth seems to be leveling off, Boyko still thinks 100% year-over-year growth is possible from 2004 to 2005. Don't let retirement
sneak up on you.
Create a perfect plan.
Like Darren, many players are drawn by the convenience of playing online. But the illegality and increasing number of sites to choose from have implications for the average player.
No guarantees
The poker Web sites are run from offshore locations such as Gibraltar or Costa Rica. Any regulation that does occur is mostly industry-driven, says Glenn McDonald, author of "Deal Me In! Online Cardrooms, Big Time Tournaments, and The New Poker." The trade organization Interactive Gaming Council (IGC), for example, has a code of conduct for member sites such as PartyPoker and PacificPoker but it can do little more than yank a site's membership.
"For the new player, there's nothing much in the way of traditional guarantees," says McDonald. "When you (play) online, you're putting your trust in the capital markets system. But it's in (the poker sites') best interest to treat you right and they generally do, in my experience." The risks of gambling
The increased popularity of poker has people like Keith Whyte concerned. As the executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, he's seen the number of calls to their national hotline increase by 25% in 2004 alone. He attributes at least some of the increase to the televised poker games, which he thinks glamorize gambling and fail to provide adequate information of the potential downsides such as addiction and financial ruin.
With poker in particular, Whyte says, people "think their skill is going to trump the random outcome of the game, and that is a very dangerous thing."
"The less able they are to understand odds or randomness, or the more control you believe you have over random events, the more likely you are to have a problem gambling," he says.
In the United States, gamblers lost $2.8 million in Internet gambling in 2003 (the most recent data available), according to Christiansen Capital Advisors. That's just a drop in the bucket compared to the $72.8 million lost to all forms of gambling in the same year. But playing online in particular comes with its own set of risks, Whyte says, because playing with credit or virtual money can distance the player from the sense that their actions have very real consequences. It can also be hidden from others more easily since it's done in the privacy of one's own home.
If you think you have a problem, you can take the NCPG's self test here. For the vast majority of people, Whyte acknowledges, gambling will not become a problem. But you can up your odds of keeping it in perspective by following the tips, below.
Tips for playing responsibly:
The NCPG offers these tips for gambling responsibly:
Set a dollar limit and stick to it.
Don't gamble on credit or borrow money to gamble.
Treat losses as the cost of entertainment, and winnings as bonuses.
Don't chase lost money by betting more to try to make up your losses with a big win.
Set a time limit and take frequent breaks.
You can read more tips here.
Should something go wrong, your best bet is to try to work it out with the poker site, McDonald says. If that doesn't work, you can contact the IGC for help, provided the site you're on is a member (you can search for members, here). ECogra is another industry organization that claims to help resolve disputes between players and sites. Neither organization has any real enforcement muscle, such as the ability to impose fines, but they do provide an alternative to kissing your losses goodbye should the poker site prove unresponsive to your complaints.
Go to the well-established sites
Even if you're not wary of the lack of regulation and you've decided to try your luck online, it can be difficult figuring out where to play. There are more than 250 poker sites to choose from. What's more, Web sites purporting to rank online poker rooms are often affiliated with those on their list, McDonald says.
Playing at well-known, established Web sites can be a good strategy, then. Moneymaker says he generally looks for the most populated sites, which tend to be PartyPoker and PokerStars. PokerPulse.com's home page shows where people are playing on an almost real-time basis. The big five at the time of this writing were: PartyPoker (2,394 real money, or "ring" games), PokerStars (628 ring games), PrimaPoker (340), ParadisePoker (365) and PokerRoom (331). (While we've shown how many games were active at that given point in time, the rankings are based on 24-hour averages. You can read more here.)
Look for safeguards
Most major sites will have policies that aim to protect the player. But no matter where you play, you should check for the following:
24/7 customer support: At minimum, these should include e-mail and toll-free numbers, the IGC recommends. You should confirm that you can actually reach someone at the site within 24 hours of trying before betting any money with them.
Policies to guard against collusion: Obviously, players working together have a distinct advantage over others at the table. Many sites, such as PlanetPoker, use software to track how often two players are in the same game, unusually high win rates and other "suspicious" playing patterns. Anyone caught colluding at PlanetPoker is barred from the site for life. Generally, if you suspect someone of cheating, you should record the hand number and contact the site immediately. Oh, and make sure you get out of a game where people are cheating as quickly as possible.
Disconnection protection policies: What will the site do if you lose your Internet connection in the middle of a game? Policies can differ depending not only on which site you're on but also which table you're on. If you're disconnected, some sites will always consider you "all in," meaning you're betting all your remaining chips on the hand, and give you time to reconnect and rejoin the game. This way, you're not forfeiting all the chips you've bet up until your disconnection. But because some players take advantage of this, sites often limit the number of times you can use the disconnection protection. And some tables may force you to fold if you lose your Internet connection. This happens fairly often to Darren, but he says he's successfully had resulting losses credited back to his account on PacificPoker.
Payout policies: Do you have to meet a minimum level of winnings before you can cash out? How long and what form will the payment take? Some sites will issue a paper check once your winnings hit $50, McDonald says. (He notes that none he's received have ever bounced.) The IGC says you should expect to receive any wire payments within 10 days.
How it works
Once you've picked a site you trust, it's generally a good idea to sample their "play for free" games, which don't require real cash bets. This will help you get used to the way the site works, though it likely won't help you improve your poker skills. This is because people generally play fast and loose in the non-cash games.
"When I first started doing it with play money, people played pretty recklessly," Hilary says. "People started raising and re-raising and re-raising and it just became a game of trying to out-bluff the other players."
Darren has experienced the same thing, and even sees it with very low-limit games. But McDonald still recommends it as a first step to getting used to how a site works. Once you're comfortable, you can move on to playing for cash.
In order to do so, you'll need to fund your account. Most major credit cards no longer allow you to fund a poker account with their cards, McDonald says. Instead, you'll likely need to use a third-party payment service such as NeTeller. You can fund a NeTeller account with a Visa credit card, wire transfer or electronic check from your bank and then fund your poker account from your NeTeller account. Darren has gone one step further by setting up a separate, low-dollar checking account to fund his third-party payment service. This way, if someone finds a way to compromise his account, he can contain the damage.
Many sites offer bonuses to lure new players. If you deposit $100 in your poker account, a site offering a 25% bonus will give you $25, for example. But don't forget to read the fine print. Many sites require you to play a certain number of hands before granting you your bonus.
Once you're set up, you can choose from games that are tournaments, where you pay one set amount at the beginning and play multiple hands until your chips are gone (or you've won), or ring games, where you place minimum bets with each hand. A 50-cent/$1 game means the first person obligated to bet (called the "blind") has to bet a minimum of 50 cents, and the second blind has to bet $1. These very low-stakes games can be a good way to test the waters before venturing into a $4/$8 game, for example.
Sites make money by skimming a little off each pot. This is called the "rake," and a typical amount is probably 5%, McDonald says. So if you win a $40 pot at a site with a 5% rake, your payout would be $38. You can see PartyPoker's rake schedule here.
How playing online differs from offline
Playing poker online differs from playing in brick-and-mortar poker rooms in a few ways. Moneymaker points out that playing online can be a lot less intimidating than a real-world casino, where the smallest limits are often $3/$6. The biggest problem he sees is players who try to sit at tables where the stakes are too high for their cash flow.
"I'd tell a new player to just play your bankroll," he says. "That's generally 40 times the big blind." So at the $3/$6 table, that would mean having around $240 to play.
Even high rollers don't need to tip the online dealer, something that's common practice when you win in a real-world casino. But the main difference everyone agrees on has to do with sitting thousands of miles from your opponents, rather than across a short expanse of green felt. "The No. 1 weakness of the online game is you can't physically assess the other players," McDonald says. "You can't look for tells and play the player in that sense."
While this is generally true, Darren and Hilary have both spotted a few tricks that, if nothing else, attempt to compensate for the lack of physical clues:
Slow bets: While the hands tend to be played more quickly online, some players will take the full amount of time to place a bet no matter what. When Hilary found herself playing against such laggards she often bailed on the hand. Darren says he's occasionally guilty of such stalling: If he has a good hand and he wants to lure other people into betting more money, he'll bet slowly to make it seem like his hand is weaker than it is.
Extremely fast bets: These are often used to project confidence. Darren says he'll bet quickly on less-than-stellar hands to make it seem like his hand is better than it is.
Odd betting amounts: Betting an odd dollar amount can require the use of several different colors of chips. Darren says he thinks people use this trick to make their bets appear bigger.
But in general, McDonald says, poker translates remarkably well to the online medium. "It's the same game with the same cards and the same rules.
"Your best bet is to play by-the-book poker. Play very conservatively and play smart, disciplined poker . . . that's the way to win right now in the low-stakes online game."
