Online Poker is simply poker played on the internet in various poker rooms, and although the first online poker room was only launched in the late 1990′s, online poker has exploded in popularity and is estimated to have a value of over $2 billion per year.
Some of the reasons for this unprecedented growth are:
Online poker rooms are accessible to anyone with a computer, whereas land based casinos can be both difficult to access and rather intimidating for the beginner.
Many online poker rooms offer free e-money to beginners, which in turn allow the rookies to hone their skills without the risk of losing hard-earned cash.
For the uninitiated online poker rooms may seem vulnerable to fraud, but quite the opposite is true. Technology has the ability to track collusion between players and to detect any unusual patterns or discrepancies. Dedicated security personnel regularly check hand history and IP addresses to prevent players from colluding or playing from the same household or even the same area together.
The poker rooms may have their own methods of preventing cheating.
Even though most of the reputable online poker rooms and casinos have gone to great lengths to protect their integrity and credibility there have been a couple of occasions where security has been breached:
In 2007 Poker Stars picked up the fact that the winner of the main event of the World Championship of Online Poker had abused multiple accounts and was summarily disqualified
In the same year an employee at Absolute Poker was caught playing a high stakes game while scrutinising his opponent’s hole cards
