Poker online is a convenient and accessible way to play the game any time of the day or night. It offers more poker variations than live games, and it is easier to make decisions with one click of the mouse. It is also fast and fair, with no wait for the cards to shuffle or for the collection of discards (known as the “muck”), and it will match you with players of a similar skill level.
The game exploded into an international phenomenon after Chris Moneymaker won the $10,000 buy-in WSOP Main Event for just $86 in 2002, but it wasn’t until 2011 that a federal law was introduced to regulate online poker. Since then, a handful of states have passed laws to legalize online poker, including New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware. Pennsylvania and West Virginia have also chosen to regulate the game, but virtual hands have yet to be dealt in either state.
Despite the popularity of poker in the US, it remains a game of skill over the long run, and the top pros spend as much time studying the game as they do playing it. Signing up for training sites, networking with successful pros and brutally analyzing your own play are just some of the strategies you can employ to improve your poker game. Moreover, learning the rules of the various poker variants is essential. The most popular of these are Texas Hold’em and Omaha. However, there are other variants such as straight poker, five-card stud, seven-card stud, lowball and Omaha high/low.