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As an avid poker player I was going to come in here and bring up the enormous amount of evidence I have seen that fish almost certainly cannot count to four, then I read a little further and realised its about the animal. Never mind.

I can't believe this post has an "informative" rating. Of course the places pay out. If they didn't, it would be all over the entarwebs. There's no way an online gaming site could weather the storm of negative publicity that would arise from failure to pay out. Just ask Dutch Boyd http://www.pokertips.org/history/online-poker.php/ .

As for taxes on US operations...um...What US operations? Costa Rica is not in the US. Gibralter is not in the US. Antigua is not in the US.

The porn industry can get required permits because the required permits exist. Online gaming companies can't request a permit that doesn't exist. What kind of nonsense is that?

The fact is the US government wants to get a cut of any transaction of any kind that takes place anywhere in the world. There's no way that can happen with transactions that take place across international boundaries. So they'll just grab the people in charge under whatever pretext they can, hold them by the ankles, and shake them until the money stops falling out.

That doesn't really follow at all. The role of chance in the game can actually be an advantage for machines, which can compute probabilities more accurately than all than all but the most skilled human players.

More importantly, machines don't have the problem of reacting emotionally to a situatino and letting that overrule their reason. A computer program will never go on tilt.

So it's easy to imagine someone who is an expert at the game but who isn't usually calm enough at the table to actually act on that expertise and play well. The potential for such a person to create a poker bot that played better than the expert himself is quite high.

-bs

1. Do not, do not, do not, learn to play online

I disagree. For one thing, there are many strategy sites online with good advice. (Example: PokerTips.org). For another, its better to learn how to play based on good fundamentals: Math and reading people by their bets. Learning how to read physical tells is useful but far overrated. If you have good fundamentals, then you will be a better player and exploit tells more efficiently.

And finally, i'd say that you learn more against good competition. And the best competition these days is on the internet, for the simple reason that anyone in the world can play there, whereas, your hometown is limited to who is physically nearbly. I'll agree that play money tables are worthless and may even harm your game starting out. It's better to start off at the low limits.

2. Second piece of advice, never play for money online. Just don't. Don't do it.

I think this is silly. IF it's legal for you to play in your country/state, i say go for it. online you'll find better games (more fish) and it's also faster, more convenient, and you can leave anytime. Whereas, if you go to a live game you'd feel silly leaving after 5 minutes if there are no good games, the rooms are smoky, sometimes far from home, etc.

Also, you can find games with limits as low as $.01-$.02 online, so you can actually play "just for fun" without worrying about losing money. You could lose everything and just be out a few bucks. The truth is that there ARE good players online and there are also BAD players online. Whatever youre playing for you'll find it.

As for addiction, you should be careful about that but, as with anything fun, one must exercise self-control. If you find it becoming an unhealthy hobby, then just quit. Luckily, poker as not as addictive as "gambling" for a few reasons; it's a "game of skill", so if you lose, you're going to keep losing and quit; it's more social, since it is a multiplayer game; theres a lot of thinking involved, it's not a "passive" experience; I'd say that playing poker isn't really much more addictive than say, playing video games.. but YMMV.

Poker is primarily an odds game, that is to say it is all math. There are three places where a decision has to be made. The first decision is, "Should I pay to see the next card?" This is called Drawing. The second decision is, "I have a decent hand, but my opponent raised me. Is he bluffing?". The third decision is, "Should I try to bluff?".

Odds come into play everywhere. When you are Drawing, you must have the correct odds or else you will lose money in the long run. That is to say, if you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting your straight on the next card, you must have at least 3:1 odds to Draw. (The pot must have $3 for every $1 you pay). There is also the concept of "implied odds" - predicting how much will be in the pot at the end of the hand and not just at the present.

When deciding whether or not to bluff, you must know the odds of your bluff succeeding, and add that to the odds of you hitting your out on the next card. At that point the calculation becomes the same pot-odds calculation described above. This involves some reading of your opponent; you have to know how often he will call, and how often the bluff will be sucessful. Luckily, computers can be pretty good at modeling and seeing patterns, probably much better than humans. It seems that Neural nets and other well-developed AI techniques would be very good at modeling these behaviors and predicting future ones. Calling bluffs will require the same type of knowledge.

Some have asked how it's possible to read patterns on the internet. Some people don't really have patterns in their game, they just call everything. These people will lose because they put too much money in the pot, they don't have the odds for the bets and calls they're making. Mostly, decent players have patterns in how they bet, for example they will bet when they only have 4 out of 5 flush cards. (A Semi-bluff). Computers have an advantage here because they can introduce a random element that humans cannot reproduce.

The recent winner of the World Series of Poker, Chris Moneymaker, had never played in a live game until the WSOP, he had only played internet games. This probably gave him good fundamentals in reading people based on their bets, and good math fundamentals.

Some have also questioned the wiseness of playing internet poker, since it is just "gambling". Well I'll tell you a little secret, poker isn't really gambling, poker is a skill game and especially with so many bad players out there who think it is just luck, hoping they'll get lucky, it's easy to win money. That's why the same players consistently win thousands of dollars online. For more information on poker strategy and reviews of online casinos, see this site: PokerTips.org

Poker is not a card game, it's a people game (aka don't play the cards, play the people). It's all about bluffing and reading other people's bluffs. I'm baffled that people even bother playing poker on the internet. Even with webcams the game wouldn't be the same at all.

While it's true that poker involves reading people, it is primarily a game of calculating odds and using them to your advantage. For example: if you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting your flush on the next card, then you should only pay to see the next card if there are $4 in the pot for every $1 you must pay. Etc. This gets more complicated with bluffing.

It's also easy to read people on the internet. People still bluff and call with patterns that reveal their hand, and observant players can take advantage of this. That's why the same players always win at the high-stakes table. That's why, in the recent World Series of Poker, the winner was an internet player who had never played a live game before

For more information on internet poker, please see PokerTips.org . This is a great site that has lots of strategy information and reviews of online casinos so you know which ones you can trust.