Online Poker

Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide.

Traditional or brick and mortar, live venues for playing poker, such as casinos and poker rooms, may be intimidating for novice players and are often located in geographically disparate locations. In addition, brick and mortar casinos are reluctant to promote poker because it is difficult for them to profit from it. Though the rake, or time charge, of traditional casinos is often high, the opportunity costs of running a poker room are even higher. Brick and mortar casinos often make much more money by removing poker rooms and adding more slot machines.

Online venues, by contrast, are dramatically cheaper because they have much smaller overhead costs. For example, adding another table does not take up valuable space like it would for a brick and mortar casino. Online poker rooms also allow the players to play for low stakes as low as 1¢/2¢ and often offer poker free roll tournaments where there is no entry fee, attracting beginners and/or less wealthy clientele.

Online venues may be more vulnerable to certain types of fraud, especially collusion between players. However, they have collusion detection abilities that do not exist in brick and mortar casinos. For example, online poker room security employees can look at the hand history of the cards previously played by any player on the site, making patterns of behavior easier to detect than in a casino where colluding players can simply fold their hands without anyone ever knowing the strength of their holding. Online poker rooms also check players' IP addresses in order to prevent players at the same household or at known open proxy servers from playing on the same tables

Typically, online poker rooms generate the bulk of their revenue via four methods. First, there is the rake. Rake is collected from most real money ring game pots. The rake is normally calculated as a percentage of the pot based on a sliding scale and capped at some maximum fee. Each online poker room determines its own rake structure. Since the expenses for running an online poker table are smaller than those for running a live poker table, rake in most online poker rooms is much smaller than its brick and mortar counterpart.

Second, hands played in pre-scheduled multi-table and impromptu sit-and-go tournaments are not raked, but rather an entry fee around five to ten percent of the tournament buy-in is added to the entry cost of the tournament. These two are usually specified in the tournament details as, e.g., $20+$2 $20 represents the buy-in that goes into the prize pool and $2 represents the entry fee, de facto rake. Unlike real casino tournaments, online tournaments do not deduct dealer tips and other expenses from the prize pool.

Third, some online poker sites also offer games like blackjack or side bets on poker hands where the player plays against the house for real money. The odds are in the house's favor in these games, thus producing a profit for the house. Some sites go as far as getting affiliated with online casinos, or even integrating them into the poker room software.

Fourth, like almost all institutions that hold money, online poker sites invest the money that players deposit. Regulations in most jurisdictions exist in an effort to limit the sort of risks sites can take with their clients' money. However, since the sites do not have to pay interest on players' bankrolls even low-risk investments can be a significant source of revenue.

Differences compared with conventional poker

There are substantial differences between online poker gaming and conventional, in-person gaming.

One obvious difference is that players do not sit right across from each other, removing any ability to observe others' reactions and body language. Instead, online poker players learn to focus more keenly on betting patterns, reaction time, speed of play, use of check boxes/auto plays, opponents' fold/flop percentages, chat box, waiting for the big blind, beginners' tells, and other behavior tells that are not physical in nature. Since poker is a game that requires adaptability, successful online players learn to master the new frontiers of their surroundings.

Another less obvious difference is the rate of play. In brick and mortar casinos, the dealer has to collect the cards, shuffle, and deal them after every hand. Due to this and other delays common in offline casinos, the average rate of play is around thirty hands per hour. However, online casinos do not have these delays. The dealing and shuffling are instantaneous, there are no delays relating to counting chips for a split pot, and on average, the play is faster due to auto-action buttons where the player selects his action before his turn. It is not uncommon for an online poker table to average ninety to one hundred hands per hour.

Online poker is considerably cheaper to play than conventional poker in many ways. While the rake structures of online poker sites might not differ fundamentally from those in brick and mortar operations, most of the other incidental expenses that are entailed by playing poker in a live room do not exist in online poker. An online poker player can play at home and thus incur no transportation costs to get to and from the poker room. Provided the player already has a somewhat modern computer and an Internet connection, there are no further up-front equipment costs to get started. There are also considerable incidental expenses once on a live poker table. In addition to the rake, tipping the dealers, chip runners, servers and other casino employees is almost universally expected, putting a further drain on a player's profits. Also, whereas an online player can enter and leave tables almost as he pleases, once seated at a live table a player must remain there until he wishes to stop playing, or else go back to the bottom of the waiting list. Food and beverages at casinos are generally expensive even compared to other hospitality establishments in the same city let alone compared to at home and casino managers feel little incentive to comp poker players.

Kuhn poker

Kuhn poker is a simplified form of poker developed by Dr. Harold W. Kuhn. It is a zero sum two player game. The deck includes only three playing cards, for example a King, Queen, and Jack. One card is dealt to each player, then the first player must bet or pass, then the second player may bet or pass. If any player chooses to bet the opposing player must bet as well "call" in order to stay in the round. After both players pass or bet the player with the highest card wins the pot. Kuhn demonstrated that there are many game theoretic optimal strategies for the first player in this game, but only one for the second player, and that, when played optimally, the first player should expect to lose at a rate of −1/18 per hand.

In more conventional poker terms:

Each player antes 1
Each player is dealt one of the three cards, and the third is put aside unseen
Player One can check or raise 1
If Player One checks then Player Two can check or raise 1
If Player Two checks there is a showdown for the pot of 2
If Player Two raises then Player One can fold or call
If Player One folds then Player Two takes the pot of 3
If Player One calls there is a showdown for the pot of 4
If Player One raises then Player Two can fold or call
If Player Two folds then Player One takes the pot of 3
If Player Two calls there is a showdown for the pot of 4

Pan

Pan is short for Panguingue

Playing Pan

Panguingue is a rummy-type game played with eight standard 52-card decks with the 8's, 9's, and 10's removed, for a total of 320 cards. No jokers are used. Cards in each suit rank king (high), queen, jack, seven, six, etc. with aces being low. The cards are dealt counterclockwise

Players strive to meld eleven cards in valid sets of three or more cards. There are two kinds of melds: a rope which must be string of cards of matching suits, squares consisting of the ranks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Jack or Queen. Squares must be either all cards of different suits or all the same suit. Squares consisting of Kings or Aces qualify regardless of suit. There are no betting rounds in the game.

Each player is dealt 10 cards to meld into sets and sequences with certain cards having special values. Each player, in turn, draws either a card from the top of the remaining deck or from the top of an adjacent discard pile. This sequence of play continues until one player goes out with a total meld of eleven cards, including the card(s) just drawn. Melds (or spread) must be at least three cards, and it may be as many as eleven. The melds are classified as ropes and squares. The rope is any three cards in sequence of the same suit. A square is a set of three cards in the same rank and of different suits or of the same suit. All 3s, 5s and 7s are valle cards (cards of value). Cards of other rank are non-valle. Any three aces or any three kings form a set, regardless of the suit.