Best Online Poker Gambling Sites
Welcome to the World of Online Poker.
But there are also downsides to live casino poker, which we’ll talk about later. It’s because of these downsides that we recommend you play poker online, too. And to do that, you’ll need an account with one of the best Nevada poker sites.
The online poker boom has cooled off after being affected by the UIGEA and Black Friday, but even if the growth rate of ”America’s favorite pastime” has slowed down, there are still hundreds of thousands of people playing poker online every day.
Our mission is to show you the most legitimate poker websites to play at. Additionally, we’ll guide you through different deposit and withdrawal methods (yes, we also tackle Bitcoin), as well as rate subscription poker training websites.
In a nutshell, we want to guide you through the world of online poker safely. Most informational sites have other intentions; for example, you’ll find plenty of websites giving the sites the review 10/10 ratings, which basically means perfect. If a website ranks several poker rooms with a perfect ten, you have a good reason not to trust that website’s recommendations.
| Rank | DE Gambling Site | Sign Up Bonus | Get Started |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 888 | 100% up to $88 |
Basics of Online Poker
Online poker is the bread and butter of many of our readers here at GamblingSites.net. Unlike all other forms of gambling, online poker isn’t played against the house. It is played against other players. Therefore, it is entirely possible to earn a positive win-rate over the long term. When you join one of the top USA real money online poker sites listed on CardsChat.com, you will find lots of easy-to-beat players. You can use simple and secure banking options such as credit &. The safest online poker sites are regulated by international gambling authorities. Look for a stamp of approval from places like Gibraltar, Alderney, and Malta.
Hundreds of sites operate within the online poker industry, but what you may not know is that many of them share networks with each other, thus creating bigger player pools, which in turn create more games and higher prize pools.
”Player liquidity” is an important puzzle to solve for internet poker websites since you always need more than one person to get a game running, and lots of players if you want lots of games running. Unlike games like blackjack, slot machines and video poker, which are played against the house, poker relies on a high volume of participants to keep things going.
Player liquidity is exactly why it’s difficult to succeed by starting an online poker site today. Giant companies like PokerStars and Party Poker have already established themselves within the internet poker market and are attracting huge amounts of players – all the other issues aside, how is a start-up poker room going to convince people to sign-up when you can go to one of the giants and find plenty of games running 24/7 and participate in tournaments with prize pools worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars?
Even if a start-up operation was able to attract thousands of real-money customers to their site – which is a major feat by itself – they would only have simultaneous customers online in the tens or (at most) low hundreds at peak hours (such is the nature of the business); PokerStars, on the other hand, has around 19,000 simultaneous cash-game players online on average, and the figure goes way up during peak hours. Again, why would you play at one of the start-up sites? Player traffic, which leads to more games (by both quantity and variety) and bigger prizes, is a big customer benefit.
How PokerStars Became #1
Being extremely successful usually comes down to two things: doing the right things and having the right dosage of luck. For PokerStars, it so happened that Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker main event – along with its $x prize – after qualifying for the tournament through a $22 satellite tournament at PokerStars.
The moment Moneymaker won the WSOP is often considered the start of the online poker boom, and the numbers certainly indicate that being true: estimated online poker revenue grew from $365 million in 2003 to $2.4 billion in 2006.
The result? PokerStars was mentioned in almost every article about Moneymaker’s unbelievable winning effort. Moneymaker also won PokerStars-branded clothing automatically because he qualified through one of their satellite tournaments – which would be shown on television to millions of people – so it was great press for PokerStars in many ways.
The second big, future-defining moment for PokerStars came in 2006 when President George W. Bush made the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act a law. Plenty of internet poker rooms either folded or simply prohibited U.S. customers, including the biggest poker room at the time, Party Poker.
PokerStars, however, did no such thing. They were the second most popular online poker room in the world, and after Party Poker exited the U.S. market, PokerStars became #1. They took the U.S. market by storm with plenty of marketing and great promotions, not to mention high-quality software.
Without the UIGEA, who knows what would have happened? Party Poker was comfortably in the lead player traffic-wise, and it’s difficult to overtake a dominant leader in the online poker industry. In fact, ever since Party Poker left the U.S. online poker market, PokerStars has been the dominant leader and the rest of the sites are far away. The point being: player liquidity matters perhaps more than any factor. (The people at Party Poker were no strangers to marketing either, sponsoring events like the World Poker Tour and organizing the infamous Party Poker Million cruise.)
We’ve come a long way since the ’90s when you could still request a CD-ROM to be delivered home in order to install gambling software. Well, not that long, since fundamentally online poker software is still the same, although more secure, user-friendly and capable than before. The biggest change during the past few years has been mobile; more and more gambling sites have to make the adjustment to mobile games as screen sizes get bigger and mobile phones more efficient. The change has been more drastic in the sports betting and casino markets, but online poker is making its way to mobile as well.
Our site is called Legit Gambling Sites and the name does a fine job at explaining our main purpose, which is to showcase all the legitimate online gambling operations so that you could safely gamble on the internet. We’ve been victims of online gambling fraud, so believe me: there are plenty of real-money poker websites looking to take your money and disappear with it.
As highlighted on the home page, Lock Poker is a current (2015) example of a scam operation. According to estimates, it has scammed its customers for at least $15 million, and the real figure may be significantly larger than that. To make matters worse, its customers have virtually no way of receiving any compensation since there’s nobody who can force the owners to do anything about it. (The site was licensed in the jurisdiction of Curacao, which, by the way, took a long time to freeze Lock Poker’s license even though player withdrawal times were delayed for several months.)
Promotions
Poker is different from other casino games in one significant way: it’s played against other players, so the house takes its (small) cut out of each pot instead of trying to win your money. While casinos prefer that you lose your money (they want you to be entertained and come back but eventually lose), poker sites would rather see you keep on playing as long as possible, since they make money based on how many hands you play, not how much your lose or win.
Therefore online poker promotions are different from casino and betting promotions: while neither wants to give you free money, poker sites want to see you play, so clearing their bonus offers is often realistic (although success rate depends on your skills and how you match against your opponents). Casinos, on the other hand, would love to see you deposit and lose; the deposit bonus offer may look attractive, but is all but impossible to clear all too often (there are exceptions, which we highlight in the casino site section).
Bottom-line: you won’t be able to clear poker or casino bonuses if you lose your money, but whether you lose at poker depends on your skills, while skill only plays a minor factor at casino games (unless you play blackjack).
So how does a poker deposit bonus work? It’s all about rake. The more you play, the closer you get to clearing the bonus. If you play well (in other words, clearly better than your opponents), you’ll find it easy to clear a deposit bonus; if you’re a losing player, however, it will be difficult to clear one.
Most poker bonus offers require you to collect a certain amount of player points in exchange for a certain amount of bonus money. The maximum amount of bonus money you’re allowed to clear depends on the size of your deposit and the maximum deposit limit that qualifies for the bonus.
You accumulate player points based on how much rake you pay (for example, you might accumulate one player point for every $1 paid in rake). The term ”player point,” however, makes it sound less like you’re asked to contribute a certain amount of money in order to receive the bonus. However, anyone can do the math since bonus terms and such are easy to find on just about any online poker room’s website.
Bigger internet poker rooms like PokerStars also have VIP programs which make it possible to exchange player points into tournament tickets, merchandise and even money.
Are you looking for the best US legal online poker sites or a real money poker app? If the answer is yes, then you came to the right place. This is one of our many online poker reviews where you can find more about the best online poker options.
Without further ado, keep reading to discover how to play the best online poker for money and how to form an online poker strategy. So, let’s get started!
Contents
Best Legal Online Poker Sites
Best Online Gambling Sites For Poker
- WSOP
- PartyPoker
- PokerStars
- Pala Poker
- 888poker
- Global Poker
Is online poker legal? It's not always the same as legal online casinos and legal online sportsbooks. All new players who decide to explore the vast universe of real money poker sites should know that federally, online poker sites are illegal. However, on the individual level, online poker is legal in some of the states.
Some websites such as Global Poker (which is a sweepstakes poker site) are allowed in 49 out of 50 US states. Only Washington does not allow it. At the moment of writing our online poker reviews, only four states offer legal online poker websites in the United States. These are the following: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware.
For more information about some of the available sites, make sure to consult our Global Poker review.
US Legal Online Poker: State by State
Is online poker legal in your state? If the answer is no, keep in mind that the situation can change pretty quickly. Unsurprisingly, Nevada was the leader of regulated online poker. Once the ice was broken, the domino-effect followed.
One by one, many states tried or are still trying to pass the legislation. As you can see, some of them even succeeded. The last one to recently pass online poker is West Virginia, and we expect more legal US poker sites to be launched in the future.
When it comes to future predictions, we believe that chances are pretty good for some of the states to overcome all the legal obstacles and finally launch real money poker sites so their residents become able to play legal online poker.
Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, New York are some of the states that’ll probably make some innovations when it comes to the possibilities of playing poker online. These are the states that have active supporters of online poker in the state senate.
What’s more, regulated real money poker sites in neighboring states can only have a positive effect on public opinion. Additionally, within the borders of the aforementioned states, you can find a considerable number of land-based casinos.
Many of them come with the best online poker rooms where you can play various variants of poker, including the most popular one - Texas Hold’em. In other words, these poker offline options make it easier to launch legal poker sites and eventually start to offer legal online poker.
States Where Legal Online Poker Seems Like a Distant Dream
From this point of view, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah are just some of the states where we can see a certain legislative hostility towards online gambling. Therefore, we don’t believe that we won’t be able to play Texas Hold’em online there for quite some time.
Sweepstakes Legal Online Poker - Play Poker Free No Matter Which State You’re In
As said before, Global Poker, a sweepstakes legal online poker site, can be accessed in all US states except for the state of Washington. This legal online poker platform was launched in 2106, and since then, many players use its services. The virtual currency gaming business model is what makes it unique.
Best Online Poker Gambling Sites
Instead of playing for real money, players play poker free, using gold coins or sweeps cash. That’s why Global Poker often appears when players search for “play poker free” or “play poker online, free”.
To understand how sweepstakes poker works, let’s start with some poker basics and make sure to understand sweeps poker terminology clearly. There’s a difference between gold coins and sweeps cash, and there’s a reason for which “play poker online, free” is actually a bit of a misnomer here.
Gold Coins are the name for the virtual currency in Global Poker, and they are equivalent to what regular legal online poker sites usually call “play money”. In other words, you can’t cash them out, but you can use them to play Texas Hold’em online or participate in some of the available tournaments with other players. On the other hand, “$weeps cash” is a promotional, virtual currency that can be cashed out through PayPal.
To sum up, you can buy gold coins that don’t have any monetary value and can’t be cashed out. “$weeps cash” is obtained as free of charge once you buy Gold Coins. Because of this virtual currency online poker model, Global Poker is not quite considered an online gambling activity. Therefore, it’s allowed in almost all of the US.
Where Can I Play Legal Online Poker in the US?
Pennsylvania is the last state where online poker had become legal when PokerStars was launched there at the end of 2019. Right now that’s also the only available option to play online poker for money in Pennsylvania.
If we don’t count Global Poker, which can be accessed in 49 states, all the other legal online poker sites come with pretty restricted access. For example, Pala Poker and PartyPoker are only available in the state of New Jersey.
However, they are not the only NJ poker sites one can access. WSOP, America's top legal online poker site, is available in the Garden State, and it’s also accessible to all Nevada online poker fans as well. Likewise, PokerStars NJ, available both independently and within the FOX Bet app
Claim the WSOP promo code in New Jersey and Nevada to get a $1,000 signup bonus!Where Can I Play Poker Live?
Most of the land-based casinos across different states include special poker rooms where you can play live poker. Playing Texas Hold’em online is definitely the most popular option. After all, poker is an American thing, so it’s no wonder to see it available in the vast majority of mortar and bricks casinos.
In fact, instead of listing all the states where you can sit back, relax and try out your luck with live poker, it’s better to list all those where you can’t play poker online. It’ll be easier to remember this list:
- Alaska
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- New Hampshire
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
We must add that in Texas, private poker clubs aren’t forbidden. As long as no house makes a profit from the game, poker can be played in private places for fun.
US Online Poker Basics
When talking about the current status of legal US poker sites, there are two especially important laws that you should be aware of. Let’s take a look at these two federal laws that govern online poker in the country.
The Wire Act
The first one is the Interstate Wire Act of 1961, often called the Federal Wire Act. As you can see, it passed long before online poker or even the internet existed. However, it prohibits certain types of betting businesses to operate via wired communications.
In 2011, the US Department of Justice concluded that the scope of the act was limited to sporting events. Therefore, states, where online poker is now regulated, found that the bill didn’t apply to online poker nor other forms of gambling.
However, in 2019, the US Department of Justice reversed its opinion. The new opinion concludes that the Wire Act applies to all types of online gambling.
The UIGEA
The other relevant law is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) from 2006. This law made it illegal for US banks to proceed with transactions for offshore gambling companies. That’s how they were pushed out of the market.
History of US Legal Online Poker
Online casinos started to appear back in 1994. They were usually situated in Antigua or the Isle of Man. However, the vast majority of their users were US-based customers. Two years later, in 1996, online gambling was also brought to the North American market soil.
Best Online Blackjack Gambling Sites
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission was established just outside Montreal. They started issuing licenses, and pretty soon, it was possible to find hundreds of new online gambling websites.
Once again, two years later and again in Canada, the first-ever poker online website saw the light of day. Planet Poker was the favorite source of fun to thousands of Americans who were spending endless hours playing the first real-money online Texas Hold’em.
Over the next few years, thanks to technological advances, better online poker software was developed, while the number of websites kept increasing. These online poker operators also started to offer various tournaments and cash games and got a solid fan base all over the world.
The Industry Kept Growing & Then It Collapsed
Even though there were different interpretations of the law, especially of the famous Wire Act, the newly developed industry kept growing.
The year 2003 is especially important in the evolution of online poker. Using an account from Tennessee, Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker after participating in the event through an online satellite. In Chris Moneymaker's case, we guess, it's okay to say that name determines destiny.
This online poker strategy was live-streamed on ESPN. Suddenly, the whole nation knew about Chris's story. A good number of Americans were hoping to be the next. All of a sudden, poker was everywhere on TV. Live games were followed carefully, and commercial breaks had one purpose: promoting online poker for money and playing Texas Hold 'em online.
The great number of promoted sites were, in fact, offshore online poker sites. A lot of them disappeared from American browsers after Congress passed the above-mentioned UIGEA in 2006.
However, even though a lot of sites weren't accessible anymore, online poker couldn't be erased that easily. Some of the offshore gambling companies had found a way around the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, but not for long.
In 2011, some of the largest online poker operators, including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet, were accused of violating UIGEA and money laundering. These websites were definitely excluded from the significant US online poker market, which seemed to come to an end at the time.
Legal Online Poker Sites Rise Again
Also in 2011, the DOJ released a legal opinion that the Federal Wire act exclusively applied only to one form of gambling: sports betting. A few states saw this as a possibility, paving the way to regulated online casinos and legal US poker sites.
In 2012, Delaware was the first state that managed to do just that. Then, in December 2013, Nevada followed the example of passing online poker legislation. A week later, the Garden State became the third to legalize online gambling, and plans for NJ poker sites were made.
The first-ever regulated US online poker site was launched in Nevada in April 2013. Delaware and NJ poker sites went live that same year, a few months later. In 2017, Pennsylvania became the fourth state to join this group. West Virginia is the fifth state where online poker was regulated in 2019. Probably, more states will try to do the same thing in the near future.
Best Online Poker Gambling Sites
Which State is Next?
Is online poker legal in California or New York? This is one of the frequently asked questions that people search for in the USA. They also search for different terms of poker terminology that sound unfamiliar to them. However, that’s another question that we could discuss on some other occasion.
Let’s get back to our question of legal online poker sites and the possible new markets in the USA. Michigan has made significant efforts to legalize online gambling, particularly online poker, while California, New York, and Massachusetts also seem to be moving in the right direction.
Real Money Poker App: How to Find the Best Poker App
It doesn’t matter if you are a Pennsylvania online poker fan or a regular visitor of NJ poker sites, the good news is that you can play poker whenever you want, anywhere within the borders of one or the other state.
Many of the best online poker websites have launched a dedicated real money poker app that you can easily download and install on your device. The best poker apps are available for both iOS and Android operating systems.
In order to find the best poker app, make sure you visit one of the websites we listed at the beginning of our review.
Also, before you replace your poker offline adventure with the one that can be found on the internet, make sure to read some of the online poker reviews and get to know the poker terminology used by the players worldwide. After a brief introduction to the poker basics, it’s time to create your own online poker strategy and join one of the legal online poker communities!