Online Poker’s Future

Online poker was once extremely profitable and very easy to make money at playing a pretty ABC style of play. You didn’t have to get tricky, or balance your hand ranges with bluffs, or reraise bluff preflop (3bet light, in poker vernacular). But of course when there is money to be made, people will come to make it. In the last five or six years, the games have toughened up significantly, due to the increasing amount of tough opponents, and the diminishing amount of recreational players. The latter is caused by the difficulties of depositing money onto poker sites, as US regulations have made it a little tricky to do so. Obviously a recreational player isn’t going to jump through hoops just to play some cards.

In 2005, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, was pased by the United States government. This law simply made it illegal to deposit money into online gambling sites by using certain methods, I believe bank wiring was the main method prohibited. However, most people thought that simply playing online poker was illegal, which is not true.

The games have continued to get more difficult and of course poker enthusiasts and professionals everywhere are hoping that the US decides to allow and regulate online poker. The billions this would generate in taxes every year are very attractive, especially at a time when the economy has been poor.

Recently, more rumblings of a possible regulation of online gambling and more specifically online poker have come about, and skeptics around the country have been brought to the happy realization that this is entirely a possibility.