Online Poker Trends

COVID-19 has shuttered the casinos, so here’s what amateurs need to know to play online with the pros.

The COVID-19 virus has wreaked havoc not only on the economy in general but also on the live poker arena. Essentially, all casinos have closed, forcing poker players to play online instead.

• Poker players today are spoiled for choice when choosing an online poker room thanks to dozens of poker sites providing their online poker services to them. However, with so many leading poker sites available online, the selection process can become quite confusing and stressful at times, especially to newcomers entering the online poker community.
• Google Trends - Online Poker. Players who preferred to play live poker games are now being drawn towards online poker rooms for income, entertainment, and keeping their skills sharp until all this is over and they can go back to playing live poker again. Then there are recreational players who play poker for fun and visit casinos occasionally.

Online poker is typically more difficult than live. It tends to attract less pure recreational players. Also, with the speed of online poker it is harder to get 'bored' and play bad hands like in live. So winrates are simply always lower online compared to live.

Anyone new to online poker will find that it somewhat similar to live poker but should note a few major differences. In a casino or home game, players can see their opponents. That enables astute readers of people to adjust their strategy to take advantage of the mistakes opponents are making.

For example, a specific opponent might sit up a bit more when he has a strong hand and slouch with a weak hand. When his posture improves, fold decently strong but non-premium hands. When the slouch returns, bluff him out of the pot.

Online, players can’t see opponents. Some strong live players fail online because their best skill (reading their opponents’ mannerisms) has been taken away.

But instead of relying on physical tells, players should instead learn a fundamentally sound strategy and adjust it only if opponents make mistakes they can capitalize on.

Some strong live players fail online because their best skill has been taken away.

Declining win rate

In live poker, a potential win rate can be quite high, perhaps 30 big blinds per 100 hands in cash games filled with recreational players. With $1/$2 no-limit, that works out to about a $20 per hour win rate.

Online though, players are generally stronger at the same buy-in, resulting in much lower win rates. At $1/$2 online, the best players in the world win about $8 per 100 hands, which is about 40% as much as live players.

That may not sound too bad because more hands are played per hour online, but consider the fate of those who aren’t the best players in the world. If they win at $10 per hour live, they may win only $2 per hour online—or even lose.

As the win rate decreases, players must keep a larger bankroll to ensure they don’t go broke because of the standard variance of poker. In general, strong live players may need to keep only 25 buy-ins in their bankroll, whereas online players often need 100 buy-ins or more. Make sure to understand the variance of the game before signing up to play!

More than one table

When playing live, there’s only one table to focus on at a time. Playing just one table online leaves a long wait for the next hand. With a lot of downtime, why not play more tables?

A pro who sits down for a long online tournament session might load up 20 tournaments at a time ranging from $100 to $2,500 buy-ins. That provides the opportunity to invest a lot of money in a short period of time, even with a relatively low win rate at each individual table. Winning a little bit on a lot of tables can produce more profits in the long run than winning a bit more on only a few tables.

Online Poker Trends Websites

While readers may not want to learn to play 20 games at once, they should learn to play at least four. To master that skill, spend a few hours playing about twice as many tables as normal but for tiny stakes. Continue playing tiny stakes while adding more tables. Once a player can handle eight or so at a time, playing four will seem like a breeze.

Juggling lots of tables, players get comfortable with making decisions quickly and moving onto the next hand. Don’t wait to see what happens after making a substantial bet. Move on to the next decision. Shortly, it will become apparent whether that substantial bet on the other table won or lost.

Unlicensed and unregulated

While some sort of legitimate gaming commission regulates and licenses essentially all casinos, that’s not necessarily true for online poker sites. Legal sites available in some states include PartyPoker, PokerStars, 888, WSOP and Borgata. Those sites are safe and operate like major casinos.

Play only on the licensed, regulated sites. If none are available in a region and a player decides to frequent bogus sites, he should keep only enough money in them to play for one day. Shady sites may close and refuse to return money.

The government has closed nearly every illegal site in America over the last 15 years, and the others have failed without meeting their obligations or have simply stolen money from players. If taking a risk on one, be sure to keep it minimal.

During the last year, extremely shady mobile apps have come onto the market. Don’t play on them. They may demand a deposit through a middleman the player doesn’t know, and there’s no assurance a mysterious middleman will pay winners. The apps have the potential to be crooked in many ways. They don’t have security or fraud teams. Strong online players may lose on the apps, mainly from rarely winning when they get all-in. If something seems fishy, it probably is. The apps are nothing but trouble. Be smart!

PokerStars Sunday Million
An international online poker tournament held late in March shattered a record for entries and generated an $18.6 million prize pool, making it one of the largest online tournaments ever. PokerStars said the “Sunday Million” prize pool was the largest in company history. A record 93,016 entries played in the $215 buy-in tournament.
“AAAArthur” bested the other finalists, winning the championship on the final hand with a full house—twos over Jacks—and collecting nearly $1.2 million. Runner-up “CrAzY sTeFaN” pocketed $921,328. It’s the third-largest prize pool in the history of online poker.

Jonathan Little, a professional poker player and WPT Player of the Year, has amassed more than $7 million in live tournament winnings, written 14 best-selling books and teaches at pokercoaching.com.
@jonathanlittle

Online gambling is one of the fastest-growing industries today. While the first quarter of the year decimated many other entertainment fields due to COVID 19, online casinos flourished and showed they are incredibly sensible to customers’ needs. Gambling trends in 2020 have a lot to teach other industries when it comes to flexibility and innovation.

The market size value of online gambling businesses is estimated to almost $60 billion in 2020, while that number is expected to rise to $127 billion in the next seven years. The market always has something new to offer, and a lot has been improved on the go.

So what are the exciting innovations we can see in the online gambling world this year? Let’s look at the most important changes.

There is a real croupier dealing, a physical deck of cards and the green cloth – everything is real, but you are in the commodity of your own home. Live dealer games have become increasingly popular during this year. All through live streaming services so you and other players can have a genuine, yet safe gambling experience.

Traditional online table games used to involve random number generators which didn’t really sit well with the players. There is charm and authenticity in being served by an elegant croupier that can never be replaced by a machine, no matter how statistically perfect the results may be.

Another reason why this type of gambling became enormously sought after is the authenticity of the environment. Lighting, sound and ambient looks professional and there are multiple cameras recording every dealer’s move from multiple angles. Players can even talk with them and other players during the game.

Whether you’re into poker, roulette, blackjack or any other table game, you can relax at home while having a genuine brick-and-mortar casino experience.

Many major and new online casinos like 777 Slots Bay are already accepting crypto as a legitimate payment method, but it seems that this digital currency has gained significant traction in the previous year. This trend is rising continuously for several reasons.

Blockchain technology offers transparency and security at the same time. Every transaction made using cryptocurrencies is anonymous and all existing data about the transfer is incorruptible. This is achieved by storing data about the transaction across multiple nodes (meaning that it is stored on many different computers).

Related to the aforementioned fact, it is important to note that there is no single physical or virtual location that stores cryptocurrency. Different users own different amounts, yes, but the data about the transactions, users and value is owned and distributed by all participants.

Furthermore, when doing a transaction using crypto, there are no third parties like banks and gateways. This enables transfers to be almost instantaneous. There are minimal transaction fees and no hidden costs and conversions.

One of the most unusual recent trends is the rapid increase of women who participate in online gambling games. Whether the online experience suits them better than the real-life casinos or is it just the result of the current lifestyle, no one can tell for sure.

But new online gambling sites have embraced this new clientele readily. Some sites even specialize in games made for ladies. Since the average age of this group is 25-35 years, the games are made to follow the mentality and interests of a younger population.

The rate at which women enter the gambling world has been higher than that of the male population in the past two years. No one can tell for sure if this trend is going to continue, but if it does, it will definitely make a huge impact on the industry. Probably for the better.

Although virtual reality gaming is nothing new, it has entered the gambling realm only recently. Even so, the incredible popularity of games incorporating virtual and augmented reality has made this niche spread like wildfire.

Online Poker Trends 2019

Virtual reality games enable players to share the same virtual space, like sitting at the same table and talking to others while playing. Although this technology is still in the making, it is evolving rapidly and in a few years, we might be able to sit in the same virtual room playing poker, while looking at each other.

Augmented reality is similar, but doesn’t use a virtual environment. Rather, it uses a real environment and then adds overlays to make it more interesting. It also enables visual effects, distorsions and animations that can be preset or chosen by the players. The whole experience is very immersive and adds a certain layer of fun that is completely new to gambling.

Mobile devices have taken over literally every online market, and online gambling is no exception. There is an increasing demand for mobile gambling platforms and developers are busy trying to deliver mobile optimization and new, custom-made games for these devices. Statistics show that a significant share of players prefers mobile gambling, and those numbers are only rising.

While the majority of online gambling sites have already optimized their content for mobile devices, it is evident that gambling apps are much more popular among the players. Hopefully, this new demand will be addressed in the next couple of years.

Online Poker Trends Games

Adapting classic games like roulette or poker to a small, vertical screen might be a bigger challenge than it seems, though. A lot of developers share an opinion that mobile gaming will bring novelties to the gaming style, but this is yet to be seen.

Online Poker Trends Free

The year 2020 is definitely the year of online gambling. So many innovations emerged recently, and so many new technologies have become a norm. The industry grows at an insane pace, and we’re sure that gamblers all over the world are in for a truly fantastic ride!