Beginners that have never played online Texas Hold ‘me will often question whether online poker is legit or not. This is understandable in many way as both gambling and the online world often don’t have the best of reputations, so when combined there can be possible room for concern. In terms of the legality of online poker in the UK (where this blog is written from), online poker is perfectly legal with the UK government seemingly wanting to make the UK a hub for online gambling (which they can then regulate and tax to the hilt no doubt). Although in the largest market for online poker, the US, it has recently been made illegal to play poker online for real money. Whether this restriction stays in place is debatable, but if you are an online poker player in the United States at the moment and you want to play for money, you’re going to have a tough time finding a game.

There are occasional cries from players of collusion or that the games are fixed. Strangely this tends to be after a series of bad beats! Due to the sheer size and popularity of online poker at the moment you are going to get a range of players online all with varying degrees of skill and strategy. This will include the “kamikaze” type players where “all in” is their personal mantra. You will lose to these players. Even if you have a solid game and statistically you are a massive favourite, you will still lose hands against these clowns. This scenario is one which it would be easy to cry foul, or claim that the game is rigged. Simply put, if it was proved that a poker room was fixing a game it would potentially be the end of poker online. Period.

Online poker is extremely highly regulated through numerous different gaming regimes and in all honesty you will have a much higher chance of playing in a fair poker game online than you would in a real world casino. Don’t underestimate the sophistication of the monitoring systems in place at the various online poker rooms. You are downloading their own custom software to play poker so they can integrate as many monitoring systems into the software as they can possibly manage. Due to them having access to all poker hands player on all the tables, as well as user details, IP addresses, bank details, etc, any player attempting to collude with a friend or gang of players to scam the poker rooms should expect to be caught extremely quickly.