Randall J. Lopez 
The online gaming market has exploded in recent years due to the rise of mobile gaming, with the market being worth billions of dollars. Poker is one of the most popular casino games. So when the pandemic caused brick-and-mortar entertainment establishments to shut, people began cashing in online — resulting in record revenues in different states and huge pots in online tournaments. The 2020 WSOP.com Super Circuit Series even increased the prize money from $1.24 million to $4 million after a higher-than-expected turnout of players online. This sudden boom in online poker isn’t just because live poker players are transitioning to online games. Instead, a rising number of people have also tried out the competition.
If you’re among those who are considering taking up online poker, below are a few reasons that can convince you:
It’s convenient
The first reason to try online poker is its convenience, as it eliminates the need to visit a casino and spend on travel and food physically. With online poker, you choose whether to play real money games or not. If you do, you can quickly deposit money and start playing from anywhere. If not, there are still several conveniences — such as having no player capacity restrictions and not needing to wait for vacancies at tables. Online poker also makes the thrilling card game accessible on devices from desktops to smartphones. Because of this, there are also several good poker apps available, giving you an option to play poker games offline or outside of browsers.
More accessible to those not familiar with the rules
When you play poker live, you can’t bring anything that could be used as a reference point as the opposing players would immediately capitalize on this. Any information, such as player ticks and betting patterns, will need to be logged after the game. When playing online poker, players can easily make notes while playing to try and recognize patterns. New players can also use poker hands ranking chart. This will reduce the chance of mistakenly betting with a lesser hand while not revealing to your opponents that you are new to the game.
It offers a broader selection of games.
There are many types of poker, such as Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and 7-Card Stud. But aside from the variation, online poker and poker apps also offer different interfaces and gameplay that can appeal to many people. For instance, the pandemic has ushered in live poker technology, which can give people the experience of playing at a live casino from their home. Through online streaming, players can play with a live dealer in real-time. With the wide selection of games online poker offers, you can choose to do multi-tabling to experience different games in a short amount of time.
It gives you bonuses and free money.
Online sites offer bonuses to their players — these can come in the form of welcome and loyalty bonuses, motivating both experienced and new players to keep joining more matches. There are even sites that give free money in return for signing up. Aside from that, there are also freeroll tournaments, where all you have to do is register and play. And when you end up among the top players, you can win real money. While these tournaments don’t have big money prizes, they have low-pressure games where you don’t have to risk anything.
