Online gaming has become extremely popular over the last few years and there are numerous poker news sites where you can get the very latest information, not only about the game in its various different forms, but also about players, tournaments, freerolls, and the different online poker rooms that are active on the Internet. The attractiveness of poker as a game has increased exponentially since the turn of the century, not just as an online game, but also as a spectator sport. Many tournaments are now shown on cable and Satellite television since the hole-card camera was introduced – this camera, patented in 1995, enables a player’s cards to be seen by a television audience when they are face down on the table. Using poker news sites it’s possible to follow the coverage of events such as the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour.
A new tournament, the first ever PokerNews Cup, got under way this month (October 2007) with one player securing a seat with a $50,000 deposit! It is possible to win seats with freerolls of up to $12,000 at this and other tournaments in pre-tournament competitions, thus ensuring “good viewing” There are three ways of playing poker then – there is live poker, where individual players gather around a table for a game that may or may not be filmed (the PokerNews Cup and the World Series fall under this category). There is online poker, which is essentially the same as live poker, with the exception that players are facing each other over the Internet. Finally there is video poker, where the player plays against a machine – this may be a slot machine in a live casino or a video machine on an Internet site.