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Playing Poker Online In 2012

November 29, 2011

With 2012 fast approaching I thought that now would be a good time to write a post about playing poker online in 2012.  There have been many changes to the world of online poker in 2011. The industry is almost unrecognizable today compared to this same time a year ago.  There is still a lot of turmoil but things are starting to settle down. Playing poker online next year is going to be more difficult for people from the US but this may only be temporary. The US government has made deals with some online poker sites that would allow them to legally offer their services in this country once online poker is fully regulated. I am not aware of any particular Bill that would do this but other poker sites like Party Poker have also been very active in the USA.

This is very good news for Americans but I also have some good news from players from around the world. Full Tilt Poker is one of the companies that will be allowed to operate in the United States but that is just a side note to the deal they made with the DOJ recently. Millions of online poker players have been waiting to be paid the money owed to them by Full Tilt since around April of 2011. This money should be paid soon, hopefully by Christmas.

There have also been some popular innovations to online poker in 2011. I will cover a couple of the major developments that will have a big impact on the way we play online poker in 2012.

Time Tournaments - MTT’s Will Never Be The Same

Pokerstars recently launched a new tournament structure that is going to be a big hit in 2012. Time Tournaments have fixed time lengths that range from 15 minutes to a couple hours and they do not have a fixed prize pool structure. I will scale down a typical poker tournament to make it easier to understand. Let’s say you play in a $1 Time Tournament with 99 other players.  The time length is 15 minutes and each player gets 100 starting chips. This makes each chip in play worth one cent. If you are the chip leader with 1,500 chips after 15 minutes you would win $15. If you were the short stack with 8 chips you would win 8 cents. This new type of tournament is sure to be copied by other online poker sites in 2012.

Webcam Poker - An Old Idea Recently Perfected

Webcam poker surely isn’t something new or innovative but no online poker room has been able to pull it off successfully until recently. 888 Poker, a non-US room (for now) has been offering HD quality webcam poker tables for a little while now. This will likely spread to other rooms in 2012 and may one day become the standard quo. This adds some cools twists to playing poker online. You may want to start practicing your poker face and reading up on common tells.