Before people could play poker online, they played in casinos. The best poker room in Las Vegas is the Bellagio and they have one room which seats a maximum of ten players. It should therefore be obvious that – compared to the action they can get by dealing blackjack or roulette – poker was not an attractive proposition for the casinos. This is part of the reason why poker has not been more popular in the
past – it is not very profitable for the casinos. However, nowadays, thanks to the online revolution, a lot of people play poker.
Going back in time a few years, $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em (NLHE) was considered “high stakes” and there was not much action avail‐ able online any higher. Slowly, and with some reluctance, sites added newer and higher stakes games that, at the time, caused great excitement among the players. The availability of $5/$10 NLHE games was a big deal, and then later when $10/$20 NLHE was added that was a big deal too.
As late as December of 2005 I emailed PokerStars Cardroom man‐ ager Lee Jones making the case for adding $25/$50 NLHE games. He responded, “No, I’m afraid we’re not going to deploy bigger no limit hold’em games any time soon … that’s not carved in stone (nothing in this business is) but unless I see a major shift that I’m not expecting, we won’t be doing it.” However since then they have added $25/$50 and then even $100/$200 and $200/$400 NLHE in ad‐ dition.
The second most popular poker site is Full Tilt Poker. What makes them special is that they have the highest stakes poker games avail‐ able. They host $1,000/$2,000 mixed limit games, $1,000/$2,000 LHE, along with $300/$600 Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) and $500/1,000 NLHE. Clearly therefore there is a huge amount of money involved – and it will pay massive dividends if you can learn to play it well.
