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Many people ask me "Why play poker online?"         Well there are a lot of reasons and I will tell you some here! The rake There is always a charge the card room must charge you to play. That is how they make there money! The most common way to do this is called 'the rake'. The 'rake' is a small portion of each pot the house keeps. It is always cheaper online. There are a lot more expenses running a live card room like rent, utilities and employees. Of course the online rooms have expenses as well, but they are less and they can pass the savings on to you! The average max rake online is $3.00, for a live game it is $4.00. That adds up because it is every hand! One more important factor, that many miss is how the rake is taken. In live rooms they take 10% of the pot up to the max. Online rooms tend to only take 5% up to the max rake. This means you don't pay as much rake on small pots. This will save a lot of money on a tight game, where the pots are small. Speed of play Well, if you have read the reviews you will know that speed of play is very important to me. And that is why I love online poker! You don't have to wait for a human dealer to shuffle the cards. There are no 'slow dealers' for a half hour. There is never a dropped card, or deck of cards. There is never a beverage server stopping the action. I find online poker allows 2-3 times as many hands as a live game, more if you play short handed. Anyone who plays good poker spends a lot of time waiting for cards to play, the faster dealer shortens the wait. Statistics This is the best reason of all. At online card rooms, you can get hand histories. This is a report of how all the hands played out. It will tell you who bet, checked, called, folded or raised! This is the most valuable information in the world of poker! You can see where you went wrong, or what you did right! You can learn how your opponents play, and learn how to defeat them. Some of the poker sites have statistics and note sections right at the table. These are all things you just can't get at a live game. Play anytime When I go to my local card room at 3:00AM, there is usually about 10-20 people there. Not exactly a lot of choice in games. Online you can find lots of games at any time. Online card rooms are world wide, with the most players coming from U.S.A., Canada, England and Australia. Of course there are players from other places on the globe as well, and this means 24 hour poker action! Another point to mention, sometimes I only have an hour or so to play. The live card room is 25 min away from me, with 25 min back how would I be able to play? Online is the answer! Stakes Do you like to play for thousands of dollars or for pennies? If you play online it doesn't matter! Online card rooms have all the popular stakes of the live card rooms plus micro stake games. A live card room could not afford to pay a dealer to deal penny ante games, but an online card room has no problem with it! Also there are a ton of tournaments to play in and sit-and-goes, where you wait for the table to fill and you play for a prize pool with fake chips. Play anywhere You can play online poker from the comfort of your own home! Some people play at work, but I bet your boss wouldn't like that! You could play at any place there is a computer! Driving to a card room that is far away from your house will cause wear and tear on your car, and gas isn't free. No tipping O.K., you can call me cheap. But if you think about it this can add up to a lot of money! In a live game, the dealer expects a tip for every pot you win, and the rake is already higher! At the card room I go to the booze is not free, but the soda and coffee is. But is it really? You can only get a free coffee from a beverage server, and if you don't tip them they don't come back! So I don't consider it free, and I find I have to pay more for the 8oz cup of coffee then I do at home. Hmmm, I guess I know that because I am cheep. To be fair... I consider myself a fair person. I also think online poker is better then live poker. However there are a few things a live card room has that online poker does not or can not offer. The first and biggest is your opponents face and reactions, if you can read people this is major and bad. If you can't read people than this again is major but good, and very good at that! If you play online you have to watch for betting patterns and other clues to your opponents play. Another problem is your access to your money. I don't mean safety because as long as you use established card rooms this is not an issue. There is a lag on getting your money in and out of online card rooms that you just don't have in a live room. The easiest way to get around this is to have a sufficient bankroll. The bankroll I would suggest is 300 big bets of the limit you play.