Poker Games You Can Find Online

You don't have to go to the casinos to play casino style poker. You can play it online. Here are five websites that include poker games that you can play. For U.S. residents, the first two websites are free and pay cash. This is rare to find as online gambling was made illegal in the U.S. back in the fall of 2006.

Pureplay Poker

The poker game at pureplay.com is one which is a little different than most poker websites. You can play for free, or you can sign up for a $20 monthly membership to have access to additional tournaments. All the games where you can win money are tournaments at pureplaypoker.com. If you finish in the top half of a tournament, you will win points. Those points can then be used to enter other tournaments. The key is to build up your point totals so you can buy entries into the bigger prize games. You can also win entries into the weekly games such as the weekly $5,000, $2,000, and $500 tournaments.

The problem with pureplay.com is that the website really doesn't represent a true game of poker. People play there like it is play chips and they don't care if they get knocked out in the first hand because there is always another tournament starting shortly. This results in multiple people going all in early in the tournament with hands that players would fold in a real poker game. This is why pureplay.com has gotten the reputation of being more of a lotto game than a poker game.

Nopay Poker

Nopaypoker.com unlike pureplay.com never asks you to make a monthly membership payment. Neither of the websites require you gamble with your own money. Nopaypoker.com offers quite a few options for poker players. You can earn 26 chips a day by clicking on advertisements to play with, you can also earn them in other ways described on the website. There are regular ring table games, tournaments, freerolls, and even league games! Poker leagues for those of you that are not familiar with them allow you to play in a series of one table tournaments in which you award points. Based on the average number of points a game you earn in the league you will have a chance to qualify for a portion of the payout for the league.

The play at nopaypoker.com is much better than pureplay.com. The reason for this is that despite the fact that you don't pay a cent to the website, you can trade in 3000 chips for a varying cashout rate. Right now 3000 chips will earn you $30 at nopaypoker.com. Anyone you refer that joins using your referral link and cashes out for 3000 will result in you getting a 20% bonus added to your account. This results in people playing more seriously in tournaments and league play. The only issue with league play is that many people on the website tend to join a game and then set their account to "away" hoping to finish in the top half of the one table tournament.

Absolute Poker

At Absolute Poker, U.S. members can still play in the freerolls that they have on a regular basis throughout the day. You are not permitted to make a deposit though if you are a U.S. member. There are numerous freeroll tournaments with structured qualification rounds to enter into very large freerolls where big prizes are given away totalling thousands of dollars. The issue with absolutepoker.com though is that the freerolls are quite often played like lotto. Don't expect to find true poker strategy played there.

Pokerstars

Pokerstars claims that as U.S. residents you can still play real money games there legally. I would be highly hesitant to believe their claims if I was you. They do have a large variety of games you can play though. There are games such as Texas Holdem, 7-card stud, Omaha Hi-low, Razz, and Horse. This gives serious poker players a lot of options to play, but if you are from the U.S. I would still recommend that you skip playing at this website. For those of you that still want to play, they do offer a large variety of play chip games as well to enjoy.

Pacific Poker

Pacific Poker used to be one of the better poker rooms on the internet. The reason I include this one in the review is because unlike Pokerstars.com, pacificpoker.com makes it clear that U.S. players can not play there based on the legislation passed in 2006. It is a shame that this website went away as they used to have a very good referral program where you could earn extra money to play with at the tables based on how your referrals did. This still exists for international members, but as a U.S. member you should realize you will not be able to play here. For international members they have a large variety of games including 7-card stud, holdem, Omaha, and hi-low variations.

U.S. Poker Players Have Limited Choices

After looking at all of these websites, I can only recommend two online casino sites for poker for U.S. members. These are nopaypoker.com and pureplay.com. I would highly recommend going with nopaypoker if you prefer more realistic levels of play. Pureplay.com does offer larger prize pools though, but you have to get through the lotto players to win.