RichMond Gaming Blog

Join the Crowd

It will be a shame if we do not try our hands in one of the most happening things taking place around us; this is not a mere statement but has solid proofs. One of the famous Canadian site estimated that 7341 players were active during one 24 hours period where they waged real money. During the same period, a sum of US$141 million was waged by players as money changed hands. That is quite an impressive figure just for one full day! You can know the exact statics of day-to-day online poker games and the sum involved via reliable statistics available online.

Goodness of Playing Online Poker

Nothing can beat the fun of playing your favorite poker from the comfort of your home. You can play at multiple tables simultaneously, quit whenever you wish without raising eyebrows, enjoy more number of hands per hour than the traditional casinos, and have nil chances of dealers’ mistake apart from avoiding possibilities of other players folding out of turn or reaching for their chips as they watch your reaction. The best of all is that you do not have to listen to the trash others speak around you while you are playing and you can smoke or dress to your heart’s content.

Here are few common terms used in the game of poker and the knowledge of which is a must to follow the game and act accordingly.
Natural indicates a hand without any wild cards while Rank refers to the value of the particular card (there are 13 ranks in total).
Bugs is a joker which can represent any card if it is used to accomplish a flush or a straight but acts only as Ace for all other kinds of hand.
Declare involves the announcement of your desire to try for high hand or low hand. There is also an option for trying both high and low hand. It is done by secretly placing the chips in your hand; no chip indicates that you favor going low while 1 chip for going high and 2 chips for trying both high and low.
In High/Low games, the highest and the lowest hand share the pot after the round of declaration. It is essential to thoroughly understand the agreed upon conditions for high/low before beginning the game.

Down refers to placing the cards face down such that the value is not shown. It is also called as In The Hole. Roll is when the down card is flipped up.

For Beginners
First and foremost, you have to check the system requirements before finding one or more websites which conduct online poker games. The good news is that most of the online poker websites wish to please their customers and do not expect the latest system configurations which may limit the number of users. Here is a brief overview on few things that you need to check before downloading and installing the software available for playing online poker games.

System Requirements
Discussed here are the requirements as mentioned by few top poker sites: (recommended configuration is in italics)
Windows 2000 or XP, 64 MB or 128MB RAM, broadband or dial up connection, 266MHz or 400MHZ Pentium CPU, and 30 – 60 MB free disk space. In case of MAC system requirements, minimum Mac OS X 10.4 is recommended apart from G4 or G5 processor, 512MB RAM, and 30MB free space.

Connection Requirements
It is to be understood that your internet connection will inevitably influence the quality and speed of online poker games. Dial-up will be sufficient only for low quality plays while to experience high gaming quality, you need download speed of 256 Kbit/s and 64 Kbit/s upload speed. ADSL and cable connections will ensure least transmission interruptions.