(Image: Paul IJsendoorn / Pexels)

I. Introduction

Online casinos, the virtual counterparts of traditional land-based casinos, have gained immense popularity due to their convenience, variety, and innovative features. Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, online casinos offer a myriad of games at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. However, not all online casinos are created equal. The right platform can elevate your gaming experience, while the wrong choice could lead to disappointment, or worse, a breach of your security and privacy. Factors such as safety protocols, a wide array of games, enticing bonuses, and stellar customer service should be considered when choosing an online casino. Remember, your choice of online casino doesn’t just influence your gaming experience; it defines it. Therefore, finding the best online casino in 2023 is not merely a suggestion, but a necessary strategy for a rewarding and secure virtual gambling journey.

II. Understanding Online Casinos

Online casinos, also known as internet or virtual casinos, have significantly transformed the gambling industry, offering a convenient and exciting way to enjoy casino games from the comfort of your own home. Since their inception in the mid-90s, online casinos have evolved dramatically, leveraging advancements in technology to offer immersive, interactive gaming experiences. These platforms work by allowing players to wager and play various casino games through the internet. They attract players with enticing bonuses, which often include sign-up bonuses, deposit match bonuses, and loyalty rewards. There are primarily two types of online casinos: web-based, where players can gamble directly on the website without downloading any software, and download-based, which requires the download of software to play and wager on the casino games. To ensure fairness, reputable online casinos use random number generator (RNG) software, which ensures that game outcomes are entirely random. Additionally, they employ stringent security measures to protect players’ personal and financial information.

For years, “Doyle Brunson Dies” has been the default placeholder headline in poker media discussions about how you would handle a super-big story that every news outlet is gonna have, and every player is gonna care about.

By now y’all have presumably heard, Doyle Brunson, the Godfather of Poker, Texas Dolly, Ten-Deuce, died Sunday in a Las Vegas hospital at age 89. We all knew it was inevitable — death and taxes, right? — but in recent years we could hear the clock ticking a bit louder …

Brunson literally wrote the book on how we play the game. Sure, a lot has happened since Super/System, in theory or otherwise. But none of the players in today’s game would’ve existed without Doyle Brunson. (Some of today’s crushers weren’t even born until Brunson already had seven or eight World Series of Poker bracelets.)

His final tally, of course, was 10 bracelets, including two in the WSOP Main Event. Even though those won in 1976 and ’77 were against fields the size of an elementary school classroom, back then there was far less dead money for the taking and the players he beat were among the best in the world.

And that’s part of what made Doyle so special. The when didn’t matter — Brunson was ageless, even as he aged. He held his own year after year, session after session … at the WSOP, on the WPT, in Bobby’s Room, on High Stakes Poker, and sometimes even online. He did it all. He wrestled with the old dogs with quiet bravado and took on the young guns without fear. And even as poker evolved, he adjusted, and never stopped playing a winning game.

It’s just part of why he mattered so much — and will continue to matter — to millions in a world he immeasurably shaped.

Many players are debating over this. What is better, reading articles, watching videos or getting poker coaching?

All of the above have pros and cons and to get the most out of any option, you need to know what you want to achieve. Poker coaching – is the most expensive option, but likely will help you to improve faster than others. It is going to be quite hard to improve your game just by reading strategy articles, so do not stick with it for too long. However, it can surely be a good place to start and give you many insights on what to do next.

Another thing you really need to understand is that watching random poker videos will waste a lot of your time and just cannot help you much, so this is much more an entertainment that learning practice. Many players do not want to see the truth here. To be honest, most people just jump into learning platforms without understanding what to take away from it and watching random poker videos will not help you much.

The exception to this is poker strategy courses, which concentrates on one specific area. Going over that will help you fix any mistake in your game and all you have to do is identify what you want to fix.

Obviously, the best way to do that is to get professional poker database analysis, but if you do not want to invest so much money, you can learn how to find your poker mistakes yourself!

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Getting my gaming commentary game back on, with an appearance as a talking head-and-torso for a special Global Gaming Expo episode of APCW Perspectives, featuring venerable online gambling gadfly J. Todd at the mic.

My part begins at about 5:50, after J. and Becky Liggero talk about the American Gaming Association’s new push for nationwide legal sports betting. (Go teams!)

The TL;DR — Kahnawake Gaming Commission is pulling its casinos out of US markets to do business with New Jersey, further putting the squeeze on gray-market online gambling operators … and it’s probably not good that the Senate introduced SB 3376, a placeholder bill for a revised version of Sheldon Adelson’s Restoration of America’s Wire Act, um, Act, aka RAWA. Even if the new bill is going nowhere, simply having it in the legislative mix poses a threat. Oh, and happy soon-to-be 10th birthday UIGEA!

So online poker is pretty dead, huh? It’s a late Saturday night/Sunday AM in Las Vegas, and we just need two more players to fill up the lone $1 sit-n-go on WSOP.com. There’s one player waiting on a $100 SNG, and I’m already down about $12 on the most active NLH and PLO cash tables.

Apparently everyone’s in New Jersey playing online slots.

Still, for $1 and a tepid desire to get back in some sort of action somewhere, I’m gonna pay to experience something close to what free players do that makes Caesars Interactive worth $4.4 billion.

UPDATE: Total bullshit. I was all-in with pocket 9s, aggro-dipbag re-raised, my computer was giving me the rainbow swirly, and his pocket Kings held up. 8th place out of 9.

Online poker is tough these days! I’ve got a ways to go, obv, before I can win $4.83 for first.

If you thought RAWA was dead, think again! Sheldon Adelson has some politicians in his pocket more than happy to sell their integrity to do his bidding. Also, mergers in the U.K. could spell more trouble for William Hill. Links to the stories from the show are listed below:

RAWA Still Raging: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blo…
New Jersey Online Profits: http://www.igamingbusiness.com/news/n…
Pennsylvania Online Bill: http://www.onlinepokerreport.com/2075…
Fantasy Hearings: http://online.casinocity.com/article/…
Ladbrokes / Gala Coral Merger: http://www.igamingbusiness.com/news/l…
Full Tilt Merger and Affiliates: http://www.gpwa.org/forum/full-tilt-m…

Lately, when many Canadians think of the Senate — our unelected upper house of Parliament — they think of the Senate expense scandal (or possibly other scandals) which may be an issue in the general election this fall. That’s unfortunate, as today the Senate Standing Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce released its report on Digital Currency.

The Committee offers a number of welcome, measured, and moderate proposals.

The very first recommendation exhorts the Canadian government to “create an environment that fosters innovation for digital currencies and their associated technologies” and “exercise a regulatory ‘light touch.'” That’s certainly welcome given the innovation that’s taking place in the space in Canada and the cryptocurrency businesses that are being started and acquired here.

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Can you spot the liar?

The New York Times asked that question — recognizing right out the gate this is supposed to be a poker skill — and presented an interactive exercise featuring video clips of people answering seemingly innocuous questions, to see, essentially, if you can spot a simple bluff.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/21/science/can-you-spot-the-liar.html

(Apparently the body-language-reading techniques being taught at the TSA aren’t quite preparing their security agents for the WSOP.)

Booyah, I got 9/10 … so don’t even think about it. Phil Hellmuth can read souls, pshaw!

The one I missed was where the girl talks about boys playing a game in the library where they tried to scream the word “penis” as loud as they could. And I suppose my answer was biased as I had actually won that game several times in 9th grade.

So poker people are buzzing again about the promise of California for online poker. It’s true what RJ gaming reporter Howard Stutz says, that this market represents something of a holy grail for the liquidity dependent. But that’s also the reason I’ll stick by my assertions that California needs about half a country to go pro-poker before they get real about making a deal. Sorry for the buzzkill … but here’s a little Vegas Grinders outtake, recorded about three months ago, in which Andrew, Dave and I address whether or not online pokerers should be packing up their bags and setting up shop in the Golden State.

A little casino east of Phoenix, Arizona called Apache Gold is running a fantastic casino promotion until the end of this month. They are doubling or tripling any other casino’s offer up to $300. For example: If you have a valid casino offer for $50, they will give you $150 in free play, no strings attached.  They have full pay 3:2 video blackjack and full pay video poker (.25-$5 8/5 Bonus Poker) and plenty of slots so it’s well worth the drive. You can stay overnight nearby or in Phoenix and double dip too as its available once a day! Read the full details here.

While you are nearby, make sure to check out the fantastic poker action near Phoenix at both Wild Horse Pass and Talking Stick Resort.

Good luck!

Send me your tips on twitter to: @RobertGoldfarb

We should probably be sadder because someone died and poker had everything to do with it. But at the same time … man hosts poker game, catches brother cheating, shoots brother in the chest and kills him, gets seven years. Seven-ish to be more exact. Seems about right, and arguably a +EV move — though future family Thanksgivings could be tough.

Read more here: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/11/flint_man_gets_prison_time_for_17.html.

The latest incarnation of the November Nine gets underway in a few hours, and as per usual there’ll be talk of poker’s “young guns” dominating the big-money prize spots. The old man at the table this year is Bruno Politano, topping out the field chronologically at the crotchety age of 32.

However, while all the remaining players this year may be young, they’re not exactly kids … at least not the way they were in 2010 or 2011.

Maybe it’s just semantics, but what’s different this year is the absence of any player who’s already embarked on a fifth decade of life (a requirement to be in the WSOP Poker Hall of Fame, fwiw) thereby skewing the average. Also 2014’s population of young non-rookies makes for the first year where all competitors at the final table are of an age more comparable to what you’d see in more traditional professional sports.

Here’s a look at how the average age at the WSOP main event final table has changed over the years in the November Nine era. Additional data is below.

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Believe it or not, I’m playing online poker again. I’ve bought in three times already, so yay, it works (and is super-easy to play for real money), but cannot yet report on the cash-out process, because you know … damn river.

But now that we have online poker in Nevada definitively running and here to stay, I’ve started paying a little more attention, and it seems a lotta eyes are on New Jersey right now. Not only do you have Gov. Chris Christie making an aggressive, courts- and DOJ-challenging push for fully legalized and legitimized sports betting inside his borders, but also you have poker-loving state senator Ray Lesniak committed to making the state a global leader in online gambling (sports betting included) and start welcoming international players into the virtual borders of the Garden State without having to show a passport. Sure, Atlantic City may be closing down casinos, but sometimes you gotta get rid of the chaff. And that’s kinda what we could be seeing as two big poker tournament main events in New Jersey — one live and one online — coincide with all the semi-related New Jersey casino-world buzz.

The live tournament is the WPT Borgata Poker Open — a poker-world stalwart that has been serving up big-time televised final tables since Season 2 of the World Poker Tour. (They’re now in Season 13.) This year’s main event is a $3,500 buy-in, with $3 million guaranteed. They expect a good turnout based on preliminary events and online qualifiers that have been running on partypoker in New Jersey as well as partypoker worldwide.

But also going on simultaneously is partypoker’s Garden State Super Series — an online event open to anyone within New Jersey borders that’s shaping up to be the largest online tournament series in New Jersey history, and for that matter US history of the licensed and regulated sort. Both main events kick off on Sunday, with the GSSS guaranteeing $250,000 in prize pool — it’s a $200 buy-in — and $50,000 minimum for the winner.

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It’s Responsible Gaming Education Week, August 4-8, you probably know, or maybe not, because “responsible gaming” isn’t exactly something we celebrate in a culture that extols the virtue of being “All In”. And it’s not likely that poker is about to see any special prizes for best bankroll management or superior game selection or, say, excellent investment of tournament winnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

So RGEW is an annual campaign from the National Center for Responsible Gaming, which is the AGA’s officially independent 501c3 that gets $25 million (a year?) from the casino industry to fund academic research in a transparent, peer-reviewed way that tries really hard to not look like Mad Men-era tobacco science.

This year’s theme: “Get to Know Responsible Gaming”. (A sensible revision to 2012’s plausibly oxymoronic “All In for Responsible Gaming”, no?) Anyhow, this new campaign caught my eye in part because I spent the better part of a semester last year doing research about gaming-related media and their connection to irresponsible gambling, particularly among those most vulnerable to manipulative messaging. Have a look if you like at 30+ pages of what is essentially just literature review on:

It’s riveting, I swear — delightfully long, dry, and unwieldy. I laughed, I cried, but mostly just committed follicular assault on myself while trying to grasp tenets of “academic writing” and APA style. (“Too much personality in your verbs,” my professor balked.)

Hey, it was good enough for a B. And if I learned anything from the process, it was that in a regulated industry there’s far more to the business of responsible gaming than a few glossy brochures in a dusty casino next to the taunting ATMs.

Sheldon Adelson turns 81 today, which makes him still just a kid according to my grandmother. We of course all know Adelson is a wealthy man, but I didn’t realize he was the richest person in Nevada (like by far). I mean sure, he woulda made my shortlist if you asked, but I didn’t really place his economic stature in context until seeing this bit of data porn showing who has the largest net worth by state.

So what do you get a man who has everything? OK, maybe Adelson doesn’t have everything, but he does have more personal wealth than the GDP of nearly 100 independent nations. He has so much money ($35.7 billion) that he could singlehandedly pay off ALL of Caesars’ debt and still have more than $12 billion left over — enough to still be the richest person in Nevada, as well as 34 other American states. Sooo … maybe just close your eyes and make a wish?