Importnin

The Best USA Online Poker Sites for 2020. If you live in the United States and play online poker I think you’ll agree that it isn’t easy, no matter what you read elsewhere. The “truth” about legal real money online poker rooms still open to USA players can vary depending on where you look. Finally, Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware have entered into an interstate online poker agreement. Players from the three states can compete against each other only on WSOP.com. Background for legal online poker in the US. Legal US online poker sites debuted on April 30, 2013. Ultimate Poker was the site that made history.

U.S. POKER WEBSITES & LAW YOU CAN TRUST

TRUSTWORTHY POKER WEBSITES

Owner Note: This website is maintained daily as a full guide to state online poker law for use for free prior to playing online poker in the United States. This knowledge stems from over a decade (10+ year) long experience within the gaming industry. To your left are state by state laws updated daily as new bills deem necessary with their estimated legalization dates. The complete first page of Google shows results that were written by spammers and retarded hired monkey writers that by no way should be writing legal articles – or anything for that matter.

The recommendations below are for sites located outside of the US but are still offering services to U.S. players. It is Federally legal to play on these sites. If you live within NJ, DE, NV, or PA then you have the alternate option to play for real money at poker websites licensed by the state. The bulk of players within NJ, DE, NV, and PA borders are doing so at WSOP.com, Borgata, or PokerStarsNJ.

I assume you are here to not just know state laws but what sites to play at. With all the regulatory news that comes out many are misinformed and misrepresented as to where they can play by state or by nation. We’ve taken the guess work out and simplified it into exactly what you need with a few of my best choices, not by who pays me the most but whom most players judge as the best site. I wouldn’t recommend more than 3 (three) poker sites at the moment, the others are just scams that occur online. I never have nor will I compromise my strong morals for ad dollars. Here are the voted best from among our peers within the poker industry.

• Highest Trust with money for the USA
• Easy to get money on and OFF
• Easy money at the tables, bad players!
• Negative: Spotty customer support

• Accepts players from all 50 US States
• All credit cards accepted for depositing
• Consistently gains player liquidity
• Negative: Hasn’t been around long

EXPECTED DATE OF LEGALIZATION

Last year, four online gambling bills (HB 271, SB 524, SB 477, and HB 392) were introduced in Pennsylvania. On May 23, 2017, a bill (HB 271) to legalize online poker and casino games passed the Senate Community, Economic & Recreational Development Committee (11-3 vote) and the Senate Appropriations Committee (24-2 vote). The very next day on May 24th, the full Senate passed this bill by a 38-12 vote. Two weeks later on June 7th, the House passed this bill by a 102-89 vote. Changes were made to the bill by the House, mainly the tax rate percentage on revenue, so it went back to the Senate for vote approval. On October 26, 2017, the Senate passed the bill and the governor signed it into law four days later on October 30th.

Internet poker bills in January and February last year were introduced in New York. On February 15, 2017, one of the bills passed the Senate Gaming Committee by a 11-0 vote. The bill then went to the Senate Finance Committee which passed by a 27-9 vote on May 9th of last year. A month later on June 13th, the full Senate passed this bill by a 54-8 vote but did not receive a vote by the Assembly.

Best Poker For Us Players

A bill, SB 203, to regulated internet poker and casino games in Michigan was introduced on March 1, 2017. This bill passed the Senate Regulatory Reform Committee a week later on March 8th by a 7-1 vote and it went to the full Senate for a potential vote but did not receive one. Another online gaming bill, HB 4926, was introduced on September 12, 2017. Michigan is making good progress on passing an iGaming bill and more movement is expected to happen this year.

On January 10th, West Virginia presented a bill (HB 3067) to legalize online poker and casino games. The bill currently sits in a House Committee awaiting a hearing and potential vote.

Around March 1st, Louisiana introduced a bill (SB 322) to legalize online gambling.

Top 10 Poker Sites For Us Players

It appears California will not be introducing any online poker bills this year. Last February, Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer introduced AB 1677, a bill to legalize and regulate online poker. It looks like the same bill as the previous year (AB 2863), and unfortunately, it didn’t make anymore headway last year. Legislators made some additions and revisions to the bill to please the racetrack industry, which they were successful in doing so.

The Illinois Senate passed a bill, HB 479, to regulate and legalize online gambling (poker and casino games) on May 31, 2017 by a 42-10 vote. This bill then went to the House of Representatives but it did not receive a vote.

In 2017: Senator Bruce Tarr introduced a bill, SD. 618, in late January to legalize online gambling in Massachusetts. It’s only two pages so more details will need to be filled in, but it’s a start. In Hawaii, Senator Will Espero introduced a bill (SB 677) on January 20th to legalize internet poker. A Senate Committee in Washington met on January 18th to discuss the possibilities of passing and regulating poker online. New Hampshire introduced HB 562, a bill allowing online gambling in the state, on January 25th. Unfortunately, none of these bills advanced last year.

Live Poker Site Traffic

Our main focus as you can see is on the legal prospect concerning poker websites in the United States. Currently, only the four states we have in our top navigation went forth to legalize and regulate online poker on the state level. Twenty three (23) U.S. states have, or had, bills in their state legislature process actively seeking to also legalize online poker sites.

Online poker is still in its “Rebirth” or “Second Coming” in the United States. Increasingly more states are beginning processes to regulate and legalize the activity. If a bill on the Federal Level (not state) is passed to legalize the game nationwide we could be in for a dramatic resurgence of internet poker websites and new players. The first to happen in 15 years, since 2003.

Our goal at PokerWebsites.com is to be the most trusted and cited authority on state law data condensed for the purposes of online gambling. We keep you posted on pending bills across all 50 U.S. states by updating our articles daily, or when information is received.

We also have breakdowns of the poker room we believe is the best choice for your state, whether they might be based offshore or are state licensed, and we are confident in their safety otherwise a “No Recommendation” will be displayed. Today is an exciting time for online poker in this country, and we hope you will enjoy the ride with us.

Our criteria for evaluating sites are listed below:

There is a lot of fraud out there and for the most part the cardrooms we mention have high standards in security. There has been security breaches at just about every poker site, but in today’s advanced technology it’s pretty rare to financially get hurt playing online poker because of cheating or other bad things on the web. Here is an article about poker scams and sites we think are the worst. Over the millions of dollars I’ve handled only once did I get hurt by fraud and I was quickly refunded the $10,000 the person attempted to take from my account. We believe in honest websites and support the Poker Players Anonymous financially, and other player ‘guard dog’ sites.

Laws, laws, laws. Probably the most common question second to how you get paid and deposit. I get asked at Brick and Mortar poker rooms whether poker is legal or not. The answer is yes, it’s absolutely positively 100% legal to play online poker. Poker websites that accept transactions are the only ones that are breaking any rules. The way you deposit is by VISA, MC or AMEX like anywhere else.

This is very important for players who are either impatient or want to play against the most players possible to reduce the risk of collusion. At the time of writing this page, one exciting concept evolved into online poker where you never have to wait for a hand to be dealt. You fold, and you’re moved to another table where you instantly get another hand dealt to you. It’s not for the novice who wants to just relax and play poker, but it can increase a winning players “ROI” exponentially.

Bonuses can look attractive, but bigger is not always better; no pun intended. One bad example of a bonus is the World Series of Poker. In poker it’s all about how fast a bonus is released. Yes, some poker websites will give the money instantly, others will make you play poker for 10, 20, 100 hours before they give you the bonus stated. That’s why release rates are so important. Paypal has returned to state based poker sites which will make payouts immediate (currently allowed in NV and NJ only). For offshore sites, credit card deposits remain at 80% popularity with an average 65% success rate.

There are very limited options for customers located in the United States to play at mainly because most pay very slowly or are not paying at all. The ones recommended above have a 2-9 day payout rate on average.

It’s very annoying waiting a few days to get a simple email answered and my view of the poker sites safety diminishes – quickly. It’s very annoying to wait a day to get an email answered. Heck, to me it’s annoying to have to wait longer than an hour. I want live customer support and while these poker sites are making millions of dollars a day in revenues you will be surprised at how bad some of their customer support is. On the other hand, some have live customer support inside of their software, or a phone number you can call to get your questions answered when you want it.

I am easily contacted by the email on pokerwebsites.com “about us” section. There you will find our qualifications to run this website.

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A few years ago I wrote an article brimming with excitement when the first U.S.-based, regulated online poker sites opened their doors in Nevada.

Well, as I said, that was a few years ago, and to be quite honest the excitement has waned a bit. I knew the process would take its time, but frankly I expected more states coming online in the intervening years. Instead we ended up with New Jersey opening as the largest online poker market and then a lot of hurry up and wait.

As someone who has been consistently terrible over the better part of two decades at predicting where poker is likely to go, I figured I’d take another shot at it. I mean if you can’t double down on your losses, what else do you have in this world?

Okay. In fairness to me, I haven’t been totally terrible. I fairly accurately predicted the arc that worldwide, unregulated online poker would take once it became clear in 2003 or so that it was going to blow up and become a massive deal. I predicted that in an attempt to cash in in the short term, sites would loosen restrictions designed to protect the game ecology. I predicted that good players would become better and better at removing money from the ecosystem. That the winners would get more and more centralized, so instead of it being relatively easy to pick up the game, read a few books, and win five or six figures a year in the early part of the last decade, it would become very difficult for marginal winners. But those at the top of the food chain would still eat plenty.

That these developments would burn out the rec players, and the ecology would get increasingly tough and competitive. This would cause revenues to suffer eventually at the sites.

And that increasing attention from regulators and law enforcement in various countries would speed this process while also creating endless headaches for folks who just want to sit in their pajamas and play some cards.

(For what it’s worth, having seen this play out made it very easy for me to predict the same arc for daily fantasy sports—though that game’s arc was much shorter than poker’s.)

So that brings me to 2018. We seem to be on the cusp of some major states coming online for poker soon. If those states come online and sign compacts with existing states, we’ll have an honest-to-goodness pool of players to play some regulated online poker in this country.

We’re not going to see the boom and bust of the last decade, mostly because I don’t see any catalyst for the boom. But we will have a large base of interested, regular poker players who want to play online poker, and that’s plenty.

But an industry that didn’t learn from past mistakes will burn out online poker in the USA just like it burned out globally. The focus should be, as much as possible, on long-term health of the game. Here are my thoughts.

Discourage Multi-tabling Specialists

One of the reasons online poker burned out is because players specialized and multi-tabled. The strategy for heads-up turbo sit-n-gos is very different from the strategy for nine-handed cash game no-limit hold’em is very different from the strategy for heads up limit Omaha eight-or-better.

So what (naturally) happened is that players specialized in one game and then grinded it as much as possible. These specialists eventually burn games out. What happens is the specialists proliferate and multi-table, taking multiple seats at every game in the lobby. And the rec player experience becomes banging heads with people who do nothing all day but grind this specific game type.

This is a degenerate game ecology. Online sites should encourage generalization, not specialization, from its grinders.

Player Loyalty Programs

To some extent, poker sites are constrained by the rules of the game. No-limit hold’em as a cash game is a highly skilled, deep game. Aside from capping the buy-in at very low levels (which basically no one wants), there’s little you can do to level the playing field between the best grinders and the casual amateurs.

The result of laisse faire policies at online poker sites is that grinders can maximize their win (as a class of players), and amateurs get burned out fast. This is bad not just for amateurs who can’t just play and enjoy the game, but it’s also bad for operators because they are losing more player deposits to winners than necessary to keep the ecology healthy.

The solution lies in player loyalty programs. No, you can’t change the rules of no-limit hold’em. But what you can do is rake the games fairly heavily and then return a substantial portion of that raked money back to the players in the form of loyalty programs.

The loyalty program’s rules aren’t constrained like the actual game’s rules. They are limited only by gaming regulations and by the imagination. The program can be set up to reward ecology-healthy activity and discourage ecology-degenerate activity.

Say you want to discourage specialization and encourage generalization. You can award bonus points for playing different games, for instance. You get no bonus points for grinding more heads-up turbo sit-n-gos, but you get a lot of bonus points if you hop in a limit Omaha 8-or-better game or a 7-game mix.

Theoretically, subject to gaming regulation requirements, these bonuses could be targeted. So you could reward Player A for playing one game and Player B for playing a different game.

You could reward casual players at a higher per-hand rate than grinders by offering the highest per-hand bonuses to the first 1000 hands played in a given period.
The goal is not to punish grinders. Quite the opposite—it’s designed to reward grinders who generalize and master many different games. It’s designed to reward grinders who put some thought and effort into helping maintain the ecology that supports them, rather than specializing narrowly and exploiting the community maximally.

Final Thoughts

Best Online Poker Sites For Us Players 2018

I think the future of USA online poker is bright. Not white-hot bright like it was 15 years ago, but bright nonetheless. There’s a large base of interested players. There’s also two decades of successes and failures to learn from. As long as sites do learn from the failures, creating a healthy poker ecosystem built to last should be no problem.

The main concern should be the recreational player experience. If a rec player can log in and easily play a few hundred hands of his or her preferred game at a table that’s not saturated with specialized, multi-tabling grinders, that’s 80 percent of it right there. Site rules and player loyalty programs should be built around cultivating that rec player experience. A few clever programs can influence much of grinder behavior to be ecosystem-positive rather than ecosystem-destroying.

If the sites focus this way as states open up to online poker, I think we’ll have great games in this country for years to come. ♠

Ed’s latest book, The Course: Serious Hold ‘Em Strategy For Smart Players is available now at his website edmillerpoker.com. You can also find original articles and instructional videos by Ed at the training site redchippoker.com.