Online Poker An In Thing in India

It's estimated that over 40,000,000 people worldwide play poker online each year. Some play for money, some for prizes, some just for fun.

Online poker is faster and less intimidating than live games, with more variations available any time of the day or night. Playing online poker is a snap. In Online Poker game, a poker table is displayed on your screen. The friendly user interface allows you to make in-game decisions with one click of your mouse. Players take turns being the dealer, as the dealer's position rotates clockwise after each hand. Just like in a casino, there's a professional dealer to deal the cards and keep the game moving. It is believed that Online poker is fast and fair, with no wait to shuffle, no collection of discards (known as the "muck"), and no misdeals. Those who play in Delhi or Mumbai, they can enjoy same poker action the way players enjoy in Las Vegas or Atlantic City!

How It is Started

Free poker online was played as early as the late 1990s in the form of IRC Poker, Planet Poker was the first online card room to offer real money games in 1998. The first real money poker game was dealt on January 1, 1998. Author Mike Caro became the "face" of Planet Poker in October 1999.

The major online poker sites offer varying features to entice new players. One common feature is to offer tournaments called satellites by which the winners gain entry to real-life poker tournaments. It was through one such tournament on PokerStars that Chris Moneymaker won his entry to the 2003 World series of Poker. He went on to win the main event, causing shock in the poker world, and beginning the poker boom. The 2004 World Series featured three times as many players as in 2003. At least four players in the WSOP final table won their entry through an online cardroom. Like Moneymaker, 2004 winner Greg Raymer also won his entry at the PokerStar online cardroom.

In October 2004, ,Sportingbet at the time the world's largest publicly traded online gaming company (SBT.L), announced the acquisition of ParadisePoker.com, one of the online poker industry's first and largest cardrooms. The $340 million acquisition marked the first time an online card room was owned by a public company. Since then, several other card room parent companies have gone public.

In June 2005, PartyGaming, the parent company of the then-largest online cardroom, PartyPoker, went public on the London Stock Exchange, achieving an initial public offering market value in excess of $8 billion. At the time of the IPO, ninety-two percent of Party Gaming's income came from poker operations.

In early 2006, PartyGaming moved to acquire EmpirePoker.com from EmpireOnline. Later in the year,bwin, an Austrian-based online gambling company, acquired PokerRoom.com. Other poker rooms such as PokerStars that were rumored to be exploring initial public offerings have postponed them.

As of March 2008, there are fewer than forty stand-alone cardrooms and poker networks with detectable levels of traffic. There are however more than 600 independent doorways or 'skins' into the group of network sites. As of January 2009, the majority of online poker traffic occurs on just a few major networks, among them Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker and the iPoker Network.

As of February 2010, there are approximately 545 online poker websites. Within the 545 active sites, about two dozen are stand-alone sites (down from 40 in March 2008), while the remaining sites are called “skins” and operate on 21 different shared networks, the largest network being iPoker which has dozens of skins operating on its network. Of all the online poker rooms PokerStars.com is deemed the world’s largest poker site by number of players on site at any one time. By May 2012 Sportingbet had increased their market share to more than 56%.

The year 2011 is known as the infamous year of Black Friday, when the U.S department of Justice seized the domain names of PokerStars, Full Tilt & Absolute Poker, effectively freezing the bankrolls of their player base. Full Tilt was accused by the DoJ of acting as a Ponzi scheme and scamming players out of $300 million. On the other hand, PokerStars paid $1 billion in fines immediately.

In 2014, PokerStars became the largest Publicly Traded Company in the industry of Poker when businessman David Baazov initiated a takeover bid costing $4.9 billion.
How is Online Poker Different?
· Proximity to your opponents: With online poker, you can play against people anywhere in Nevada and New Jersey!

· Multi-tabling: It's as close to cloning yourself as you can get. With online poker, you can play multiple tables at the same time.

· Speed of play: Online poker operates at approximately 4 to 5 times the pace of offline poker. You may also be multi-tabling, which means you could see as many as 20 times more hands than you would see in a live casino!

· Actions speak, not words: In a live casino, players can initiate or call a bet verbally, and it's binding. Online decisions are put into action with the buttons on your screen. There are no take-backs once you press the button, so make sure to keep any itchy trigger fingers in your pockets!

Online Poker In India

Online poker in India has been quite a grey area. Fortunately, lately, it is being treated like any other entertainment business, and requisite taxes of the land are applicable. For instance, any winnings (stress on "winnings") above 10,000 INR attract a 30.9% tax referred to as TDS (tax deduction at source)
And, Lutz, pokerstars may be available in India, but it is pretty much illegal to play on it, for a number of reasons (not the topic of conversation here, so I'll skip)
To continue, a number of payment aggregators or processors, within the framework of the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) are providing deposit and withdrawal facilities for playing online rummy and online poker in India.
The online gaming/gambling laws in India clearly state two things:
Not only Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in these kind of setups
is prohibited, even technical collaboration with foreign entities
is also not allowed.

Basically, as long as you are diligently paying taxes on your company’s income, deducting TDS on player winnings as per Government norms and providing a clean, certified, indigenous (Indian company only) technology, providing games of skill like online rummy and online poker in India are pretty much okay.
So far only three indigenous poker rooms currently operating in India till yesterday who conform to legality and provide a safe environment to play in:

1. www.khelo365.com

2. Play Poker-Texas Holden at Adda52.com

3. Pokerbazi.com

With launch of Pokerlion by Calcutta based Stuti Hardware Pvt. Ltd., it seems that the online poker game is warming up. Lauch took place at Sircus Club in western suburb Vile Parle. Honor of launch was done by actor Rajiv Khandelwal.

Ability Games Aka Stuti Hardware designs, develops, markets, and distributes other innovative game products Fantasy League, Rummy apart from Poker. Pokerlion is the new platform which facilitates people to play with real money. It gives exposure to fresh aspiring talent in the game development world. Mr. Navneet Makharia is the Director of Ability Games Pvt. Ltd.

Navneet says that PokerLion is going to take the real money poker gaming experience to a whole new level with a user-friendly interface for the poker players, multi-linguistic platform, having secure coding, guaranteed GTD, audited escrow bank, all major cards being accepted and having 24/7 support team for the users. The website has a clean uncluttered design, improved functionality and enhanced rich content. It is more than a poker gaming website. The website is creative and informative apart from having games. Created with the user experience firmly in mind, the website has been designed using the latest technology so the site is compatible with today’s browsers and mobile devices.

PokerLion team is headed by – Director and CEO – Mr. Navneet Makharia, Consultant – Mr. Anutosh Chatterjee and Advisor – Ms. Priyanka Kapoor. It is their enthusiasm for poker sport that drives them giving birth to the notion of making a real money poker site, form a poker team with some talented and budding poker players and making the game as popular as the other sports like cricket and football for the poker lovers in India



The company has also launched Team Goa Lions, it will be headed by – Director – Mr. Navneet Makharia and CEO – Ms. Navdha Taparia, brings some of the talented poker players from around the world like Australia, the United Kingdom, Texas and of course a few Indian Poker players to play in the national and international level poker tournaments. These skilled teammates of Goa Lions aim to popularize poker like any other sports around the world.

Speaking about the event, Ms. Navdha Taparia, the CEO of Team Goa Lions said, “This is the first time for us and we are all super excited to be the part of this journey! Being a sport enthusiast from my college days, it has given me immense happiness to make this team. PokerLion is the perfect platform to play different variants of poker game in India; Team Goa Lion is one of the talented poker team to be the part of various tournaments. I wish the both PokerLion and Team Goa Lions all the very best for future endeavors.”

How Pokerlion Works ?

Paperlion offers online Poker to the larger audience. Poker is the game of talent and of course, it is absolutely legal to play online or otherwise. PokerLion website can be accessed through any device – tablets, desktops, laptops, and smart-phones. Here our players will play against or with some of the top players in the world. We strongly believe in raising the value of shareholder by getting new players and then keeping them with new offers and incentives.

But as per the State Laws, Assam Game and Betting Act, 1970 and Orissa (Prevention of) Gambling Act, 1955 and Telangana State Gaming (Amendment) Ordinance and High Court Judgment in Gujarat, 2017 forbids games with money stakes and also does not create an exemption for games of skill and luck. So, at present, residents of Assam, Odisha, Telangana and Gujarat are not allowed to play on our website.

If you are Poker enthusiast consider the following factors before selecting a site :
#1 Software and Security

The most important thing you must check in an online poker site is its software and security measures. The software must be user friendly at one hand and the Random Number Generator for the card dealing must be certified by a proper certification body/agency like i-tech labs, Gaming Laboratories International Accreditation (GLI) etc. Moreover, the website must be using a secured SSL certificate and an anti-virus protection like Norton which ensures the security of your personal data and money on the website.

#2 Traffic

Poker is game played among individuals be it online or live. So, once you are sure about the software and security of the website, another thing to consider is whether the site has enough traffic to make game available round the clock. You should check in the game lobby if games and tournaments are running as per your play timings. On a low traffic website, you funds may get stuck due to unavailability of games of your choice.

#3 Legality

You should verify from the website that it follows the Indian laws of gaming and taxation. A poker website in India not following the defined laws will be shut down by the authorities sooner or later and it will impact your gameplay heavily. Hence, as a responsible poker player, you must verify the establishment’s legality aspects. One of the most decisive parameters can be TDS certificates which the poker sites must provide to its players in compliance with the IT act. Non taxation of poker winnings above the defined threshold may drag you in Black Money cases.

#4 Deposit and Redeem Options

How will I deposit and how will I redeem money from the poker site? This question arises in the mind of every poker player as money handling by the company must be a smooth and transparent process. Credit card, debit card, net banking, online wallets are the popular channels of deposit while bank transfer and cheque are mostly used for redemptions. You should check the time duration which the website takes for redemption requests to be processed.

#5 Customer Support Services

A good poker company always has multiple windows of interaction with its users. Customer support calling number is the best practice in online businesses which poker sites should follow. One may also look out if the poker site has options of query resolution on e-mail, live chat etc.

#6 Bonus Offers
Once you have checked the above 5 parameters which assures that the website is running in a professional manner by a company, you should look for first time deposit offers. You may also check for bonus offers on subsequent deposits. It will help you start with a good bankroll and survive longer.

#7 VIP Program and Rewards
A good poker site will always have a reward program for its regular players. You should look into the details of the reward program as in benefits of higher loyalty levels, conversion ratios offered and freebies offered by the company at certain milestones.

So welcome to the paradise called Online Poker !