Online poker is probably the most popular game of card playing ever played online. It has also been behind a huge expansion in the amount of poker players all over the world. In the United States alone, online poker has grown from a few thousand players to millions of them. The growth rate is quite fast considering that it only started out as a game for people who are interested in computer games and who didn't really have much to do with poker before.

But casino online poker didn't start out as popular as it is today. There were no real web-based poker rooms available when it went live. There were a handful of online poker rooms, one or two of which were the biggest around at the time. These companies went live with their own websites, but they didn't have any ambitions of becoming the biggest online poker sites. They just wanted to offer a good game of poker for their customers, and they hoped that word would spread about how enjoyable and exciting their service was.

Because there weren't many online poker sites, there wasn't much competition. And not everyone who wanted to play poker online was even aware that there were any good sites to play legal poker online. All they knew was that they could play at whichever site was the most convenient. This is how the first online poker sites got started.

As soon as the first legal online poker sites get bigger and offer better bonuses and customer loyalty bonus, more people become interested. More people will sign up. Some people will start playing just for the fun aspect. Others will join the bigger sites so they can win more. They want to win more big money, of course.

So the first step was to offer a bonus. Sites started offering lower than normal sign-up fees for long enough so that the players had time to decide if they were going to become real money players. When the bonuses started adding up, people's interest was sparked again. Some players stayed and started playing regularly. Now the excitement had started another round, and this time, the prize pools were getting larger.

Then the dream came true. Party poker include tournaments and more bonuses. Soon there were several different tourneys every weekend. Party poker now has around eight to ten hours of action per day with thousands of players at any given time. The player with the best winning record at the end of the season wins, and sometimes, he or she becomes the new Party Poker Millionaire.

Some of the top money poker games on the internet don't have tournament play, but they do feature large cash games. There are also some free money poker games where the money is just sitting there and the bonus offer is an option, not required to play. These free games have a much lower amount of action, but there is still big money to be made. With so many players involved at any one time, it just makes sense to play.

Online poker sites want their sites to look legitimate, so they offer incentives to be part of their online poker community. Many times these bonuses require a deposit of some kind, and the site reputably offers customer service to help any player who might need it. This is where a person should always be careful. Sometimes these sites are rigging the system in favor of those who have been playing poker long enough to win big, and there are too many players involved to actually have a chance of beating the odds.