The Best Online Poker Sites. These are the best real money poker sites the internet has to offer. They have cash prizes and tournaments in addition to popular online casino games and video machines. Join today for a safe and legit place to play. Our team continues day after day to make sure we recommend only the best real money online poker sites out there. Have fun, stay safe, and win big! FAQ About Playing Real Money Online Poker. Now, we’ll cover a few of the questions we get asked most often about playing poker online for real money. If you are looking for a poker room that offers the best poker games, we have the best 10 online poker real money sites list. While some of these top 10 online poker rooms have on-going tournaments, others don’t. Players will find that a lot of the poker sites have a mobile poker app making wagering a whole lot easier. This means the player pool and traffic would increase significantly, allowing you more options for cash games and tournaments. Best online poker sites in Pennsylvania. At least for the time being, the new PA poker rooms will only be for players in the Keystone State. Building a critical mass of players is important. Download our free online poker software, open an account, make your first deposit, get your poker bonus and then enjoy the action. Play poker, casino and sports – all with one account As well as one of the best tournament schedules and cash game selections around, signing up for partypoker also gives you access to an amazing casino and sports.

Today, we’re going to talk about real money online poker. If you think you’ve got what it takes to take on the fishes of the online poker world, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to give you all of the best real money poker sites to get you started, as well as some other information you will need about online poker.

Best US Real Money Poker Sites

If you’re in the US, you have plenty of options for playing real money poker. All of the sites that we recommend accepts US players. A common question we get is whether or not it is legal for players in the US to play real money poker online. So, we’re going to cover that question and go over online casinos by state.

Is Playing Online Poker for Real Money in the US Legal?

Depending on which state you live in, there may be different laws about sports betting or playing casino games. However, no one in the USA has ever been prosecuted from playing real money online poker at safe sites like the ones we recommend.

Legal Online Casinos by US State

We have a dedicated section that lays out different legal online casinos for USA players based on their state. So whether you live in California or New York, there is an online casino to play real money poker for you!

How to Get Started With Playing Poker for Money

Now, it’s time to cover a few basic tips you need to be aware of before playing poker online. These are essential things to keep in mind that you shouldn’t gloss over if you are serious about wanting to win real money playing poker.

Why Site Selection Matters

If you don’t select the right real money poker site, you’re going to have a bad time. Why? Well, because of how many untrustworthy sites that are out there, it’s easy to get scammed. Our dedicated team spends hours vetting online poker sites that offer real money play to find ones that are legit and safe to play at.

After a grueling vetting process, the online poker sites we’ve recommended are ones you can absolutely trust with your money. These sites will pay you your winnings and have excellent customer service teams. They’re just all-around great sites!

Poker Terms You Should Know

• All-In – You go all in when you bet all of your bankroll on a hand.
• Ante – The ante is a bet you’re forced to put into the pot so the hand can begin.
• Blinds – These are required bets by two players left of the dealer.
• Bluff – This is the act of trying to trick other players that you have a good hand when you don’t.
• Flop – The flop is the first three cards dealt.
• Pot Odds – This is the ratio of money that it takes to call the bet on the table.
• River – The fifth of the five cards dealt in a hand.
• Tilt – This is when you, as a player, become visibly upset and starts making bad decisions based on your emotions.
• Turn – The fourth of five cards dealt in a hand.

How to Stay Safe Playing Poker Online for Real Money

Before you start playing poker for money online, you want to make sure you do the proper research to make sure you know how to stay safe.

Play at Safe US Online Poker Sites

This one should be self-explanatory. You need to be very careful about the US friendly online poker site you choose, and that’s where we come in. Our team of experts has already gone through the painstaking process of finding safe poker sites for real money, so you don’t have to worry about playing at the wrong ones.

Start out Small

Before you jump right in and start giving real money poker sites all of your bankroll, stop and consider a few things. We recommend starting out small and only depositing a little bit of money at a time. This will potentially help protect your bankroll if you are at all worried about losing your money.

While the real money poker sites we recommend are very safe, this is just a measure we recommend for anyone who might still have concerns, just for their peace of mind.

Bank With Cryptocurrency

This isn’t a must, but it’s highly recommended by our team at BestUSCasinos.org. Cryptocurrency is a fantastic way to keep your money safe when dealing with online banking. It also gives you the option of maintaining anonymity.

Real Money Online Poker Bonuses

One way to enjoy US online poker to its fullest is to take advantage of online bonuses and promotions that are offered. Here is an example of an online poker bonus found at Ignition Casino:

As you can see, you have the option to receive up to $1,000, or even more if you deposit with Bitcoin. There are many other bonuses like this at other casinos, most often a welcome bonus of some kind.

Other types of bonuses you’ll see are things like the following:

• “Bad Beat” bonuses
• “Royal Flush” bonuses
• And others

Free Poker Tournament Entries

Another thing many real money USA poker sites will do is have recurring tournaments. Here are a few online poker tournament examples, courtesy of Ignition Casino:

Again, many sites will have different promotions, there are just two examples of real money poker tournaments happening at the time of this writing. Many US poker sites for money will also have bonuses that may allow you to enter for free or match a deposit you make into the tournament.

Poker tournaments for real money are a great way to get your feet wet with online poker if you are new.

Online Poker Real Money Apps

You’ll find many apps on the App Store or Google Play store, but most of them will not be for real money. If you’re looking for a real money poker app, we recommend checking to see if it’s an app from one of the casinos we recommend.

If you’re just looking to play poker for fun and not worry about real money, then any of the free to play apps would be perfectly fine. Just be careful about what company you would be giving money to if you aren’t familiar with them, especially if it isn’t one of our recommended best United States online poker sites.

Start Playing Poker Online in the USA

Well, that about does it for today. We hope you have found the US online poker site of your dreams. Be sure to check back regularly as our rankings change quite a bit. Our team continues day after day to make sure we recommend only the best real money online poker sites out there.

Have fun, stay safe, and win big!

FAQ About Playing Real Money Online Poker

Now, we’ll cover a few of the questions we get asked most often about playing poker online for real money. If we haven’t covered your question here, please feel free to reach out at any time.

• Of course you can! To get started playing poker for real money online, just follow the steps outlined in this guide. And, make sure you stick with our recommended list of sites to ensure you are playing at only the best and safest real money poker sites.

• A growing trend today is the use of virtual reality for online poker games. Right now, many online casinos have not caught up with this trend of technology yet, but they’re not far behind. To find real money VR poker games would be a stretch, but if you do find someone offering real money games, just proceed with caution.

• Where Can I Play Real Money Online Poker in the USA?

  For online poker real money USA, you can play at any of the sites we recommended at the top of this page! All of these sites are safe for US players to use and vetted by our team of experts.

• As we stated earlier, unless they’re apps directly from the casinos themselves, we would hesitate before depositing any real money. However, there are real money poker apps out there that are safe to play at.

You’ll find no shortage of live poker cash games and tournaments in California. But these games are expensive between their multi-hundred dollar buy-ins and their flat-fee rake structure.

Why not make the switch to online poker? The buy-ins and rake are reasonable. There are more games and variants to choose from. And you can claim a deposit bonus, which no live cardroom offers.

All you need is an account with one of the best California poker sites online.

We strongly recommend you join one of the real money poker sites we endorse. We explain why, what we look for, and more in the next section.

Then, we’ll show you why you should consider switching to playing online poker in CA, including how it can save and make you more money compared to playing live.

If that sounds good to you, then let’s get started.

If you want to play real money poker online in California, your first step is to find a safe and reputable poker site to join. This isn’t a step you want to take alone. Here is why.

Poker is unique from most other gambling games in that you’re not playing against the house but other players like yourself. The site you join needs to have adequate traffic, otherwise, you won’t find a game to play.

This information is available online if you know where to look. And when it’s not, there are usually a few tells you can pick up in the online poker room’s lobby.

If you don’t know how to find this information, or how to interpret the clues, you might as well choose a poker site blindfolded. There’s really no difference if you insist on finding your own CA poker site to join.

On top of that, there’s other criteria you should consider, such as the poker room’s games, variants, stakes, rake, promotions, and more. It’s a lot to uncover.

That’s why we suggest you rely on us. We have decades of online poker experience. And we’ve researched and tested almost every online poker site in existence, so we know exactly which ones Californians should join.

Here’s what we look for in the best online poker sites for California.

• The poker site’s license and the commission that issued it
• The banking options you can use
• The withdrawal limits i.e. how much of your winnings can you withdraw each month?
• Can you claim a deposit bonus or participate in a VIP program, guaranteed tournaments, etc.?
• Are they trustworthy? What do other poker players think of them?

This covers the basics and tells us whether the poker room is safe, secure, trustworthy, and reliable enough to join.

But we’re not done yet.

We also need to make sure they’re a GREAT poker site, especially for poker players in California. Here’s what else we look at.

• What features does the room have? Do they have hand history players, four-color decks, odds calculators, quick play, etc.?
• Can you use a HUD?
• What kinds of tournaments can you play? Can you play guaranteed tournament? Satellites? Knockouts? Turbos? 6-max?
• What real money poker games and variants can you play?
• Do they allow multi-tabling? How many tables can you play at once?
• Is their rake reasonable?

We compare every site we review, take the top choices, and order them from best to worst. The result is a list of the top poker sites or, in this case, the best California poker sites.

We’re thorough in our research and testing, as you can see for yourself if you read our poker room reviews.

The goal is to save you all that time, money, and energy, then help you find a California-friendly online poker room as quickly as possible.

We think we achieved that. But you’ll only know for sure once you choose a CA poker site to join, create your account, and get some real money hands and tourneys under your belt.

Rake at California Poker Sites

One unique thing about playing live poker in California is how you pay rake. The rake is the money the poker room collects as their fee for hosting the game.

Most poker rooms charge you a percentage of the pot and cap how much they can rake. For example, a poker room might take 10% of every pot up to $10.

Many cardrooms do not rake the pot if no one sees a flop. This is known as a “no flop, no drop” policy.

California flips all this on its head. Here’s how.

By law, California cardrooms cannot rake a percentage of the pot, so they charge a flat rate and/or charge an hourly fee instead.

For example, you might pay $10 every hour to play. Or you might as much as $7 (at $5/$10) plus whatever the room takes for their promotions, such as a bad beat jackpot. They also rake the pot even if no one sees a flop.

Now, let’s compare this to online poker.

One of the California online poker sites we like charges 5.5% rake for their highest limit games and even less for their micro stakes.

If you play $5/$10, like our live example above, you’ll pay $0.01 for every $0.18 in the pot (5.5%). You’ll pay $1 to $5 max per hand depending on the number of players in the pot. That’s 70% less on the high side, just for playing online.

That’s not all the money you’ll save either. Here are the other ways you’ll save by choosing to play real money poker online instead of live.

• Not having to travel
• Not wasting time waiting for a game or seat to open
• Not playing at rooms without a no flop, no drop policy
• Choosing whether to play bad beat jackpot games

You’ll save money, but you can also make more money playing poker online because you can play more than one table at a time and you can participate in promotions like deposit bonuses and VIP programs.

The bottom line, you’ll increase your hourly rate and take-home pay. And all you have to do is choose to play games at the top CA poker websites instead of live.

This doesn’t just apply to cash games either. It applies to tournaments, too.

California is also known for their poker tournaments. They host some of the largest and most popular poker tournaments in the world.

• WSOP circuit events
• WTP tournaments such as the WPT Deep Stacks Championship
• Battle of the Bay
• California State Poker Championship
• Memorial Day Tournament Series
• Bay 101 Summer Open
• Commerce Hold’em Series
• A. Poker Open
• Gold Rush Poker Series

These are great live tournaments to play in. They can add a nice boost to your total live earnings column, especially since they routinely pay six and seven-figure prizes to the winner.

There’s also a little prestige and notoriety in doing well in these tournaments, which some poker players care about.

But do they offset the downsides?

• Buy-ins range from several hundred to several thousand dollars.
• The rake is expensive. You should expect the cardroom to collect $15 to $20 for every $100 you pay to play.
• The bigger tournaments can take days to complete.

Now, these will apply to live tournaments. But you also have the fact that you can spend hours playing, bust the tournament, and walk away with nothing.

This will apply to online tournaments too, but they have advantages that California poker tournament players do not have.

If you want to play real money poker tournaments in California, we recommend you play online. Here are a few reasons why, relative to the points made in the last section.

• The largest tournament buy-ins online are between $215 to $600 (with a few rare exceptions).
• The prize pools still reach six and seven figures because online poker sites aren’t confined to California or a specific square footage. They can allow a larger number of players to play, which increases the prize pool without increasing the buy-in.
• You pay less rake. You’ll usually pay $9 to $10 for every $100 you pay to play.
• Most tournaments are done in a (long) day.

Now, we mentioned that you can play a tournament for hours only to bust and walk away with nothing. That’s possible in any tournament, online or live. But here’s why online poker tournaments are better.

Online poker rooms can run more tournaments since they’re not limited on space. This means you can play more tournaments. And most CA poker sites let you play more than one tournament at a time.

Since you can put in more volume (play more tournaments), you can get through your variance (losses) faster. This enables you to cash out and win more often. You don’t have to go weeks, months, or years without a score. You’ll cash out far more often than that.

There are many other benefits to playing poker tournaments online instead of live, too.

• You can earn VIP perks.
• You’ll have a larger variety of tournament games, variations, and stakes to choose from.
• You can satellite into larger poker tournaments for much less than you can online.
• You can buy into many tournaments for less than $20. Many of these have three- or four-figure prize pools/payouts.

While there’s more money, prestige, and notoriety to gain playing in California’s live poker tournaments, it also costs a lot of time and money to play these tourneys.

Online poker tournaments are a middle ground. You can still play in tournaments with large prize pools. But you won’t spend as much to play them. And you have the added benefit of multi-tabling, which will enable you to play, cash in, and win more tournaments than you ever could offline.

Yes. We highly recommend it. The traffic at each poker site fluctuates, both in terms of overall traffic and traffic to the specific game you want to play.

You’ll have better odds of finding a profitable game or tournament the more poker site accounts you have.

The most common is the deposit bonus. Make a deposit and the poker room will match a percentage of it up to so many dollars.

For example, if the poker room you join is offering a 100% match bonus up to $500, then they’ll give you $1 for every $1 you deposit. You can get as much as $500 free.

Poker rooms also offer VIP programs, rebates, tournament tickets, guaranteed tournaments, VIP exclusive freerolls, and more.

It depends on the poker room.

A typical guaranteed tourney during a Sunday schedule is $100,000. That said, we’ve seen guarantees as high as $1 million.

You should take a two-pronged approach.

One, figure out what you want in a poker site — the games, variants, stakes, promotions, etc. Then, read the reviews for every site we recommend and choose the site that offers the closest to what you’re looking for.

Yes. Most poker sites offer mobile poker.

Some poker sites offer a native app. Others have a browser-based setup where you’ll play poker in your mobile web browser.

There are tons of variables to consider, too many to cover here. If we had to give a sweeping statement, it’d be the one below.

Best Online Cash Poker Sites

If you play medium stakes or higher, chances are you’re better off playing live. You can find games like $5/$10 or $10/$20 online, but you’ll probably find more consistent action offline. And depending on where you live in California, it might even make more sense to drive to Reno or Las Vegas.

For micro and small stakes players, as well as tournament players, we think there’s a lot of value in playing at online poker sites for all the reasons mentioned above.

Poker is popular in CA. You’ll find loads of live cash game action and poker tournaments. Many of these poker tournaments pay life-altering sums to the players who win them.

But live poker in California is far more expensive, less profitable, and less convenient compared to playing online.

There’s no reason you can’t play both formats, both live and online. But if we had to choose, we’d choose to play real money poker online.

Cached

If you see where we’re coming from and want to make the leap to playing poker online, then join one of the best California poker sites and create your account now.

Best Online Cash Poker Site

Cash games and tournaments are running all day every day. Are you going to be part of the action?