In September we announced the release of the World Series of Poker video game. Well, it’s out and so far, it is very well received. It’s been highlighted by Major Nelson’s arcade. It’s been mentioned on Metacritic and across the board the reviews are good.
The game—available on XBox (it’s free on XBox Live), PlayStation and a variety of handheld devices is versatile. It allows you to set up a profile and then you can play at single tables, as part of a bigger tournament or just against another player. If you have an XBox Live account you can play against other people in real time through the game’s mechanics.
What makes this game great is that it doesn’t require you to actually “buy in” the way some games will (more about them in a minute). Instead you’re allocated a quantity of chips at the start of the day. As long as you still have chips you can play. Once those chips are gone, you’re done until tomorrow. This allows players to play without having to worry about gambling addiction or losing their shirts.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) has become such a popular and widespread brand that it’s now available at “pay for play” portals in some states. In Siena, a casino has received the Nevada igaming license that will allow it to set up WSOP (or any of its competitors, like Z4Poker) for its gamblers as early as 2014.
But what if you want to play with real money right now but don’t want to travel to a casino and can’t find anybody to play with locally? Didn’t all of those “real gambling” portals get shut down a few years ago?
It’s true that in 2011, the FBI shut down a bunch of the bigger online gambling portals. Those portals were charged with illegal gambling, money laundering and a host of other charges that made it look like online gambling was but a flash in the pan.
Earlier this year, though, CNN reported that the online gambling industry was slowly but surely returning to life as states voted to pass legislation that would make gambling online legal even if offline gambling was illegal throughout those states. It’s actually kind of confusing because games of chance are legal in a lot of states but games of skill (of which poker is one) are only technically legal in three.
In spite of the confusion, though, one thing is certain: you can gamble online now in most states which means that if you want to play poker at Luckity.com you’ll most likely be able to do exactly that. You might even want to use the XBox non-gambling version of the game to hone your skills so that you have a better chance of winning big on the paid sites!
Of course, it’s important to gamble responsibly. Only bet what you know you can afford to lose, etc. If you start to feel like you’re losing control, switch back to the no-pay games and find some help.
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