As the game of poker has evolved, so have the opportunities associated with it. Like so many of the online industries, the online poker business has turned to affiliate marketing to spread the message of the individual sites. In a multi-billion dollar industry like that of online poker, the rewards for being an affiliate can be monumental. The affiliate-marketing program not only generates extra custom for the poker sites but also distributes a percentage of the wealth amongst a wider range of online users. With the non-prejudicial way in which website owner are able to become affiliates, there is a space in the market for any user no matter how small their site, or how low the number of hits to join a scheme, and potentially earn some money too.

As with any affiliate program, the affiliate sites only earn money if a person visiting their site clicks on the links within the site and either signs up or purchases an object. In the case of online poker, affiliates must wait until a player follows the link and deposits their first cash into the site. Because not everyone who visits a site is going to want to visit external links, it is in the best interest of the affiliate to promote the site and themselves in order to maximise their own chances of getting custom. Of course this favours larger affiliate sites that can afford to advertise themselves to a far larger audience. But for the everyday Internet user it is not impossible to earn a small percentage of a poker room’s revenue. With each customer attracted earning an affiliate 20 – 35%, it is not hard to see how just a few players can generate enough cash to put a smile on your face. Without overheads and costs that vast advertising campaigns incur, every penny made is essentially profit. Herein lies the beauty of this particular affiliate program. Because it is available to anyone, it is a true online entrepreneurial venture, site owners can earn enough to expand their operations and try new forms of advertising. Just like the surge in online poker rooms has created a boom in that market, it has also made affiliate marketing an attractive proposition. No matter what your area of expertise, your budget or your knowledge the possibility to make money in online poker affiliation programs is available to everybody.

First, let’s cover the types of Texas Holdem poker games. There are three main types, and depending on locality, there may be slight changes of the rules within each type of poker game. For the sake of simplicity, we will target the three main types of Texas Holdem.

Fixed Limit Texas Holdem is a game where the betting is set within a certain monetary range. As an example, you may see games played where the betting is limited from the five dollar, to ten dollar range. This would indicate that the bets are limited to five dollars in the pre-flop and flop, and limited to ten dollars in the turn and river.

Pot Limit Texas Holdem has a form of limited betting also, however it is not predetermined before the game. The limit in Pot Limit Texas Holdem is limited to the amount currently in the pot. This allows the betting limit to increase as the pot increases.

No Limit Texas Holdem is where you’ll find the betting is only limited to the amount the players are willing to bet. There are no set betting limits in this game. If played within a casino, players may be limited on how often they can raise within each game. No Limit Texas Holdem is most often played by the experienced players with high bankrolls.

Now that we’ve covered the types of Texas Holdem, let’s get down to the terminology used in all of those games.

Blind bet: The blind bet is the bet made by players before the cards are dealt for the round. Blind bets are usually made by the first two players on the left of the dealer.

Call: When a player matches the bet of another player, it’s referred to as a call.

Check: When a player “checks”, they are not placing a bet. When a player checks they are opting to not place a bet. A check can only occur if there have been no other bets placed in the round. Checking means that the player chooses not to bet, but still stays in the game.

Fold: When a player folds, they are quitting the current game and will no longer be placing any bets on that game. They will continue play on the next deal.

Raise: To raise simply means you’re betting more than the last player.

All In: To go “All In” means the player is betting everything they have on your hand.

Dealer Button: The dealer button is a token used to determine who the current dealer is and who is to place the blind bets. It is passed in a clockwise direction to the next player after each round.

Pre-Flop: This is the very first round of Texas Holdem. The dealer gives each player two cards, which are called pocket cards.

Flop: This is the second round of Texas Holdem poker, and is when the first three communal cards are placed face up on the table. These communal cards can be used by all the players to create the best five card hands.

Turn: The third round of Texas Holdem is referred to as the turn. It’s this round in which a fourth communal card is placed face up.

River: This is the last round of Texas Holdem. A fifth communal card is placed face up on the poker table in this round.

Now that you’re familiar with Texas Holdem terms, you’re ready to get down to the business of learning the rules. May Lady Luck be with you!

The dealer is the person that deals the cards in a poker game. In Texas hold’em the player that sits on the dealer position is the last to act. In online and casino poker there is a small button below that player that lets everyone know he is the dealer, regarding the fact that the real dealer is not present at the table like in home games.

The blinds in Texas hold’em are two the small blind and the big blind. They are forced bets that have to be made prior to the actual dealing of the cards. The big blind is the first person placed on right to the dealer and the small blind is the bid placed by the person sitted left to the dealer. The big blind is twice as big as the small blind. Their value is set by the organizers of the game and the way the dealers and the blinds change is clockwise.

Texas hold’em is played with a pack of 52 cards and no jokers. The cards are dealed starting from the dealer button. At first every player gets two cards faced down, cards that only they will be able to see. Then the dealer places on the table three cards faced up, that all the players can see, cards named flop. The forth card is dealed faced up although and it is called the turn, and finally the fifth faced up and called river.

Betting is happens between rounds. There are four rounds, the first is the pre-flop round, the one that contains the blind bets just before the players get their cards. The first to bet is the one on the left of the big blind. The second round is the round after the flop was dealt, the third is after the turn and the fourth is placed after the river. A player’s options are: to check, to call, to bet, to raise or to fold. The player of the big blind can check when it is his turn at the fist round and for all players in a round where everyone checked. When we say call we understand that we will return the specific bet with its full amount. When we bet it means we want to put money for the first time on our cards, and to raise means to increase the bid already made. Folding means to give up on the hand and any additional founds already placed on the playing table.

There is a special feature in hold’em called showdown. This is where players try to combine a card or two or maybe none from the ones they are holding in their hands with the five cards placed on the table. There are different combinations that can bring winnings.

In Texas hold’em there is no color classification. Every color means as much as any other. But anyhow, you can’t be confronted in hold’em with two players having at the same time flushes of different colors. When two hands are alike, the player they will win is the one that has the bigger kicker. If two players have pairs of threes but one has an ace as a kicker and the other one a king, the player holding the ace will win the hand.

Women see gambling more than just betting money on a game or dropping coins in a slot machine; it’s a holistic experience that embodies all the senses. Ask a man about a trip to the casino and he’ll tell you about the gambling and the money he won or loss. Ask a woman about a trip to the casino and she will tell you about the shows, the shopping, the atmosphere, the food and drink in the casino itself, and oh by the way, she lost or won some money.

Current observations reveal a growth in women taking up poker online, with studies showing that like their bricks and mortar sisters, women enjoy the “social” interaction of internet poker and the need for to escape the grind of daily life without spending a fortune for that experience!

Online gambling has allowed more women to become adventurous in the risks they take. The online arena facilitates their inner growl, letting women live each gambling moment as a lion rather than a lamb; the demure, prim and proper appearance of a lady no longer applies when gambling online. Women can therefore pretty much hold their own. Even when playing against men, they are not afraid of men excluding or patronising the so called “weaker sex”. Not only that but the convenience of having entertainment provided in the safe confines of their own home means that women with children no longer have to worry about hiring a nanny for the evening. They can play when it suits them night or day without ‘risking’ the need to stop their winning streak.

Today, the number of online casinos catering for women is staggering. With each site offering a wide variety of games and gambling opportunities, internet poker offers women the opportunity to play the games in a non-threatening environment without having to deal with overbearing male egos. The lack of females frequenting offline bookmakers and to an extent some men who are too nervous to visit those dens of vice are prime examples of how the internet has broken down this barrier. It’s refreshing to see that women who gamble online can now firmly take off the mask played in the real world, let their inhibitions go and be the deadly wild card once thought of as the underdog.

With greater autonomy in their personal lives and fewer women being tied down with the responsibility of marriage and children, their spending power has escalated at a rate that not only keeps those shop ‘tills’ ringing but has also given women the freedom to spend as they wish. With online gambling now a mainstream activity, the trend has also seen more women taking the lead in online poker playing. We only need to see the rising number of gambling sites catering exclusively to women to know that this is the market to be in.

Until very recently, the online poker boom was thought to be a male dominated arena with less than 10% of players at a typical casino poker game being women. But online gambling industry experts have recently set out to investigate internet poker trends that have led to the widespread increase of online poker websites. Two studies conducted in the US brought out interesting and unexpected revelations in terms of demographics and the overall popularity and appeal of online poker.

Surprisingly, the studies, one conducted by PC Data “Spotlight on Games”, show that over one third of online poker players are female with women being the fastest growing segment of the online poker playing public. The studies also revealed that an overwhelming majority of female poker players prefer to play at online poker sites. In fact, only 1 of every 6 women preferred online poker to regular poker!

As betting matures online, a large part of it will take place around casual games which just happen to be popular with women players. In fact, despite the assumed male dominance of online gambling, women do make up a significant share. Current figures show that this is approaching around 47% of all internet users being female.

Online gambling providers therefore need to take serious note of women players if they are to maximise the overall package and in turn increase the value and loyalty of these players. It would seem that although men are currently ahead of their female counterparts in online gambling, women gamers are rapidly creeping up the stakes to become one of the most powerful demographics to woo and within a few years, they will become the smartest group to bet on.

2003 was the year that Poker started its growth to worldwide fame as the most popular game of the decade. Internet poker and Television became the driving factor for the fastest growth of a sport since the Snooker explosion in the 80’s. The advent of televised poker such as Poker Million on Sky Sports and the WPT tour on Challenge started growing a cult audience. Under table cameras and pinhole cameras allowed the viewers to see the players cards. Therefore, we could now see how the pros played and how they bluffed. John Duthie, a TV producer was the first player to win a million pound on Television in the Poker Million event.

Internet poker exploded as it now allowed people from all over the world to play against each other night and day and fed the demand of TV poker. Players can now find a game at any level 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Games start as small as 5cent/10cent games where the minimum buy in is $1 or $2 and go up to $100/$200 games where you need a minimum of $1,000 to sit down. Online poker also allowed these players the opportunity to qualify for the big TV tournaments through online satellite tournaments. There was now the opportunity for players to win millions of dollars on TV tournaments via satellites for as little as $10. 2003 saw Chris Moneymaker win the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and $2,500,000 from a $40 satellite.

Poker tournaments online went wild with hundreds of players entering tournaments and creating huge prize pools. This now meant that you could sit at home and play in big tournaments and win thousands of dollars. In 2004 the WSOP saw the impact of online poker players as 2,500 players entered a $10,000 entry tournament. 50% of these players were from poker sites. The winner, Greg Raymer, took home $5 million dollars.

All of these factors resulted in a new breed of poker player, young aggressive and with lots of money. 24 year old kids were winning over a million dollars a year by playing high stakes poker online. The experienced poker players now had a place where they could earn a living without leaving home. The online poker professionals flourished and the new players grew and learned the game. Now it is common place to see games online where the players have $10,000 each in front of them and the average pot is $2,000. Tournaments online regularly have guaranteed prize pools in the hundreds of thousands of dollars with the winners taking home $25,000 to $50,000 in a night. This boom in online tournaments and cash games has meant that the land based tournaments have been flooded with entries. The 2005 WSOP had a record 5,600 players generating a record prize pool of $56 million. The winner Joe Hachem, took home a massive $7.5 million dollars. This was one of the biggest payouts in any sporting event ever. Now million dollar, or million pound tournaments are becoming commonplace all around the world. Poker on television is available 24 hours a day, with a plethora of poker books hitting the market giving everyone expert advice on how to become a successful player.

New players joining a poker site can sit down on practice tables and play for fun with free chips whilst they learn how to play the game. The International Poker Network employ Professional poker teachers who sit down for 3 hours a day on the practice tables to answer players queries and advise them on strategies.

Poker is now the “in” game and as such has attracted a lot of media attention. Celebrities are now commonplace both online and in live tournaments. Ben Affleck recently won a major poker tournament in LA taking on the best in the poker world.

Online you can regularly see celebrities such as Lou Diamond Philips, Delta Goodrum and Brian McFadden playing in normal poker games (quite often for high stakes). Celebrity TV poker tournaments are commonplace and sportsmen and TV stars are all competing for the prize of beating their peers in the ultimate game of skill and strategy. Sportsmen have utilised their competitive edge and ability to handle pressure and are thriving in poker games with Steve Davis, Mark Williams, Matthew Stevens and Phil Taylor some of the notable successes in the poker field.

Not only have celebrities and sportsmen been attracted to this new pastime but also women haven taken to online poker in their thousands. Now they have a game where they don’t have to go to a male dominated card room alone, they can now sit in the comfort and security of their own home and pit their skills against all other players regardless of their sex. And they are getting good, maybe they are natural risk takers. Current estimates put the number of women players online at 25-30% of the total players, and it is estimated that 2 million players are online each year.

The high stakes games have now gone even bigger with the corporation, a group of 16 of the best poker players in the world taking on Billionaire banker, Andy Beal. Andy Beal is a maths wizard, a billionaire and a very good poker player. He challenged the best players in the world to play him heads up (one on one) for the $10 million dollars he brings with him to Vegas. This game runs with blinds of $30,000/$60,000 or $50,000/$100,000. The “game” is becoming a regular event in Las Vegas. Last time Beal left with $10 million dollars of the corporation’s money. Now they are back playing again. The talks are now about increasing the sit down money from $10 million to $40 million.

So if you want to take part in this phenomenon, take a look at www.ipnpoker.com the home of The International Poker Network. It is an aggregated room comprising some of the biggest sportsbooks and media brands. Games and tournaments are played in a choice of currencies – dollars, pounds, euros and there is a large choice of languages available including English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and Greek.

Every day you will find over 30,000 players across all different types of games giving you plenty of choice as to when and what to play. At peak times there will be over 7,000 players across all the different games.

Do you fancy playing in the ultimate game of skill for high stakes? As the quote from the movie ‘The Color of Money goes, “Money won is twice as sweet as money earned” and it is especially true in poker.