Online poker is a game of cards played over the internet. It has become a huge industry thanks to its convenience and accessibility, especially for players in remote locations or countries. The games can be played from a computer or on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Players can play for real money or use virtual chips to try out the games for free. The market is expected to grow significantly over the forecast years, aided by surging usage of internet services and relaxation of regulations governing online gambling and betting.
Several software applications exist to help users improve their online poker playing. These include hand database programs that allow users to save, sort and recall all hands they play. The software may also scan active tables for known players and display previous statistics from previous hands with those players next to their name (known as a heads up display or HUD). Other programs track winnings, calculate odds and equity, or flag likely mistakes.
It is possible that the decline in new subscribers could be a result of laws or marketing schemes that affect poker as a whole, rather than Entain’s particular operations and poker player pool. This is particularly true since the distribution of country of residence for our analytic sample was much more concentrated than that in LaPlante et al.’s 2009 study. Additionally, the average age for our analytic sample was slightly older than that of LaPlante et al.’s (2009) sample, which was on par with many other studies of poker playing behavior.