Online Poker
The most popular form of poker is online, with players competing against each other over the internet. A variety of software applications are available to help you improve your online play. These include hand database programs that save, sort and recall all of your online hands. They also allow you to make notes on players in real-time, which can be very useful. For example, you can use them to track player names and nicknames, or to mark certain players for special attention (overly aggressive players, players who 3-bet too much, etc).
One of the more obvious surface-level differences between live and online poker is the pace of play. While in a live game you might be dealt 30 hands per hour, online that figure can rise to 60 or more per hour. The faster pace of play also artificially increases the variance you experience, meaning that your swings are bigger over shorter periods.
After an initial flurry of states regulating online poker in 2013, New Jersey was the third state to join an interstate poker compact with Nevada and Delaware. However, the prospect of California joining a multi-state poker agreement was brought to a standstill when the Department of Justice reinterpreted the Wire Act to prohibit any regulated US gambling site from combining its player pools with those of another state. Until the DOJ changes its position on this issue, it will be difficult for new regulated states to build large, successful poker networks.