Online poker for real money is a topic that fills some people with anxiety.  While playing for play chips on Facebook is easy enough, the thought of actually putting down some real cash on the virtual felts is generally a much different story.

Why all the hesitation?  For one thing, people are –  quite correctly –  worried about security.  When you play for real money at an online poker site, you have to put your trust in a number of parties, including not only the room itself, but a host of third parties such as payment processors that are involved in the transaction.  Then you have to feel comfortable that the games themselves are fair; in the history of online poker there have certainly been more than a few crooked rooms, and even at honest rooms there can be crooked players.

The major sites have not been immune to cheating scandals over the last few years, with both PokerStars and Full Tilt revealing at multiple points the existence of bots or cheating rings on their sites.  That’s where the honesty of the room comes into play –  both rooms were public about what they had found and made serious efforts to get the funds of those impacted by the cheating.

Obviously you wouldn’t have to worry about any of the above if you were playing online poker for play money.  No one would go to the trouble of cheating you out of your chips, because they simply aren’t worth much, if anything at all.  The sad reality, however, is that when you start adding real money to the equation, people now have a much stronger motive to engage in dishonest actions.

Should this stop you from playing online poker for real money?  Probably not.  Hundreds of thousands of players world wide have battled it out for actual cash in the virtual arena, and as long as you’re careful and observant, you should be able to do so as well without incident.