1. Best Texas Holdem Website
2. Best Free Texas Holdem Sites
3. Best Online Texas Hold'em Poker Sites
4. Most Popular Texas Holdem Site
5. Best Online Texas Hold'em Sites
6. Top Texas Holdem Sites

The popularity of online poker has saturated the market with poker rooms that seem to pop up on a daily basis. Each site is seeking to garner your membership with various promotions and catchy slogans that will make you think they are the right choice for you.

There are hundreds if not thousands of online poker rooms that you can find, but choosing the right one is key. Having many options is always a good thing, but too many, and we can get a bit overwhelmed. While all poker rooms have the same concept of being able to play poker over the internet, not all are the same in regards to quality and what they have to offer. Here are two of my favorite texas holdem poker sites for 2013. You can read the full review by clicking on the site name:

Best Texas Holdem Website

If you’re like I am, you want to make your decision as painless and stress free as possible. After all, we got online to play poker, not weed through a bunch of poker sites for hours on end.

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Good news for you is that I have spent over a decade playing online poker and know what to look for in a good poker site. I’ve spent those countless hours scouring the ends of the internet making sure the poker rooms I play at are the very best and now I’m here to share that information with you.

Trust

The site we choose will ultimately be holding our hard earned money. We want to be able to trust and feel secure knowing that our funds will always be safe. We also want to ensure the game play is fair and never manipulated.

You want to make sure the site you play on is licensed and regulated by a third party company or government that has a strong reputation in the gambling industry. These governing bodies make sure the sites they license are always operating in a legal and fair manner.

Most poker rooms will have a license from the government they reside in, but you always want to make sure. There have been rooms in the past without a license and were obviously not a safe place to play. To find out if a site is regulated and licensed, you can usually check the “About Us” tab on the home page of a site. If you cannot find this information or are unsure, contact support and find out before you start playing.

Promotions

The way online poker rooms market themselves is by offering promotions. With so much competition and each site looking for your business, you will find some very generous promotions that can add some free cash to your bankroll.

A deposit bonus for new players will be the first type of promotion you come across. You want to find a room with a nice offer and one that is easy to clear. By clear I mean, what requirements must be met before having this money released into your account.

When a site offers you a deposit bonus, they will match a certain percentage of that deposit in the form of bonus money. However, you must meet playing requirements in order to obtain this “Free Cash”. Generally you will have to play a certain number of hands and pay a specific amount of rake to unlock the bonus. This is crucial information to know before jumping right in. You may see a site that is offering a huge bonus, but when you read the terms and conditions, it’s almost impossible to clear.

You don’t want to go by what the actual bonus is. Make sure to read the terms and conditions to find out exactly what is needed to receive the bonus. Some bonuses just aren’t worth going for due to very stringent requirements.

Finding the right mix of value and easy to meet requirements can be tricky, but if you make sure there are no outrageous terms that make you clear the bonus in a very short time or make you play a gazillion hands, you should be ok.

You also want to make sure that once you’re a member, you will still receive benefits from the site. Most poker rooms will have some type of VIP or Loyalty program that rewards players for continuing to play on their site. Check out what a site has to offer before making it home.

Software

Some sites are just more of a hassle to play on due to their lack of suitable software. It’s important to find a room that has plenty of features that make playing, a pleasurable experience. There’s nothing more tilting than sub-par software, trust me on this one.

Some key features you want your poker room to have are:

• Multi tabling functions
• Game filters
• Note taking
  
• Hand histories
• Hot keys (keyboard shortcuts for easy in game play actions)
• Easy to use lobby
• Graphics

Other aspects to look for are the options you have to play. If you are using a Mac or Linux operating system, the software may not work for you. For users in this category, make sure the site offers a flash version or is compatible with your type of computer.

Game Selection

All poker rooms will offer Texas Hold Em as this is the most popular form of poker. But, if you enjoy other games such as Omaha or Stud, you need to make sure it’s offered. Having the option to play many forms of poker is a nice benefit. Some sites will have a wide selection with obscure games like; Badugi and Chinese Poker. On the flip side some sites will only have 1 or 2 variants that limit what you can play.

Another key to game selection is the tournament lineup. If MTTs are your cup of tea, then make sure they have a decent selection of tournaments and Sit n Go’s with a wide range of buy ins. Many rooms will have guaranteed prize pools that make playing worthwhile.

Player Traffic and Competition

The amount of players on a site can influence you’re playing experience. Sitting and waiting for games to start is not my idea of playing poker. You want a site with enough traffic to be able to pick and choose your tables. A few thousand players online at any given time is ample and should be the minimum amount of traffic you should be looking for. These stats can usually be found on the home page or just by checking the software lobby to see how many players are online.

When it comes to competition, this will be harder to judge. From my experience, poker rooms that also have a casino or sports book tend to have the weakest competition. The gamblers who win in the casino love to take their money over to the poker room and test their luck. This is always a good recipe for soft and profitable games.

Support and Banking

Having fast and reliable customer support goes a long way in a poker room. Make sure they have at least a live chat feature that puts you in contact with a support agent for fast service. Having a toll free number is a plus and should be on your list of key elements.

As far as banking goes, you need to make sure the room has plenty of options for deposits and withdrawals. Finding the best software and games means nothing if you can’t get money on and off site. A full list of banking options is available on most sites to make sure your method of choice is available.

Also check for fees and haw fast cash outs are processed. A good site will process all requests under a week with less than 2 days being optimal. The better rooms will have the option to use online wallets or have withdrawals credited right back to your credit card or bank account for quick and easy access to your winnings.

Best Free Texas Holdem Sites

If you stick with these criteria, your choice of poker rooms should be a good one. Just remember that if you are ever in doubt about what a room offers, you can always contact support to find out. This is also a good way to see how good their support staff is.

Best Online Texas Hold'em Poker Sites

More Reviews:

Which Poker Site is Best for Playing Texas Holdem Online

This is a tough question, not best suited for a single recommendation. For starters, there are US Poker Sites which tend to accept players from all over the world, and there are poker sites that cater to specific markets. If you’re in UK, Canada, or Australia, wouldn’t you rather play poker in GBP, CAD, or AUD? Same goes for Euro Poker sites or even poker sites that support Asian currencies. Poker is a global game, and finding a site that caters to your market is the best first step; our currency page can be found here.

Most Popular Texas Holdem Site

The next thing to consider is whether or not the poker site is compatible. Depending on your OS you might be interested in our pages on Mac Poker Sites, Linux Poker Sites or even sites compatible with Ubuntu. If you’re using Windows, don’t worry; all poker sites covered on this page offer online Texas Hold’em games that are Windows compatible. Next in the decision chain is whether you want to play using downloadable software or whether you’d rather use the no download, flash version. However, if you expect to also play on your mobile device, you’ll want to read our page on Mobile Poker. Also, we assume you’re interested in real money poker, which is what most of our website covers; if you’re looking for free games, click here.

Understand there are many other factors involved in choosing an online poker site. If you play mostly cash games you’ll probably want to learn about the best VIP programs. If you play tournaments – leader board promotions, guaranteed prize pools, and the various types of sit and goes such as double or nothing, and jackpot pot sit and goes are probably the topics that will most interest you. Or perhaps you’re looking to win a WSOP seat online. Our website has more than 100 pages on poker site intricacies. While we dedicate the rest of our homepage to Texas Hold’em history, be sure to navigate to and read other pages of our site to learn all you’ll want to know and more about playing texas holdem online.

Legal Online Poker

TexasHoldemOnline.com has a complete section specifically for state laws. Below you will find a list of the most popular legal pages on our site. If your state is not listed, please use this link to visit our main USA poker page. Each state page provides a detailed review of the current legislature in place for online gambling and poker.

Texas Hold’em Made for Online Play

Texas Holdem is the most popular variant of poker, but this is a relatively new fact. While draw poker has existed for hundreds of years and stud poker 150+, Texas Hold’em is only decades old, AND – only since the internet and home computer boom has this has become the dominate game of choice. I’ll cover the impact of the internet on Holdem in this section, but first let me briefly cover the game’s history.

In 2007, Texas Legislature declared Robstown, Texas the birthplace of Texas hold’em with an origin date of approximately 1925. If this is true, the game wasn’t popular. This date was a guess based on Johnny Moss claiming he played the game in Dallas sometime in the 1930’s. It’s worth pointing out the most respected book on poker games, Foster’s Complete Hoyle, was published in 1963 with no mention of the game Hold’em. It did however mention Cincinnati which is played the same but with five hole cards of which any from the hand and board could be used.

While whoever invented Texas Hold’em is unknown, we do know it was Crandell Addington that put in on the map. He discovered hold’em in 1959, and introduced it to backroom games in Fort Worth. In time he befriended his biggest competitors to the funds of rich businessmen and oil tycoons, these competitors were none other than Roscoe Weiser, Doyle Brunson, and Amarillo Slim. In 1967 the four relocated to Las Vegas together and started a regular holdem game at Golden Nugget downtown. Even though this was the only place the game was spread in Vegas, when the first ever poker tournament took place in 1969 – hold’em was the main event. This was won by Crandell Addington and the following year the same tournament became known as the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

Although the WSOP helped spread Texas Hold’em, this wasn’t even close to the most popular game of choice. It was one of many options, and while a bit more popular in Vegas and parts of California, everywhere else it was a distant second to 7 Card Stud. In fact, I can recall in the 1990’s at East Coast casinos no greater than 20% of the tables were of the holdem variety. Where the game really got big was the internet.

The movie Rounders no doubt helped with the poker boom, but this movie was released in September 1998. The same with televised poker! While the WSOP aired a version without hole cards seen (hole-card came started in the US in 2002) this was just a one hour episode each year that didn’t gather much attention. While this and others were earlier contributors, what really got the game started was real money online poker which was invented by Randy Blumer. The original website was planetpoker.com (no longer offering real money play) and the first ever hand of real money internet poker occurred here on January 1, 1998 at a $3/$6 Fixed Limit Holdem table.

And what happened from here? The $10,000 buy-in WSOP main event had never previously had more than a few hundred entrants. In 1998 it had 350. The years that followed were 393, 512, 613, 631 and in 2003 there were 839 entrants. What was happening is online poker sites were offering chances to win a WSOP seat online, and this kept increasing the player pool. When that 839 player Main Event ended in 2003, the real online poker boom took full flight. This year an accountant from Tennessee, perfectly named Chris Moneymaker successfully parlayed a $39.00 online poker satellite to a Main Event entry and then gold bracelet, winning first place and $2.5 million in prize money.

Best Online Texas Hold'em Sites

This made for great TV and the popularity of poker then exploded with countless poker television shows and young adult wanting the chance to be the next Chris Moneymaker. From 839 entrants in 2003, the number of entrants grew to 2,576 in 2004, in 5,619 in 2005 and 8,773 in 2006. Although the numbers are down slightly, in 2011 Pius Heinz topped a field of 6,865 entries to become the World Champion, winning the gold bracelet and $8,715,638. The WSOP is available in Europe although it goes under the acronym WSOPE. You can have a look at this site http://www.pokeronline.de/ for more information.

Top Texas Holdem Sites

From small game played in backrooms of Fort Worth, to a single game at the Golden Nugget, to the first WSOP which had 7 entrants, it was no doubt the internet that made Texas Holdem the game of choice. Initially it seeded players to the WSOP, as a result, televised poker caught on, and all everyone seen, the fame, glory and thoughts of riches, were focused on the Hold’em variant. This is a great game, with rich in history that’s still being made. We’re glad to be part of it and have set our sights high with the aim to become the internet’s number one guide to playing Texas Holdem Online! We hope you enjoy our website and wish you the right side of variance in all of life. Thanks for reading, sincerely – THO Staff.