In short, yes! But gambling has a long and volatile history in Canada as well as the rest of the world. The first law enacted in Canada to address gambling in any form, be it betting on a poker game or wagering on sports, appeared in 1892. Following the standard English common law, the original Canadian gambling laws restricted the act but didn’t ban it outright. Multiple amendments were added over the years, but the law itself remained relatively intact until 1970, when significant reform to the Criminal Code allowed Canadian provinces to have authority, with minor exceptions, over licensing and regulating gambling.

These changes permitted the creation and cultivation of Canada’s vast gambling industry. Winnipeg is the location of Canada’s first casino, which opened in 1989, followed by another casino in Montreal in 1993. Several other provinces followed suit. While gambling is legal at casinos and approved locations in Canada, it is still by and large illegal to gamble for profit outside of these locations. However, while online casinos are not allowed to legally operate from within Canada at this time, it is still very much legal for Canadians to play online poker, wager money, and enjoy casino games at online casinos that are operated abroad.

So if you are living in Canada and are worried about breaking gambling laws by playing in an online poker tournament or practicing a new variety of poker in an online poker room, rest easy. There is absolutely nothing illegal going on and you can enjoy your game of poker in good conscience.

Welcome to poker.ca, home to the largest Canadian online poker directory and news site. Here you’ll find the resources you need to fully engage in the online poker community and keep up to date with all the latest news in the poker industry. With an emphasis on news that affects Canadian poker players and sites that cater specifically to gamblers in Canada, this site provides a unique source of reliable information that can’t be accessed anywhere else on the web. For the first time, all information pertinent to Canadian poker players has been filtered, analyzed, and gathered in one location for your convenience. Check back often for constant updates so you can stay on top of your online poker game.

There has never been a better time for Canadians to take their love of poker online. With so many sites striving to offer players in Canada the best online poker experience, there are a lot of options to choose from and just about anyone is sure to find exactly what he or she is looking for. Whether you’re excited to try out your favorite variety of poker at an online casino or take a look at something completely different, you’re sure to be satisfied by what the online poker community has to offer. More and more online casinos are offering the ability to make deposits (and withdrawals) in Canadian dollars, making your online gambling experience seamless and smooth without the need to constantly calculate exchange rates in the middle of a game. In that respect, playing online poker doesn’t have to be any different than playing at a traditional local casino or at a friend’s home on Friday night.

Why Canadians love online poker

While certain aspects of online poker will feel the same as playing anywhere else in Canada, plenty of other things about the experience can be as new and exciting as you want them to be. When you play poker online, it’s possible to try out any number of casinos in a single evening, and you only have to stay as long as you feel like it – when you’re playing online, there’s no need to persevere through a boring game if you’re not in the mood. With a click of your mouse, you can be somewhere new without worrying about how far you need to drive or whether or not you’ll need to get a hotel. Instead of limiting yourself to playing poker in the rare instances when several of your friends are simultaneously free and energetic enough to be up for a game, try playing online poker when you’re in the mood for a game but too tired or too busy to make time for a big event. Online poker makes it possible to enjoy the game completely at your convenience regardless of what else is going on in your life or anyone else’s.

Rather than spend your next free evening wondering what there is to do or wishing your friends were able to get away from work or other commitments in order to play some poker, take your free time into your own hands and check out what online casinos have to offer. You may even find that you enjoy playing online poker as much as – or even more than – poker in real life. You may discover new varieties of the game that could enhance your next real life poker night, adding a new dimension to the game that you never knew was missing. Online poker doesn’t have to replace spending time playing poker with your buddies or at your local Canadian casino, but it can be a valuable supplement to your hobby by providing convenient, stress-free entertainment on demand from the comfort of home.

The question of whether or not you can wager in Canadian dollars is an issue unique to the international realm of online poker rooms. If you were sitting down at a poker table in Montreal, there would be no need to wonder about the currency involved. But when you sit down at your computer and log on to an online poker room, you may or may not have the option to use Canadian dollars. This can be good or bad, depending on the rules and practices of the poker room.

Some poker rooms only allow gamblers to wager in U.S. dollars, which isn’t ideal for players in Canada, but it also isn’t that hard to mentally convert between these two currencies since U.S. dollars are very familiar to us. If you’re playing poker at a site with this policy, it’s important to see what method the site uses in order to ensure you’re not spending more than you should due to currency exchange issues.

One method online poker rooms use when a player is gambling with a currency that he doesn’t use in daily life involves only exchanging money when you join or leave a game. This means that your bankroll remains in Canadian dollars except when you’re playing a poker game. One of the upsides to this practice is Canadian players gambling with U.S. dollars (or Euros, or any other currency) don’t have to worry about their bankrolls being subject to constant change due to the instability of the foreign exchange market. This is a load off players’ minds at times like these when the U.S. dollar hasn’t been faring well.

Another method online poker rooms use is to convert all deposits at the time they’re made. This simplifies things on many levels, and online poker rooms tend to charge a lower premium compared to financial institutions when exchanging currency. Depending on what you’re looking for, this might be the better option for you.

There are online poker rooms that don’t require any money exchange whatsoever for players who want to use Canadian dollars. If you’d rather not worry about exchange rates, choosing one of these poker rooms will put your mind at ease.

More Canadians than ever before are interested in online poker. While plenty of fans are familiar with poker rules from experience playing in live casinos or at poker nights with friends, there are a lot of things that may appear unfamiliar at first and may take a little getting used to.

For example, the terminology involved in online poker may be a little different than the terminology you’ve been using with your friends during Friday night poker games. The differences between a freeroll and a regular poker tournament that are offered on the same online poker room website may not be immediately clear to some Canadians who are new to the online poker community.

A poker tournament is a pretty familiar thing for most poker fans. Each participant must pay a certain amount of money in order to reserve a seat at the tournament, be it a physical seat or a virtual one. The number of participants involved in the tournament therefore determines the size of the prize pool. The more people who register, the more money you have the chance of winning.

A freeroll, on the other hand, is a different kind of tournament. Rather than each participant contributing a certain amount of money in order to gain a seat, the online poker room, the casino, or a sponsor usually donates or puts up a certain, finite amount of money that will be at stake. Therefore the number of participants doesn’t directly affect the amount of money you have the potential to win, as it is predetermined by the sponsor of the event.

Some freerolls aren’t completely free, however. Players may need to put up a certain amount of money at some point, and they will still need to meet minimum betting requirements from their own bankrolls. Be sure to read all rules thoroughly being registering for a tournament so you won’t be met with any surprises!

In the digital age, it’s only natural that Canadians harbour some lingering doubts about just how upfront, honest, and safe certain internet websites actually are. Our scepticism isn’t unfounded, as there are plenty of sites out there that seek to take advantage of consumers and trick them into giving away something they didn’t want to give away, such as personal information or even money.

However, there are also plenty of great sites of the net today, and with the constant evolution of security and technology, it’s safer than ever to trust these good sites. For poker fans, there’s no reason not to trust a reputable online poker site that is licensed and appropriately regulated.

Poker players might worry about the fairness of gameplay online and whether the shuffling and dealing of virtual cards is as random as it would be in real life. This is a good reason to stick to sites with a reputation for fairness and ethical behaviour. It’s easy to find sites that deserve their upstanding reputations, and you can enjoy online poker there without having to worry about whether or not the games you’re dealt were fair or not. If the games weren’t fair, they wouldn’t be certified by a reputable organization and they wouldn’t be trusted by so many happy gamblers!

Gambling online may not hold the same charm as taking a trip to one of the big Canadian casinos to engage is some great poker games, but it does have a unique upside. Due to the nature of online poker rooms, which require very low overhead costs in order to maintain and run, it’s possible to have a much higher payout percentage than at traditional casinos that require more money to keep operating.

For example, take the Caesars Windsor in Ontario. This is a huge facility that requires hundreds of employees and a lot of capital to keep it heated, cooled, and cleaned. It requires a squad of dealers to work the tables, security to ensure no one is up to no good, and all kinds of other people just to operate each aspect of the casino.

Online poker rooms don’t share these requirements and can be operated much more inexpensively. This makes it possible for even small online poker rooms to be able to offer more lucrative and profitable conditions than even some of the biggest casinos. Less money is taken in the rake, allowing each online poker hand to be more profitable to the winners than it would be at a casino poker game. This is a great incentive for poker players who want to keep as much of their winnings as possible to play at online poker rooms rather than in traditional casinos.

Another great feature that makes online poker rooms so attractive is the fact that unlike at traditional casinos around the world, online poker tournaments don’t feel the need to deduct even more things from each prize pool – there is no deduction for dealer tips, etc. So if you’re a poker player who doesn’t want to share your hard-earned winnings with a casino, online poker might be the way to go.

In short, no, you shouldn’t, but this is only true if you are meticulous and thorough in ensuring that you’re only frequenting reputable, audited, and regulated online poker rooms.

Canadians are informed consumers who generally do their research before taking a leap of faith. This same philosophy should be equally applied to choosing your online poker room to ensure that you are not setting yourself up to be taken advantage of or putting your personal information and your money in danger.

It doesn’t take much time to make sure an online poker room is legit. Check out the front page, scroll down, and see what accreditations the site has. Are they licensed, and are they audited regularly by an international authority? Who is regulating their activities? The biggest gaming authority in Canada is called the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, so if you see this name you know the site is operating with Canadian approval and under Canadian standards. This organization has proven itself to care deeply about online poker players and take action when necessary if an online poker room isn’t operating up to their fair and ethical standards.

If your online poker room is licensed, audited, and sufficiently regulated by ethical and reputable authorities, you have absolutely nothing to worry about and can go about enjoying online poker without a second thought.

There are four terms Canadians must be very familiar with in order to effectively bet in online poker games. Basic poker rules are simple, though the game itself can often seem more complex than it is. In order to make good bets when playing online poker, it’s important to grasp the following actions.

Check – To check means to pass and not open the betting or put any money down on your poker hand. In order to check, the betting round must not have been opened yet. In online poker strategy, this could mean many different things. Perhaps you aren’t confident in your hand, or perhaps you want others to think you aren’t confident, or perhaps you are curious to see how other poker players choose to proceed before you make a move. This action is particularly effective in making other online poker players wonder what you’re up to.

Call – To call means you are putting in the same amount or more money than the player before you. Some poker players use the term ‘see’ in place of call, but in most online poker games Canadians can count on using the term ‘call’.

Raise – To raise means you want to increase the bet and force all other players to put in more money (to call) if they wish to stay in the online poker game. Different online poker rooms have different rules when it comes to how you can raise, often dictating the size of the raise in relation to the original bet, or adding limits to the number of raises allowed per hand.

Fold – To fold means you forfeit your investment up to that point and have decided to cut your losses rather than continue playing. In online poker, Canadian players need to remember that it’s not always wise to stick with a hand once they’ve called or raised beyond a certain point – do the math and make sure you’re making the right choice, and don’t hesitate to fold if it’s the better option.

With knowledge of these four basic poker rules that account for the majority of actions that make up most of online poker decisions, players from Canada can play confidently and aggressively in any online poker room with players from around the world.

Even though plenty of poker players love both live poker and online poker, there are still enough differences between the two to inspire some poker fans to prefer one over the other. Unlike many other places in the world, Canadians are lucky enough to have the option to legally gamble in casinos without going abroad. This makes live poker accessible to those of us who live near casinos, and not too far of a trip for most everyone else who is a dedicated poker fan.

However, even when there’s a casino just around the corner, sometimes it’s still tough to make time to go, which is part of the attraction of online poker. It’s also great for when the roads are dangerous in the winter and you’d rather not drive long distances if you can avoid it. In addition to saving travel time by playing online poker, you’ll save even more time thanks to the automated process that is involved. There are no delays as the dealer shuffles and deals the cards and counts chips over and over again, as the computer software can do this instantly. Even though it may only amount to a few seconds at a time, this adds up very quickly. At a typical traditional casino, for example, the average poker table sees only about thirty hands played per hour. At the average online poker table, however, the rate of play is often three times faster with about ninety or a hundred hands played per hour. For players who are impatient or anxious to put their free time to good use without waiting around for the dealer to do what needs to be done, online poker can be particularly attractive and enjoyable.

Another great benefit of playing poker online is being able to play more than one table at the same time, something that is completely impossible to do in live poker. For players who can remain focused and organized, it’s not entirely unheard of to be involved in eight different games simultaneously when playing online poker. This can exponentially increase profit potential in a shorter amount of time! It’s no wonder online poker is such a sensation.