When Playing Real Money Online

A poker player who has enjoyed making profits out of playing in land-based casinos and gambling rooms will certainly consider playing to make profits in online poker rooms. But to earn profits from online poker, the player must use real money and not play money.

Unfortunately, there are several online casinos out there which are not totally honest and may just fleece money off their online players. Thus, all online poker experts have one unanimously given advice: When playing online with real money, proceed with caution.

There are many ways to play with real money in online poker. One is to directly use one's credit card. But some online casinos don't prefer the direct use of credit cards because they do not like to handle all the necessary procedures involved in processing the credit card purchase. Nor do these casinos want to be charged with merchant's credit card processing fee.

Another point against directly using credit cards is that the online casino will have knowledge of the poker player's credit card number. If the online casino is unscrupulous, it may ring up more charges against it. And still another point against directly using the credit cards is that the bank will not allow the use of the cards for online casinos.

Aside from using credit cards, another method used by many poker players when they play real money is the use of an intermediary service. Two of the commonly used intermediary services are the ones offered by NETeller (http://www.neteller.com) or by Firepay (http://www.fireway.com). The poker player makes "purchases" using one of these intermediary services. And then, the NETeller or the Firepay makes the transaction with the online casino.

The best advantage of using such services is that the online casino will have no knowledge of the credit card number of the poker player. But some poker players are still dubious about such services and are comfortable with the idea of revealing their credit card numbers. These particular poker players can use a prepaid credit card.

In a prepaid credit card, the poker player pays a certain amount to a prepaid credit card company and he is given a credit card which is worth the amount he has paid. He can then use this amount for the online casino. And once all the amount is used up, this prepaid credit card can be discarded. No one else can use it again or add charges to it.

If the poker player still wishes to use the same prepaid credit card, he can reload it by paying cash again to the company that provided it.