Poker in Canada – If you’re not involved, you’re missing out!

Are you a Canadian and love poker? Perhaps you’re interested in poker but have yet to really get involved? Maybe you have recently come across poker online but would like to know more about the offline world and who the stars are? This is the perfect article for you to find out a decent amount of information regarding poker and who plays it in Canada!

The number of people playing poker in Canada continues to grow every day, and the majority of these players are involved in the online poker world. This doesn’t mean the offline world of poker in Canada is dead, far from it! In fact, Canada has casinos and poker rooms in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan – the poker scene is alive and well, but who are the stars? Who can we look upon as role models? Who can give us the inspiration we need to get more involved in poker and training?

There are quite a few famous Canadian poker players for you to study, watch and most importantly; learn from. Who?

Daniel Negreanu plays poker professionally and has won four World Series of Poker bracelets and two World Poker Tour Championships. In a 2008 report, Daniel had winnings in excess of $11,200,000 – leaving him in second place on the all time money list behind Jamie Gold. As a person, Daniel is a very goal-orientated person always setting himself new goals and challenges – this is the type of attitude that has sent him to the top of the poker world and can be learned from. In 2006 Negreanu was named “Favourite Poker Player” at Card Player Magazine’s Player of the Year Awards Gala in February 2006.

Who else is well known within the poker scene?

Isabelle Mercier is a massive female role model – playing poker since her pre-teens, Isabelle has gone on to win over $800,000 dollars playing poker both off and online. Mercier has her own DVD instructing you on how to play poker and she also has her own biography. Isabelle is a member of the PokerStars online poker room (pokerstars.net) and has enjoyed a lot of success there. If you’re young, female and ambitious then looking up to a role model such as Isabelle is probably something you already do! If it isn’t, then why not?!

If you’re looking for a true Canadian poker player to learn from and follow then you should look no further than Randy Blumer. Randy is widely accepted to have started the multibillion dollar online poker industry with his site Planet Poker (in January 1998). When Randy converted his site to a real money site in January ’98 it became the first online site to do so, stamping Randy’s name in history.

In order to properly understand the game of poker you need to study other players and of course, practice a lot!  You never know, you might get lucky like Glen Chorny; a Canadian poker player from Waterloo, Ontario. Glen has only been playing professionally since January 2008 and has already won the biggest cash prize ever in Europe of over €2 million Euros!

The game of poker in Canada is forever increasing in popularity with the number of Canadians (or Canucks!) playing skyrocketing in recent years. The potential winnings in poker today, especially online, is enticing more and more amateur players in Canada to get involved; eventually leading to more professional players. The World Wide Web has given us the chance to get involved with other players from around the globe, whilst staying true to our routes and interacting with other Canucks at the same time.

Are you interested in playing poker online but you can’t find many poker sites that accept Canadian dollars as a deposit method? Perhaps you’re a regular Poker player but you’re struggling to find Canada-friendly sites? Whatever your situation, finding sites that accept deposits in Canadian dollars is a tough, time-consuming task, through reading this article you will be able to not only find the best sites that allow you to use your Canadian dollars, you will find out the best ways to search for them.

You want to win enough money to retire early, but the poker sites won’t even let you give them your hard earned money?! Don’t worry; I have saved you several hours of trawling through search engines below.

PokerStars.com is one of many sites I managed to find that accepts Canadian dollars as a deposit method; you can use VISA, MasterCard, Western Union, MoneyBookers, Instant Checks / eChecks, FirePay and many more methods of payment. At peak times this website is one of the best sites to be on, with over 200,000 players logged on.

Another great site is PartyPoker.com; you can even pay with Bank Transfer and Maestro! The list of accepted payment methods and withdrawal methods is slightly longer than on PokerStars.com, and there are a few bonus codes such as 25SUPER which gives you $25 free after you have played 500 hands (so long as you deposit $50 or more). The downside of PartyPoker.com is that it does not accept players from the USA; however, this does mean you are dealing with a company who know how to deal with Canadians and their currency.

One of the most popular online poker rooms is sportsbook.com; the best thing about this site is that it lets you take complete control of your gambling lifestyle from one easy to use account; if you wish to play poker, places bets or play in the casino you can do them all from this one account.  Whilst the list of accepted Canadian deposit and withdrawal methods is quite limited compared to the other two, the ones they do accept are the most commonly used (Visa, MasterCard, Checks, MoneyBookers and Wire Transfers).

If it’s the best deposit bonus you’re after, TitantPoker.com is the one for you; a 150% deposit bonus up to $500 and $25 free cash is available, with many others if you search. At peak times this site welcomes over 40,000 users, easily enough for you to make your millions from! The deposit and withdrawal methods for Canadian dollars include all the major ones listed above and a few others.

When searching for other sites, you need to know what to enter into the search engines.  A few simple phrases such as “poker sites that accept Canadian dollars” and “Canadian dollars poker deposit” will be sufficient, but don’t forget to read the terms and conditions before you enter any agreement.

When it comes for looking for something to do in order to pass the time, most people these days turn to online poker.  There are many places for people, specifically Canadians to play online poker.  If you think that you might like to give online poker a try, then here are the best poker sites for Canadians.  Take a look around at each site and see what you can find.

The first thing that you want to take into consideration is whether or not you want to play poker for real money or simply play money.  Most Canadians that are looking to pass their time simply play with fake money; therefore there is nothing to lose.  If you want to play for real money and see how good you actually are, then one of the best poker sites for Canadians is going to be Poker Stars.  Poker Stars is a poker site that can be utilized by all Canadians as well as the rest of the world.  Once you sign up and confirm your email address, you can start playing in play money tournaments or even a free roll tournament here and there.  In order to get started on Poker Stars all you need to do is go to www.pokerstars.com download and play from there!

If you have already played on Poker Stars or you are looking for a change of scenery then check out Party Poker.  This is another great site for Canadians to play poker and it is fairly easy to use if you are not familiar with the poker world.  You can play with all sorts of different people and you can even kick it up a notch and play for a little bit of money.  Most poker sites will have a minimum amount of cash to deposit as well as daily limits, but if you win a little you are free to deposit that cash into your account whenever you like. Excellent ideas for a rainy day, providing you are good at the game that is.

When it comes to the greatest poker sites for Canadians, you really just need to keep your eyes open and play at the best site that works for you.  If you choose Poker Stars, you will actually be downloading an application that you will have on your desktop.  From there you will be able to log in and play whenever you like!  Take a look around online and make sure that you find the poker site that is going to work best for you.

On-line poker is legal in Canada until the judiciary rules otherwise. The crux of the interpretation exists in how the law is written in the Criminal Code of Canada – Part VII Disorderly Houses, Gaming and Betting. This article will walk through that law and allow the reader to make a judgment for themselves whether or not online poker is legal in Canada.

Before we try to interpret the legislature’s will on the matter, it is important to define exactly what is meant by playing online poker. For the purposes of this article on-line poker means a single individual in their residence playing on-line poker for money over a cable connection on a web site physically located outside Canada. If more people are playing or if the web site operates in Canada then on-line betting moves closer to the edge of illegality, although may not cross it.

Playing on-line poker in Canada is not operating in a “common betting house” because your computer and its connection to the gambling site do not “enable” the wagering; the on-line poker site enables the wagering activity. In other words, the computer and the internet connection alone would not be sufficient for the wagering activity to occur. The computer does enable the user to transmit and pay for bets and so technically on-line poker may be an infraction. The intent of the law, however seems not to criminalize poker playing but to criminalize poker rooms where the general public arrive to play poker and the house makes profit from the activity.

Betting outside of a common betting house still has criminal sanctions, so online poker in Canada may still be illegal by one clause stating a wager “by radio, telegraph, telephone, [or] mail” is an offense. A bet made through a cable connection is clearly not any of the devices specifically enumerated by the statute and so does not constitute an offense. When the legislature tried to change the language to “any form of communication”, the change was not passed.  The change was not passed because the legislators feared outlawing internet gaming and the private person wagering on-line. If the player uses a modem connected to a telephone then an infraction may exist, but one that will not likely be challenged by law enforcement officials.

So the intent of Canadian statutes against gaming clearly seems to be on unregulated betting parlors or casinos physically located in Canada. On-line poker played by an individual in their residence and over a cable connection will not attract scrutiny. If a Provence attempted prosecution, which they might, they would have an extremely hard time persuading a Judge much less a jury that On-line poker playing in Canada is illegal.  Since the legislature did not change the statute specifically for fear that it would criminalize online poker and other gaming, Canadian prosecutors would seem to have a very high fence to jump to convict a person under current law.