It might not be long until you’re playing online poker tournaments with a live dealer who is broadcast through a Webcam over the internet, and at the same time go to a land-based casino where you’ll play poker at an automated table, without a dealer, where cards, chip counts and pot sizes are all done electronically. It seems these are strange times indeed if you’ve been keeping up to date with the latest happenings in the poker world.
The new automated table called the PokerPro, which was developed and now sold by PokerTek, is now infiltrating poker rooms in many casinos. The table requires no dealer and little supervision because the software inside handles every aspect of the game. Players simply push buttons to create the action – so, goodbye chips, cards and dealers.
At the same time there are online poker sites that offer live dealers in their games. This is an idea that hasn’t caught on quite as much because the technology is expensive and much less efficient than current online-poker systems. However, these sites broadcast dealers in real casinos, with real cards at a real table, so that players can actually see cards being shuffled and dealt. Although this new technology is not the biggest thing going on, I would say it will definitely have a place in the future of online poker.
All of this can make the biggest poker enthusiast’s head spin because every variation of the game has its own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. It will be interesting to see what the latest poker news is ten years from now.