There are a ton of real money poker sites out there to choose from and all poker sites offer real money games. That’s a good thing on one hand, because you’ve got options. But on the other hand, all those options can make things confusing. That’s why you need to know what to look for when you’re searching for a place to play, especially when your playing poker with cold hard cash.

The best poker sites accepting US players, offer reliable and friendly customer support, a steady stream of traffic for cash games and of course easy to clear deposit bonuses.

How to Choose the Best Online Poker Game for Real Money. With so many online poker games on the internet, it is wise, especially when the stakes involve real money, to choose the right gambling platform. Here are some factors we considered when choosing the best real-money online poker sites in the US. Top rated poker sites aren’t necessary the best rated poker websites if they don’t offer a healthy selection of bonuses. Big, small, simple or complex, it doesn’t matter how they come, all we’re interested in is whether or not a US poker room has a way for grinders to earn some extra cash. Best Online Poker Sites USA. Playing poker at the best online poker site can only guarantee American players an experience of a lifetime. Online poker is a popular and widespread variance of land-based poker and although it varies in gameplay and it is just as thrilling. There was once a time when the biggest and best poker sites were open to US players. That’s no longer the case. American poker players have a difficult time finding a safe real money poker site to join these days, especially one that has plenty of banking options, games that run, and reasonable promotions.

This page outlines the best real money poker sites for USA players. Below you will find mini reviews for each poker site including the software used, minimum deposit required and a few features you can expect to find once you download the software. Most of the poker rooms are Mac compatible, supporting a native Mac poker client.

What to expect from the real money poker sites below;

• Safe and secure payment options with prompt withdrawals on winnings. Bitcoin and Visa are the top two methods.
• Player rewards programs and weekly promos with cashback at some sites.
• A solid influx of cash games running throughout most of the day

Ranking the Top 6 Real Money USA Poker Sites in United States

• Poker RoomUSABonus%MatchBanned StatesPoker Room Review
• 1. Bovada Poker$500100%NY, MD, WA, UTBovada Poker
• 2. Ignition Poker$2000100%NY, MD, WA, UTIgnition Poker
• 3. BetOnline Poker$2500100%Accepts All!Bet Online Poker
• 4. Sportsbetting Poker$2500100%Accepts All!Sportsbetting Poker
• 5. ACR$1000100%NY, MD, WA, UTAmerica's Cardroom
• 6. Black Chip Poker$1000100%NY, MD, WA, UTBlack Chip Poker

Lists the Best Real Money Poker Sites for US Players

Bovada Poker - Accepts USA Real Money Poker Players

100% up to $500 Bonus - No Bonus Code Needed

Bovada has been providing US players with real money poker games, sports betting and casino games since 2003. The poker room is the oldest US accepted site, offering a $500 first deposit bonus and includes a VIP program. If you’re looking for easy to beat cash games, this site is it. They don’t run many high limit games, but they do have plenty of micro to mid limit games in full swing 24 hours a day. Tournaments cater to new and well versed players through daily freerolls, guarantees, satellites and qualifiers. Most guaranteed tournaments run in overlay.

Ignition Poker - Real Money Poker in Hold'em, Omaha and Draw

100% up to $1000 Bonus

Ignition Poker is another great choice if you're looking for a US poker site with real money games. The poker room displays the biggest guaranteed tournament for US players and is best known for a superb customer support team. This real money poker room has no problems with processing payments, especially to US players and accepts most payment methods (Visa, MasterCard, Bitcoin, MoneyGram). Ignition will match your first deposit by 100% up to $1000. The minimum deposit at this site is $50.

BetOnline Poker - Accepts All USA Players and Offers Casino Games

The Only US Real Money Poker Site with a 100% Instant Bonus

Bet Online is the newest poker site to hit the market and offers real money games in Texas Hold'em as well as Omaha. This room is packed full of fish making it one of the easier poker sites out there. Bet Online has a minimum deposit requirement of $50 up to $1500 and is offering a 100% instant bonus on each deposit. The poker room runs games at all levels, in a variety of formats and is currently one of the best options for American players as they have quick payouts on withdrawals.

Sportsbetting Poker - Fast Payouts

Receive up to $2500 Free With All Real Money Accounts

Sportsbetting Poker is our #4 USA accepted real money site. Sportsbetting Poker offers Hold’em and Omaha cash games with an emphasis on Hold’em. The poker room is the sister site to BetOnline and includes a casino and popular betting site. They provide excellent promotions and a 100% to $2500 deposit bonus for new players. Additional features include; smooth software, fast payouts, $100,000 in guaranteed tournaments each month.

Whether you live in the US or around the world, all the practical aspects of getting up and running with online poker can be found here. There is a lot more to this than simply choosing a site and logging on to play. You will find huge differences between the sites – and different sites that welcome players from certain states and countries.
While there are plenty of pages here which cover multiple topics, you’ll find a lot of info for the following areas:

State Poker Overviews: Many of the original gambling statutes under state law were introduced around 100 years ago. This was long before the internet. Some states have since updated their laws. These vary between fully regulated gambling (New Jersey), outright bans for online gambling (Utah) and concessions for live casino poker and home games (the most common solution). You will find many resources here covering state poker. These include the laws, live gaming opportunities – and which online poker rooms are available to you.

Poker Deposit Methods: One of the biggest challenges that US players looking to enjoy real money poker face is how to get their money on board. Credit cards can work, though will often be blocked under federal banking laws. Fortunately, there are a lot of solutions available these days. These include Bitcoin, prepaid cards, money transfer services and even bank wires. When it comes to real money poker deposits, we have you covered. You’ll find a long list of articles comparing the different options here. These include all the US methods, plus many which are available to international players.
Real Money Poker Sites:

Finding the right site for your skill level, bankroll, location and favorite games can feel daunting. Here at USPokerSites.com we have produced guides to help you find the poker room which fits you the best. Some players prefer sites with the easiest games, while others are looking for no-deposit poker sites where you can enjoy the real money games for free. If the law is your primary concern, then our article covering Legal US Poker sites could be the right area for you.

Mobile Real Money Poker: It was not all that many years ago that enjoying online poker meant you needed to sit at a desktop computer. Advances in technology (both hardware and software) mean that you can now enjoy the games on a wide variety of mobile devices. Not all sites offer mobile poker, and not all the games are available at every site. We have produced detailed guides for readers looking to get the most from mobile poker. You will find articles covering iPhones, Android, Tablets and iPads here.

Real Money Online Tips and Strategies: Once you have chosen the best real money poker site, the next step is to start beating the games. If you are new to this area, you will find some poker playing tips and strategies to get you started. General tips are a great starting point, though you will also find strategies for specific poker types here. Tournaments are covered. You’ll find how to beat the games with buy-ins and the free versions here.

Is It Legal To Play Poker Online For Real Money?

Law is based on your country, and the country with the biggest confusion when it comes to real money poker is the USA. Many players still (incorrectly) believe that playing online poker is illegal under federal law. This is not true. The only federal act controlling poker only applies to the banks and poker sites. The UIGEA, passed in 2006, makes financial transactions between poker rooms and banks illegal. This is the reason why depositing at the offshore sites can be tricky, though it does not make the game illegal in any way for individual players.

State laws are a complex area. With most statutes predating the internet, interpreting them in the light of the smartphone era is next to impossible. Some states, including Washington and Utah, explicitly ban real money online poker play. This does not stop some of the bigger offshore sites welcoming players from these states.

If you are outside the US, then the prevailing law will depend on your country. Readers from France, Spain or Italy have segregated poker sites – only offering games to one specific country. Many other countries do license poker rooms, though allow players to join the bigger global player pools. Still other countries, most recently Australia, have tried to ban online poker entirely. Our guide to the many different poker licensing authorities covers this complex area.

What Kinds of Real Money Poker Games Are Available?

There are many poker variations available online – and new / innovative games are being released all the time. These are usually divided into four main formats, though you will find overlaps between them. The formats are cash games, tournaments, sit n goes and fast-fold poker.

Cash games involve betting real money. You can play online from pennies, right up to stacks with thousands of dollars. Texas Hold’em is the most popular format for cash games – though you can also play other poker games like Pot Limit Omaha in cash game format.

Many beginning players prefer poker tournaments. Here you buy-in for a fixed price, and get a stack of chips. Bet sizes will keep increasing as the tournament goes on – and your aim is to win all the chips in play. Prizes are given to the top 10% or more of the field. There are now many tournament variations, including rebuy events and satellite qualifiers. The satellites allow you to win tickets to bigger buy-in events, both live and online.

Sit N Goes are smaller tournaments, usually just 1 table, with no fixed start time. These do not involve the many hours that you’ll normally invest in a multi-table tournament. There are now several variations of this format. These include double-or-nothing (where half the field get paid), and the faster lottery jackpot Sit N Goes, which have prize pools assigned at random.

Comparing Real Money Poker Sites

Most of us who’ve been playing real money poker for a while have made a few mistakes when choosing online poker rooms – I know I sure did. I want to help you to avoid making those same mistakes, so I’ve compiled this list of 5 things to know when comparing real-money poker sites.

1. Not All Real Money Poker Sites Spread the Same Games

It’s no fun to sign up to a poker site or mobile poker room only to find that the game you wanted to play isn’t offered there. It kind of renders your entire search process useless. Save yourself some frustration and research each site’s games before you sign up.

If you play the more popular forms of poker, namely Holdem or Omaha, you won’t have a problem with this. Pretty much every real money poker site in the world spreads both games in cash and tournament form.

But if you’re into the lesser-known forms of poker, like HORSE and other mixed games, you need to be careful.

Very few sites spread HORSE these days, and fewer still spread uncommon variants like Badugi.

If you like particular types of tournament games, make sure a potential poker site has them. Some sites pride themselves on offering unique tourney structures.

2. Some Real Money Poker Sites Have More Players

It’s a fact: without players, there can be no poker. A real money poker site could have world-class software, a bunch of incredible games, and excellent promotions, but none of those things matter if there are no players sitting down at the tables.

You’ll find that the most established sites online have the largest player pools. For example 888 Poker has been around for ages – since 1997 to be exact. Thus it’s no surprise that it’s one of the largest networks around, with about 2000 players average online at a given time.

Now, it’s not necessarily a given that the sites with more players are better. It’s all about what you’re looking for personally. If you just want to make sure you’ll be able to get a game at all times, then yeah – choose the biggest site you can find. But it’s a fact that the smaller sites often have a higher fish-to-regular ratio than the big guys.

A site like Ignition Poker is a goldmine if you’re just looking to crush bad players. The vast majority of players there are terrible. In fact, it’s practically Ignition’s corporate policy to make sure fish love their site and stick around – the Ignition software has built-in features designed specifically to deter grinders from sucking the games dry.

So ask yourself what’s more important to you: a smaller player pool made up of mostly fish, or a larger player pool with some grinders sprinkled in. Then choose your real money poker site accordingly.

3. Some Real Money Poker Sites Have Better Software

This is probably the hardest part about picking a poker site, because you can’t really know whether or not the software is good without having played there. I’ve signed up at the download sites and played real money poker on iOS that looked incredible on paper, only to find that the games were glitch-filled and slow beyond belief.

A good rule of thumb is that the more established poker sites will have better software. Think about it: a site like Bet Online has been in operation for over 10 years. That’s over 10 years of investment into the software client that other sites simply can’t match. Thus it’s no surprise that 888 Poker has one of the best software clients around.

Some of the features that make BetOnline Poker and Ignition's software world-class are:

• Blazing fast connection speeds and smooth-clicking buttons.
• Multi-tabling options like auto-resize tables and a four-color deck option.

Of course no two players are like, and there’s room for subjective opinion in picking a real money poker site based on software. But it’s almost always true that older, bigger poker sites will have better software clients. Keep that in mind when making your choice.

4. The Best Online Poker Sites for Real Money Have Better Reputations

Wherever we choose to play, we want to be sure that our poker investment is kept safe. The main mechanism for determining whether or not a real money poker site is legit is reputation.

Frankly, sites that rip people off do not last in this industry. Once word gets out that a player has been stiffed, or once too many players complain about poor service, a poker room has dug its own grave.

Conversely, sites with excellent reputations generally have histories of serving players well. Ignition Poker and BetOnline.com have long been known to be two of the safest real money poker sites around. They’re so safe, in fact, that they’ve gained near-complete mainstream acceptance.

5. Some Online Poker Sites with Real Money Give Better Bonuses

You’ll certainly want to factor promotions and bonuses into your decision when choosing a poker room. Sometimes bonuses can be the difference between a winning month and a losing month, so take advantage of whatever free cash you can get.

After many years of change, the setup for US based online poker fans has now become more settled. Banking restrictions mean that no poker sites are based in the United States, with the exception of smaller state-regulated rooms in Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware. Instead the sites are based offshore, where they legally operate in jurisdictions in the Caribbean or in Central America.

While these sites are not as big as the international giants, many of them have a good selection of games these days. You can enjoy some big bonuses, and even participate in online tournament events or qualifiers for big live tournaments.

Below you will find an overview of the three biggest and best poker sites for USA players. After that there is a quick overview of the history of US poker to date, plus notes on state regulated rooms and the different deposit options available.

Reviewing the Best US Poker Sites December 2020

Online Poker History in the USA

The USA has a confusing legal landscape when it comes to online poker. In 2006, the government passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which attempted to prevent online gambling in the United States. Not surprisingly, the law was poorly written, vague, and unenforceable. Although this law did not specifically outlaw online poker, it made it difficult for some poker sites to process transactions for players located in the USA.

The purpose of the UIGEA was to force banks to block transactions to online poker sites. Banks process countless transactions every day so this measure has been largely toothless. Some credit card transactions are blocked, but most other transactions slip through. Banks have been fighting this bill for a long time because it’s impossible to enforce.

Poker players themselves are not the target of any federal law that we know of. Washington State passed a law that made it a felony to play online poker but this law has never been enforced. Quite simply, the legal landscape of online poker in the United States is a joke. These so-called “poker bans” were enacted by politicians with questionable motives and no intentions to actually change anything.

We aren’t lawyers and this doesn’t count as legal advice, but we can tell you that millions of Americans play online poker without a problem. The federal laws on the books only target financial institutions and not individual poker players. We’ve played online for years and so have many other USA players, and we’ve never had a problem (other than the occasional blocked credit card deposit).

4/15/2011 Update

On April 15th, 2011, the FBI seized and shut down the websites of four of the major online poker sites that accepted USA players (Full Tilt, PokerStars, UB, and AP). We're not sure where this leaves USA players moving forward, but we will do our best to monitor the situation. For the time being, USA players can continue to play online poker on the websites listed on this page.

State Regulated US Poker

3 States now offer real-money poker games to their residents. The first to legislate was Delaware, followed by Nevada and New Jersey. Some of the big names like PokerStars, 888 and Party Poker – which left the US following the events of 2006 and 2011 – run these rooms in conjunction with locally licensed casinos.

Take up of these poker sites has been below the original estimations, with small traffic even compared to the mid-sized offshore poker sites. It is hoped that as more states regulate the game, deals to share player pools will create sites big enough to offer big prize tournaments and a bigger choice of poker games.

Deposit Methods for USA Poker Players

Federal laws restrict US banks from allowing deposits poker sites. Over the years, the offshore sites have become very good at payment processing. You will find three main categories of deposit method – with paper checks the main way of requesting a payment.

Credit Cards: As long as your credit card allows overseas payments, you can deposit this way. Visa and MasterCard are the most widely accepted brands, though Amex and even Diners Card can be used sometimes too. If your transaction gets declined, you can also try a prepaid Visa gift card.

Money Transfer Services: This category includes Western Union and MoneyGram. These services will not allow direct transfers to the poker sites. Instead you will transfer to an individual – the site will give you that person’s details. This is a reliable and established method of getting your money on board.

Bitcoin: Depositing with bitcoin is now mainstream, and as long as you buy bitcoin and deposit them straight away, the risk from the fluctuating value is minimal. Once you have made a deposit using Bitcoin, you will also be able with withdraw using this method.

USA Poker Deposit Methods

Best Real Money Poker Sites In Usa United States

In pre-UIGEA days, USA players were able to easily deposit to/withdraw from online poker sites with their PayPal account, which made things extremely easy. Nowadays, however, there are less deposit options available for USA players. Here are a few deposit methods that still work for players from the USA:

Best Real Money Poker Sites In Usa

More USA Online Poker Resources:

Best Real Money Poker Sites In Usa Online

• My friend Roger at Compatible Poker offers a complete USA poker guide which provides visitors with up-to-the-minute information on USA poker legislation, USA deposit methods, and USA-friendly poker sites.
• Steve over at PlayWinningPoker.com has an excellent writeup on the UIGEA, in case you still had questions.
• More reviews of USA poker sites, including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, Bovada, and Aced.