Disclaimer: If it isn't already, it may soon be illegal for U.S. citizens to play poker online for real money. Any use of this information for illegal purposes is expressly forbidden. Visitors are responsible for following the laws in their own jurisdictions.

Making A Deposit

     When you visit a casino poker room the first thing you do is visit the desk and see if there's a game that you want to join with open seats at the table. Then, you'll be instructed on where to buy your chips. I've bought them from a small cage in the poker room, or directly from the dealer depending upon the casino.

     Online, buying chips is not so easy. At least not the first time around.

     While you would think that entering a credit card number would solve the trick, it turns out that almost all online gaming tansactions are declined. They aren't declined by the poker rooms, they are declined by the credit card companies. Most credit card companies do not want their customers using their cards for online gaming, and they will refuse to allow the purchase of chips at an online casino ro poker room. This has nothing to do with your credit, and it ceratinly has nothing to do with the poker room.

     So, poker rooms have turned to other banking methods to enable their players to purchase chips and begin playing at the real money tables. The method of choice for most online players is Neteller.

     Neteller works in the same way as Paypal, for those of you familiar with Paypal from eBay. The company acts as an "eWallet". You set up an account with Neteller, which takes several days due to security checks. Then you can transfer money from your bank account or a credit card to your Neteller account.

     Now, you can use your neteller account to fund your poker room account. All of the reputable online poker rooms accept neteller, so you can use this method of banking at any of the online rooms. And once you are done playing, you can empty your poker account into your neteller account.

     Neteller is not the only eWallet company out there. Others include Click2Pay and Firepay.

     Each poker room has it's own list of banking methods. And each room tries as hard as they can to provide a banking method that works well for their customers and themselves. Check the banking page of you preferred poker room's website and review their options.

     If you are having deposit difficulty, contact their customer support. That's one of the reasons poker rooms have support programs, to help customers when they have a problem, take advantage of their support.

     In the end, don't be surprised if making your first deposit requires some bothersome tasks, but once you have a banking method in place, playing at any of the online poker rooms will be easy.

     Online poker rooms and casinos are in the same set of cirumstances when it comes to processing deposits for their players. If you want more information on depositing money into an online gaming account, you can look over this page about online casino payment methods.