Is It Legal to Play Online Poker in the United States

Like many poker fans, you may have been concerned about the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act last year. Does the Act make it illegal to play online poker?After the Act was passed, nothing actually changed with regards to the legality of online gambling. As I have said, it remains illegal in those 11 states. But the Act did not make online gambling illegal in the United States of America as a whole. Following this line of thinking, then logically there are 39 US states in which online gambling is legal, as it was before the Act was passed.
First of all, you should know that even before the Act was passed, online gambling was already deemed illegal by 11 states. I assume this means that the state laws deem online poker to be illegal--I am not familiar with all of the state laws, but that is what I would conclude. The 11 states in which online gambling was deemed illegal--and remains so today--are Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wisconsin. Let me repeat, online gambling remains illegal in these states. However, as far as I can tell, no one has ever been prosecuted by any state for gambling online.In California, where I live, the law does not equate "poker" with "gambling" but deems it game playing, and professional poker players are not deemed as gamblers, but as professional game players.

How to Make a Living Playing Online Poker

Believe it or not, but there are thousands of people around the world who play online poker for a living and they don't need to work a normal job. If this sounds like something that you might want to do then you will need to consider some factors as to how you'll make a living playing online poker. There is nothing that you can do in order to become a professional online poker player other than make sure you practice a lot.
Becoming a full-time poker player isn't always as good as most people will make it sound so you will want to make sure that you're considering the facts before you make the move to doing this full-time. You will typically need to play long hours of patient poker every single day in order to make the money that you normally would at a real job. Some days you'll get lucky and win a lot of money quickly, but then other days you might lose a lot of money quickly.