Well this really blows. I thought we were making progress towards the legalization of online poker and getting the natural jump that the game would take to all of the mobile smart phone platforms. As I have said before, there isn’t much to report on the mobile poker front. Now with the US government sticking their greedy hands into the fold, I can almost kiss this site goodbye.

But, if I can’t speculate about the next craze in online poker, I can subvert their will and show you the places that still offer online poker to Americans.

As of right now, most American poker players were completely shocked on Friday, April 15 when the federal government went after and shut down operations in the US for four of the largest online poker rooms: Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet.

To tell you the truth, I’ve never played at either Absolute or UB because I’ve heard some shady things in the past about cracks in their poker software. Specifically, I remember a story that showed that players could see the cards for one of the two sites. Anyways, they are both owned by the same group and I never played at either poker room.

I did play at both Full Tilt and PokerStars, but for the past 10 months or so I had been favoring PokerStars and their Home Games network. Well, not anymore … at least for now.

Still want to play online poker in the US?

There are still online poker networks that offer services to U.S. based clientele. First and foremost is the Cake Poker network, which I have promoted recently as the only viable mobile poker website in this article.

You can also obviously play at Cake Poker without using a Windows Mobile device, just like any other online poker room. Cake Poker. The software may appear a little different then you are used to, but it doesn’t take long to master.

Other Poker Networks

There are a couple of other poker networks that are still alive and kicking. This includes one of the new largest poker rooms for US players – Bovada Poker. Being the new largest US poker room isn’t saying that much right now, as all the casual fans of online poker have stopped playing.

On average, there will be between 500 and 1000 real money players at Bovada’s Poker rooms at any one time. This very well may increase substantially as Full Tilt and PokerStars refugees start to look for other places to play.

Also, you will find the Merge Poker network is still alive and well. The largest online poker room under the Merge network is called Carbon Poker.

Again, currently these poker rooms are rather small in numbers. Carbon is currently averaging between 300 and 800 real money players at a given time. Like Bovada, I expect this number to increase in the coming weeks and months. Carbon also has side games that you can play while you are in one of the poker rooms.

Lastly (for now), there is the Yatahay Poker Network. The largest poker room in this network is Doyle’s Room, which is based off of the legendary poker player Doyle Brunson. If you would like more information about Doyle’s Room – click here.

I have been playing poker for about 4 years now and have been doing it professionally for about 8 months, it has its ups and downs as you can imagine.
It all started when I moved to Spain last year. During my time there I broke my ankle, lost my job and in turn couldn’t afford my rent. I loaded money onto my poker account and put some hours in at the local wireless cafe, it kept me alive.

After a few months I realised I was making 3 times more than I was getting for job, so it wasn’t a conscious decision. Now I’m back in the UK I’ve had 3 jobs since. Every time I come back to poker because I keep getting more money playing poker part time than working. Eventually I just made it full time.

Iv had a couple of bad times during my 8 months, all of them being self inflicted, playing with a hangover, too tired, calling to many coin flips,etc…
Most of the time being put down to lack of discipline, I realised this and sorted it out.

I exercise before a session, eat good food, and only start playing once I feel fresh. It’s very tempting to play a few hands after you’ve been on a night out and had a few drinks, fighting this urge is harder for me than actually making the money. I normally play 7 days a week, but I work 6 if I plan to go out on the weekend so I don’t play with a hangover the next day.

Playing poker for a living has its pros and cons. You get as much freedom as you want, you chose you own hours and days, and you can pretty much play anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Not many people have this amount of freedom and can still make money, so I make the most of it, I like to travel a lot. I’m moving to Thailand for a while soon.

You can get sucked in If you play too much poker. I like to play a lot of poker, about 60-70 hours a week. I get out a lot too. Its important to have a balanced lifestyle, otherwise you wont truly appreciate it.

I’m actually looking for a part time job, not for the money but just for the social aspect and to get out a bit more such as a bar job.
My advice for people planning to turning pro is dont gve up the dayjob until you have consistantly earned more playing poker for a long period of time, even then nothing is guaranteed, enjoy it whilst you can.

This isn’t the best video of me playing by a long shot. There are some interesting hands in it worth watching however and I only lost about £15, so not a big problem. Just a gentle reminder that even full time players can lose sometimes.

Hope you enjoyed my 50 minute session on Aces Royal on the 50.1 tales.

Here’s a quick video from Cake Poker, Heads-up $25 just to give you some variation, since we will be covering a lot of cash games on the site.

Here is the second live poker session from our one and only Mobile Insider:

Once again feel free to leave your comments and suggestions on this page.

Previously we’ve mentioned on the site that we were planning on releasing a poker diary of our war stories. We decided that we were going to go one better and provide you with a full streaming video of Mobile Insider playing poker and commentating on his thoughts as he played.

Bare in mind that this is the very first video we have created of this sort and we are personally getting used to these ourselves so if the quality is a little off or there is something else that bothers you then please do leave a comment and we will do our best. These videos are for your benefit so we want to ensure that you are getting the most out of them.

With that in mind, here is our very first video:

Good Stuff hey? We like it, but as I mentioned we are open to suggestions.

I have one last question to propose to you:

If we were to release a product containing poker hints, tips and anaylsis and probably some great video  analysis what exactly would you be interested in finding out from us. What are the main things that would like to know. What secrets would you consider ‘priceless’? You can either leave a comment below or email us here.