To play Ultimate Texas Hold’em for real money, simply pick a casino from the list above, or head straight to our #1 casino by clicking below: Play Ultimate Texas Hold’em online today at our #1 casino site! Unlike other casino games such as slots you will be required to play real money Dollar chips. At this stage, the dealer draws three cards and places them at the center of the table facing up; this is called the flop (as in Texas Hold 'em Poker).

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Whether you’re looking for somewhere to play a few relaxing hands of Texas Holdem or you’re on the prowl for fish that you can smash to make a huge profit, you’ve come to the right spot. Our teams of experts have analyzed and tested all of the top real money Texas Holdem poker rooms on the web to find the best options for you. These are the safest, most trusted, and most reliable online poker rooms available, offering high-quality real money action.

4 Reasons These Are the Best Real Money Texas Holdem Poker Sites

• Games Filled With Recreational Players (Not Sharks)
• Cash, Sit and Go, and Multi-Table Tournament Action
• Smooth Table Animations and Quality Game Controls
• Deposit Bonuses, Rakeback, and VIP Programs

Games Filled With Recreational Players (Not Sharks)

Unless you’re not a fan of money, you probably aren’t seeking out the toughest Texas Holdem games on the web. Smart players understand that game selection is critical to being a long-term winning player. But it’s impossible to game select properly if all of your options are tables filled with professional players.

For this reason, all of the real money online Texas Holdem sites we recommend are filled with recreational players. Our review teams have professional poker players who regularly test the sites we recommend to ensure the games are still profitable. Even if you’re not looking to make money playing poker, this will help stretch your entertainment dollar a lot further.

Cash, Sit and Go, and Multi-Table Tournament Action

Casino Online Texas Holdem Real Moneyeal Money

In order for a real money Texas Holdem site to be worth your time, there needs to be sufficient action available. Before we recommend an option, we ensure there is regular action available across all Texas Hold’em formats.

Whether you play cash games, sit and gos, or multi-table tournaments (MTTs), you’ll want to know you’re not joining a ghost town, but that there will actually be players for you to play with on a regular basis.

Smooth Table Animations and Quality Game Controls

Regardless of whether you’re playing for fun or to make money, you want a poker site that has smooth animations, high-quality graphics and, most importantly, game controls that are easy to use. When the interface is confusing and not user-friendly, it not only lowers the quality of your experience, but it also creates the opportunity for mistakes. It’s very hard to win playing Texas Hold’em online if you’re constantly misclicking, calling when you want to fold, and/or betting incorrect amounts.

Deposit Bonuses, Rakeback, and VIP Programs

Many of the best real money Texas Holdem poker rooms online offer some great perks to loyal players. While you should never solely base your decision on where to play Texas Holdem online based on the promotions, it can be a great way to decide between a few top options. All of the online poker rooms we recommend offer some sort of deposit bonus, rakeback program, or VIP rewards. If they’re giving out free money online just for playing poker, we want you to be able to take advantage of it.

Tips for Choosing the Best Real Money Texas Holdem Sites

Knowing what makes top real money Texas Holdem sites rank above the rest is an important first step in choosing the best poker room for you. But to help you in the picking process, here are a few additional tips to help you make the right selection.

• Check Player Volumes When You Plan on Playing
• Utilize the Play Money Tables to Better Gauge the Interface
• Confirm Deposit and Withdrawal Options
• Check for Overlays, Tournament Series, and Upcoming Events

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Check Player Volumes When You Plan on Playing

If you’re someone who likes to play poker online during the day, it won’t do you any good if the site is slam-packed busy at night but a ghost town during the day. When you’re picking out the best real money Texas Holdem option for you, log into the site during the hours you’re planning on playing. See what the volume levels look like and determine if they’re sufficient for you. If things look slow, check again on a different day, as there are slow days from time to time.

• If you like to play during the day and you live in the US… you may want to look into joining a Texas Hold’em poker room with predominantly European players. Nighttime is usually the busiest time for a poker room, so you’ll be hard-pressed to get a lot of action during the day in the US. But due to time zone differences, it will be nighttime in Europe.
• If you like smaller tournament fields and less aggressive action… you’ll have good luck with US poker rooms during the day. The tournaments are going to be smaller in size, and as a whole, the players who play are typically less wild and aggressive as the maniacs that come out at night.

Utilize the Play Money Tables to Better Gauge the Interface

Misclicks and mistakes can be costly at the online poker table. Additionally, keeping your cool is important. Both of these issues can be agitated by a bad layout and poorly designed user controls. If the interface is tilting, you’re not going to be as relaxed when you play. Additionally, you’ll be more prone to making betting mistakes if the controls are set up properly.

Take advantage of the play money tables offered at these real money Texas Holdem poker sites. Play a few hands from the device you’ll normally be playing on to get a feel for how things work. If you don’t like the controls or see the potential for mistakes, go somewhere else.

Confirm Deposit and Withdrawal Options

Hopefully, none of you are looking for real money Texas Holdem poker rooms to try and lose money. Even if you’re just a recreational player, you’re still interested in winning money. Because of this, it’s important that you make sure there are withdrawal options available that work for you. Take a few minutes before creating an account and make sure the deposit and withdrawal options available fit for you. Make sure they’re banking methods you have access to, and make sure the time frames mentioned work for you as well.

Check for Overlays, Tournament Series, and Upcoming Events

Mostly for MTT players, check to see what their current tournaments and upcoming series and events look like. If they are getting big overlays on events, you’ll certainly want to take advantage of that.

Additionally, if they have some lucrative tournament series or events like leaderboard races coming up, that could be a big reason to join. Make sure you’re joining the best real money Texas Holdem site for today and for the future.

Free Online Poker vs. Real Money Poker

We get a lot of questions about the differences between playing free online poker and playing online poker for real money. To answer these questions, we’d like to address the differences between the two.

To be more specific, though, there are two main types of free online poker that we need to address differently—social casino free poker and free poker at real money casinos.

Social Poker Apps vs. Real Money Texas Holdem

Social poker apps are those that you’ll find on Facebook or through the app store that have no real money option attached to them. You might be able to pay for a subscription to play more or get more chips, but the ability to cash out real money is not there.

These social poker apps are wildly different from real money Texas Holdem for several reasons:

1. The decks are often rigged in these games – Because these are not real casinos, they don’t have to follow the same rules. Often, that means they spice up the action with better flops and better hands for all players. This can be more fun, but it can really restrict your view of how real money poker will be.
2. The players are nothing like real money players – When there’s nothing on the line, people are going to play like maniacs. When there’s not even the ability to move up to real money, the play money players are even wilder. If you’re looking to get better at Texas Holdem, this is not the environment to do it in.

There’s nothing wrong with social casino apps, but make sure you understand their purpose.

Free Play Poker at Online Casinos vs. Real Money Texas Holdem

Your second option for playing Texas Hold’em for free online is to utilize the play money options at the real money rooms. These are closer to what “real poker” will be like, but there are still some major differences. There are also some major differences with the social poker apps.

First, the decks in these games will not be rigged. They will operate under the same random number generator dealers as the real money games. This is nice, as it does start to give you the ability to see how cards will actually fall. Second, the players will still be pretty far from what you can expect in real money games because they still have nothing at risk. The one perk of these over social poker apps is a lot of these players have hopes of moving to real money, so they may play a little more in line.

Can You Win Money Playing Online Texas Holdem?

Yes! Online Texas Holdem games give you the ability to win big without having to leave the house. Additionally, poker is a game of skill played against other players and not the house. Because of this, it is completely possible to win real money online on a consistent basis. There are plenty of professional poker players around the world that make a consistent living playing online Texas Hold’em.

Real Money Texas Holdem Poker Bonuses and VIP Rewards

Another popular topic we get questions about is the different kinds of bonuses and rewards available to Texas Holdem players online. Here’s a quick summary of the different options. All of the top real money online casinos with Texas Holdem recommended in this guide offer some variation or a variation of all of these bonus programs.

• Texas Holdem Deposit Bonuses
• Rakeback or Cashback
• VIP Reward Points
• Free Tournament Tickets
• Freerolls

Texas Holdem Deposit Bonuses

A deposit match bonus is one of the most common you’ll see at online poker rooms. The room will match your initial or reload deposit up to a certain percentage and to a certain dollar amount. This means you could make a deposit of $200 and end up with $400 in your account to play with! Most deposit bonuses are a 100% match up to anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.

These deposit bonuses are credited in one of two ways to your account. The first way is they put all the funds in your account immediately as bonus funds. You can start playing with them right away, but you won’t be able to cash them out until you play a certain amount of hands to prevent people from just taking the bonus money and running for the hills. The second and more popular way is for the funds to incrementally be dropped in your account as cash as you play more.

A $100 bonus might be split into 10 $10 bonuses, and as you play a certain number of raked hands, they will credit your account with cash.

Rakeback or Cashback

Some real money Texas Holdem sites will give you a percentage of the money they collect in rake back to you. With a program like this, as long as you break even at the tables, you will turn a profit because of the rakeback. You can think of this as a profit share from the site for every hand or tournament you are involved in.

VIP Reward Points

Many of the online poker sites listed in this guide offer VIP rewards programs for their players. The more you play, the more points you earn toward rewards and tier status. With these points, you can usually cash them in for cash, tournament tickets, trips, or swag.

Free Tournament Tickets

Either through a welcome bonus or through VIP rewards, you may be awarded free tournament tickets at that real money online casino. These are free entries into real money tournaments that don’t cost you anything. If you happen to win the tournament or make any money, it’s all yours to keep.

Freerolls

Freeroll entries are usually awarded through a welcome bonus or as a VIP reward for loyalty. A freeroll tournament is a tournament where nobody pays an entry fee, but the poker room adds money or prizes to the prize pool. For no money, you have the chance to win real money, tournament tickets, or other prizes.

Often, freerolls are a great way to earn extra cash because a lot of people skip them for some strange reason. You may find yourself at a table in the tournament with a lot of players sitting out because they failed to show up for the free money. Your win!

Real Money Texas Holdem FAQ

Are Real Money Texas Holdem Poker Sites Safe to Use?

Yes. The online poker industry has come a long way since its early days and is completely safe and secure for you to use. This is, of course, assuming that you’re only using the safest real money Texas Hold’em sites that we’ve selected. Other sites may be safe, but we can’t vouch for them if we’ve not tested them.

Can I Play Poker Online If I Live in the US?

Yes! Online poker is not illegal in the US. There are many great online poker rooms that offer services to American players for you to choose from. If you’d like to check the specific laws and legal guidance for your state, check out our US legal guide where we break down our most current interpretation of the laws state by state.

Can I Try Playing Poker Online for Free Before I Play for Real Money?

Yes. All of the real money Texas Holdem sites we’ve listed in this guide offer play money or free money options. You can use these for as long as you’d like to determine if you’re interested in playing for real money. All free play games at these sites use the same software and digital dealing software as the real money tables. The only difference is you have no money at risk.

What Kinds of Texas Holdem Games Are Available to Play for Real Money Online?

The options you have to play Texas Hold’em online at these sites are immense. They offer different stake levels, including micro, low, medium, high, and nosebleeds. Regarding the game types available, they offer cash games, sit and go tournaments, heads up action, multi-table tournaments, and short-handed action.

Playing poker online for real money has been a bugaboo for the federal government in the US for most of the past decade, but that’s begun to change. Currently, the states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Nevada have all made online poker explicitly legal and regulated.

Although many other states are looking into some form of legalization and regulation as well, at present for those residents of US states other than the three mentioned, playing online poker comes with some restrictions.

Top Real Money Texas Hold’em Sites Of 2020

If I Play Poker Online for Real Money, Am I Breaking the Law?

The short answer is no, in the sense that no single player has ever been prosecuted for playing online poker for real money in the US. However, there are laws in place that limit online casinos’ ability to handle your transactions. In 2006, the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act allowed the US Justice Department to go after international casinos and financial institutions that process online wagers from US players. This is why many well-established online casino operators don’t allow US players to register on their sites.

For those real money casinos that allow US players, they have limited deposit and withdrawal options, which can make depositing and withdrawing funds at an online casino difficult for US players, albeit not impossible. This is to protect those online casinos from possible prosecution by the Justice Department.

While online poker players in the US are unlikely to face prosecution for playing poker online, there are other factors to consider. Perhaps the biggest concern is being able to freely access your money and withdraw winnings in a timely fashion. What complicates this is the event that occurred on April 15, 2011, known throughout the poker world as Black Friday.

Black Friday Myths and Facts

On that day, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against online poker rooms that included Poker Stars, Full Tilt, and Cereus. The government also froze the assets of these companies, which included money in players’ accounts.

• Myth: The individuals named in the United States v Scheinberg case were engaged in no wrongdoing.
• Fact: The government accused the individuals of engaging in bank fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement. The lawyers for the individuals and companies indicted argued that the law specifically prohibits wagers defined as gambling when the outcome is related to chance. The lawyers maintained that poker is a game of skill rather than luck.

The case against these companies was settled without any prosecution against the companies nor with any admission of guilt on their part. If this were the end of it, than myth number one could tentatively be argued to be fact. However, one reason that these companies could not pay back their players was that individuals in the companies also embezzled funds, namely the winnings of various players on those sites. Although the litigation against the poker companies named in the Black Friday indictments have been resolved without prosecution, criminal charges remain against those accused of embezzlement.

• Myth: Black Friday made it illegal to play poker online in the US
• Fact: Many international casinos quit providing access to US players as a result of Black Friday, but many had already been doing so. However none of the actions taken on Black Friday were aimed at individual poker players. The legality of playing poker online in the US is a murky area that relies on the interpretation of individual states’ laws, particularly when referring to poker as a game of chance.

• Myth: Poker is entirely a game of luck and chance.
• Fact: Poker involves several skill sets that allow players to minimize the role that chance plays in the game. For example, the same skill-set that allows law enforcement interrogators to access information from a suspect is also at play in poker. Being able to read a player’s body language and track that according to other observations about the player’s character and personality is an important skill in piecing out the information a player needs in a hand.

Another skill, mathematics and the knowledge of probability, is also useful to a poker player. However this skill does involve navigating the vagaries of chance. If you look at poker at the level of an individual hand, then it’s easy to see where luck and chance dominate. Skilled players don’t play the hand so much as their opponents. Being able to piece together betting behavior and reconstruct the hand possibilities an opponent may have is less akin to chance then to the similar piecing together from incomplete information that scientists, physicians, and archaeologists engage in in their disciplines, yet no one would declare their results entirely reliant upon chance.

Nevertheless, it would be equally incorrect to state that chance plays no part in poker. The skilled players know how to avoid bad situations and capitalize on good ones, but even they can be stung by the flip of a card and locked in in such a way that they can’t get out of a hand without losing everything. The development of sound poker play strives to mitigate this reality. As a consequence, it really depends on how a state law is worded for playing poker to qualify as an illegal activity, and UIGEA relies entirely upon the designation “illegal” for its enforcement.

Are There Safe and Reputable Sites to Play Poker Online for US Players?

Many sites do offer online poker for US residents. In many cases they are safe in the sense that they aren’t looking to rip off their customers. Most casinos rely upon brisk business to make their profits. If a casino earned the reputation of being dirty, it would lose the business it relies upon.

Still, some online poker rooms are better than others. Here are two legitimate texas hold’em poker websites that accept US customers:

BetOnline

For US players, this is one of the best sites you will find. You can make deposits with a Visa or a Mastercard, as well as numerous other options. The minimum deposit is $50, but this site offers a 100% matching bonus up to $1,0000 on your first deposit.

In addition, this site offers a wide variety of poker games, including Texas Hold’em and Omaha.

Bovada

Another great poker site for US players, Bovada is well known for attracting fish, players who lack skills and/or experience. The deposit methods here are a bit more limited in that it only accepts Visa, MasterCard, and Bitcoin. There are other deposit methods as well, but these options are less common.

The minimum deposit is $20, and the sign-up bonus is 100%, up to $500. The graphics at this site are slightly better than the simplicity you find at BetOnline.

However, Bovada lacks some of the perks you find at BetOnline, where a computer automatically keeps betting and play statistics for you.

Many other top online casinos now accept US players and even the US Congress is holding hearings about whether poker is indeed a game of skill. Considering the market for online casinos, the legitimacy of online poker is gaining prominence. It may be quite soon where it is completely legal and regulated across the US.