There is no doubt that the introduction of online casinos has changed the face of casino gambling in Ireland. Not only are experienced casino games players now playing a much broader range of casino games online, but the massive choice of online casino games now available has encouraged a whole new customer base to try playing casino games online. Most of these new online casino customers tend to play the slots games, but the one online casino game that appears to have gripped all of us is poker. After years in the doldrums poker has made a remarkable comeback as a result of the online casinos, and there are several versions of poker to choose from. The simplest poker formats, Draw poker and Stud poker are usually played against the house for fixed odds are provide an excellent learning environment for those new poker players looking to progress to the more serious poker games such as Texas Hold’em. Texas Hold’em is undoubtedly the poker format of choice for serious poker players all over the world, and most international poker tournaments now involve playing Texas Hold’em. For those of you who have never played Texas Hold’em we have detailed the rules on our casino games pages, but here is a quick summary to get you going. Texas Hold’em poker is a poker format which uses five community cards dealt face up one at a time into the centre of the table after each player has been dealt two cards face down. The attraction of Texas Hold’em is that there is a betting round when the players have received their two cards, followed by further betting rounds after each community card has been dealt. This inevitably leads to much higher pots for the winner and of course higher potential losses for the losers of each hand, with a lot of decisions to be made as a showdown hand is formed as each community card is dealt. A word of warning though for inexperienced Texas Hold’em players, this is definitely a casino game which tends to reward experience as well as luck. Particularly important if you are playing Texas Hold’em online against other players.