Cashing Out from an Online Poker Room

After you’ve learned enough about poker to be able to make a little profit the next thing you have to do is be able to get your money off of the site. Most players never get that far. They just deposit and deposit but the good players win and need to get their money off of the site.

Probably the easiest method to get money off of an online poker site is via EFT (electronic funds transfer). However this option is not available to everyone. It’s usually not available to US players or players who are citizens of countries where they’ve enacted laws to deter online gambling.

You can also request that the money be placed onto a debit card. This is usually an option that is available to you if you make a deposit with the same debit card.

You can also set up an account with an intermediary site which process the payments on your behalf. These intermediaries are often called E-Wallets. They’re a little like a bank in that you can make debit card and EFT transfers to them and then you go onto the poker site and tell them about your intermediary account and they’ll deposit your funds from there. When you cash out it works in reverse with the poker room depositing into your intermediary account and then you can withdraw the funds from there back into your bank account or they often will supply you with a debit card and you can get access to your money almost immediately.

PayPal is probably the best known of these intermediary type of companies. But PayPal does not process payment for gambling related activities for people in the US so this is usually not an option on many poker site. There are other sites like Skrill that provide a similar service.

You can also ask for the poker room to cut you a check. This obviously takes a little bit longer to get access to your cash but some people prefer this method. Recently there have been some problems with the checks issued by online poker rooms due to the fact the US has gone after the banks processing the checks and frozen funds. The poker room usually eats the loss but you should be aware of the risk of getting caught holding a check from a room that has had their funds frozen.