Internet poker players have two new options in deciding where to hold ‘em and fold ‘em.

Two new online poker rooms–StraightFlush and Gnuf–have opened and will attempt to make a (brand) name for themselves among the hundreds of online poker rooms already out there.

StraightFlush (www.straightflush.com) is located on the Kahnawake Indian Reserve outside Montreal, Canada, and is licensed by the European island nation of Malta.

It is affiliated with Bet U.S. (www.betus.com), the Internet sportsbook that features former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura as its spokesman.

What makes StraightFlush unique is that in addition to the normal monies a poker player can win playing poker, StraightFlush customers earn a bonus when they come up with–what else?–a straight flush.

Depending on how high the stakes of the game are, StraightFlush poker players making a straight flush–five consecutive cards of the same suit–can win anything from a restaurant gift certificate, Ipod or plasma TV to a Caribbean cruise, jet skis or seat at the next World Series of Poker tournament.

In order to cash in a straight flush at StraightFlush, players must be playing in a real-money ring game of level $1/$2 or higher.

Real-money ring games at lower levels, real-money tournaments and play-money games offer no bonus for a straight flush.

In addition, in order to qualify for the straight flush bonus, players must have been playing at the site for at least three months.

And no matter how lucky a player is, one can only collect one straight flush bonus in a three-month period.

Gnuf (www.gnuf.com) is based in Sweden and licensed in Malta.

The website offers not only poker but also casino gambling and bingo.

What makes Gnuf different from competitors is that it sees itself as more than just a virtual gambling hall–on its website it describes itself as a “community.”

In addition to player chat, which many online poker rooms offer, Gnuf also lets its poker players post personal blogs (web logs or online diaries) as well as personal photos and videos.

Gnuf also offers a special promotion for poker players called the “Bad Beat Jackpot.”

Any poker player who gets four of a kind–8’s or better–and loses a real-money hand will win a special bonus prize to compensate for his or her bad luck.

With both StraightFlush and Gnuf being new, licensed in Malta, offering online poker and having special poker bonuses, it appears as if the two Internet gambling sites are strikingly similar.

Nothing could be further from the truth, however.

Each site enters the worldwide online gambling market with a vastly different outlook and business model.

StraightFlush will allow poker players from the United States to play for real money.

Gnuf will not.

So in exchange for the added business the American market will bring, StraightFlush will have to face the myriad potential legal problems that doing business in the USA will bring (like risking the arrests of company officials by U.S. law enforcement authorities).

Gnuf won’t be involved in the U.S. market so it won’t have to worry about the U.S. Feds crashing their poker party.

But Gnuf also won’t benefit from that lucrative U.S. market’s large and wealthy population, which makes up the lion’s share of any U.S.-friendly online poker room’s client base, and without which it will be harder to survive.

To ban the U.S. or not to ban the U.S.–that is the question–and one of these new online poker rooms is hoping it’s come up with the right answer.