BY TOM SOMACH

Yahoo! has landed a seat at the table.

The poker table, that is.

The giant Internet portal, which offers online services such as a search engine and e-mail, has added online poker to its repertoire.

Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) has announced a partnership deal with St. Minver Ltd., a Gibraltar-based gaming company, and Boss Media, a Swedish software firm, to run an Internet poker room.

Yahoo! Poker will provide both real-money and for-fun poker games.

Poker players in the U.S. and other countries that have laws against online gambling will only be allowed to play for fun, however.

To further widen the chasm between Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! and U.S. law that frowns on online wagering, Yahoo!’s British arm will officially be behind the online poker room.

Yahoo! poker room can be accessed at www.yahoo.co.uk/poker.

At various times, the main Yahoo! website has been ranked as the most-visited website on the Internet.

Because of this, some industry observers predict Yahoo! Poker will eventually become the most popular poker room on the Internet–even without U.S. customers playing for real–simply because of the massive amount of world traffic that visits the portal.

In fact, the importance of the U.S. market vis a vis an online poker room’s success may not be as critical as once thought.

Party Poker (www.partypoker.com), for example, previously banned U.S. customers from real-money play and then suffered a huge overall drop in business.

But, by then refocusing its marketing on Europe, Asia and elsewhere, Party Poker rebounded to regain a spot as one of the world’s most popular online poker rooms, despite the blackballing of Uncle Sam.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)