For the most part your funds will be safe. Especially if you deposit on one of the more well known poker sites. In fact, your funds are more likely to be more safe on most poker sites than in a bank, since in the recent economic past, a number of banking institutes in first world countries have gone into administration and had to be bailed out by there respective governments to protect peoples savings. All regulated poker sites are forced to keep all the players funds in safe accounts and don't invest them in any way (Unlike the banks). Your funds are very safe and secure!

The only time you could get into some kind of trouble from this is if you deposit your money onto a less known poker site. All of the bigger sites (And all sites advertised on this site) are safe and secure places to play. The reason you don't want to deposit your money onto these smaller sites is they don't have the same level of profitability as the most popular sites and like any business they have a risk of going bust. Recently a few "skins" (Small sites that operate on the same network) of the MicroGaming network went into administration because they were not operating profitably. At the current moment, over a year later, the players on these sites are trying to get there money back.

So if you really want to make sure your funds are 100% safe, you need to deposit on a poker room that a) Has a large number of players b) Has been in business for a long period of time c) Is highly profitable and generates large profits every year for multiple years. According to those criteria Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker are considered to be the safest place to have your poker funds stored. Consequently, these sites are the largest and actually the most enjoyable places to play in our opinion. Of course, some of the smaller sites have a weaker level of competition so there is definitely a risk vs reward question here to whether you want to play there. What we suggest is that you keep the majority of your bankroll on the largest trusted sites and then if you want to play on a smaller site, transfer a small portion of your bankroll onto it and cash out regularly, only keeping a small amount of money on the less known site.