Internet Poker History

The History of Internet Poker

I’m a firm believer that one ground breaking event happens every 5 years. Prior to online poker the cell phone was the big consumer buzz. Online poker is one of those things that are very similar. Who would have thought that anyone would want to carry around a phone all day? Same with poker, who in their right mind would want to play online poker using electronics? Let’s discuss internet poker history and how it came to be what it is today.

A company and poker room called Planetpoker.com was the first to venture out into the online poker arena. They first opened their doors to real money players in 1998. Many barriers faced this market in its infancy. The trust factor was overwhelmingly the biggest. “How are we going to assure our players that this is safe,” thought Planetpoker.

Poker software was examined by gaming industries and given stamps of approval. Even in today’s world of Random Number Generators players still believe in conspiracy theories about scanners and opponents having the ability to see each others cards.

Online poker brought a new look to Texas Holdem. These days people associate poker in two separate categories. It’s either real poker, or internet poker. Internet poker players have an entire different style and belief system about poker. They rely heavily on odds, statistics, and patterns while the live poker players mostly rely on behavioral traits exerted in the form of “Tells”.

It turns out the biggest threat to building an internet poker room back in the 1990’s was getting a large enough player database to get games going. The lack of awareness and capability of the customers was holding online poker back. Some believe one of the reasons online poker is so popular today is not because of the World Series of Poker but because the world is becoming more comfortable with computers. People are doing everything on computers today from dating, gambling, business and paying bills.

Stakes have increased along with popularity. The stakes went from nickel and quarter ante’s to people risking millions of dollars. A large influx of high stakes poker players and online pros has fueled this high stakes fad. The history of high stakes poker goes way back but only recently began occurring on the internet in year 2004.

In the year of 1999 Paradise Poker opened up their virtual doors to poker players launching the second poker room for gambling. Another placed called PokerRoom was in the works but was only offering play money games and used “No Download” poker mac compatible software. People finally realized the potential of online poker when Paradise Poker sold for over $300 million dollars. Party Poker emerged in the late 1990’s soon to become the largest poker room on the internet.

Internet poker has yet to slow down but governmental issues may present themselves in years to come. On May 1st 2006 the first state in the banned online poker,

Washington

State .

Washington

State has over 75 brick and mortar casinos to date. This lead to skepticism as to what the real reason was for banning online poker in

Washington.

Players are continuing to become famous by night as the World Series of Poker is known to turn the average citizen into immortal celebrities. Online players are qualifying in daily satellites become famous for less than a couple bucks. With this chance of fame and glory only governments can stop online poker as it may some day become more popular than brick and mortar casinos.

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