What is online poker and where did it start? Online poker is pretty self-explanatory, poker played online. An accountant from the United States estimates that 25% of all money gambled, is gambled online. Another interesting fact for you, in 2001, online poker revenues were 82.7 million dollars. Four years later, that number jumped to 2.4 billion dollars! So, now that we know online poker is so huge, let’s get into the history and why it’s so enticing.
Planet Poker
Planet Poker was the first real money online poker room, which opened in 1998. Before this, anyone could enjoy a friendly game of poker without using real money. Planet Poker made it possible to use a real money card room, which used players’ debit cards to forward real money transactions. The first online poker game happened on January 1st, 1998. Mike Caro, a professional American poker player, became the star of Planet Poker one year later.
Online players enter the real world
One feature of all these new and upcoming online card rooms was to set up online tournaments which could be won, subsequently advancing players to real world poker tournaments. An online player named Chris Moneymaker, who won an online card room tournament, moved on to win the 2003 World Series of Poker! This caused shock in the entire poker online terpercaya community, making online poker card rooms seem so much more enticing. Chris was not the first, and this happened a few other times since then.
Online gaming enters the stock market
In 2004, one of the largest online gaming companies, SportingBet, became the biggest publicly traded online poker company, amassing a market value of $340 million. Since then, many other online card-room companies have entered the stock market for public trading. The next year, PartyGaming blew the online poker competitors out of the water with its public offering of $8 billion!
Moving to the modern world
There were close to 600 online poker websites recorded in 2010. At that time, PokerStars.com was titled the world’s biggest poker site, according to the numbers of players they had. In 2011, something very dramatic happened. What is known in the poker community as Black Friday, the day the US Department of Justice took over three major online poker companies, stopping the bank rolls of their players. They were all accused of scamming players, and PokerStars paid $1 billion in fines. They were later introduced as the largest public company in the industry of Poker. Fast forward to 2020 and online poker has become wildly popular. During this 2019 to 2020 corona virus pandemic, many casinos and live games are shut down, leading most poker players around the world to flock towards the online gaming community.
Online players enter the real world
One feature of all these new and upcoming online card rooms was to set up online tournaments which could be won, subsequently advancing players to real world poker tournaments. An online player named Chris Moneymaker, who won an online card room tournament, moved on to win the 2003 World Series of Poker! This caused shock in the entire poker community, making online poker card rooms seem so much more enticing. Chris was not the first, and this happened a few other times since then.
Online gaming enters the stock market
In 2004, one of the largest online gaming companies, Sportingbet, became the biggest publicly traded online poker company, amassing a market value of $340 million. Since then, many other online cardroom companies have entered the stock market for public trading. The next year, PartyGaming blew the online poker competitors out of the water with its public offering of $8 billion!