While poker is one of the world’s oldest card games, online poker has a shorter history, one that parallels the expansion of the Internet for popular use in the 1990s. Although the first online casino, Gaming Club, was founded in 1994-95, poker was not included among the games available, although it was already being played in online chat rooms, because Internet gaming sites had not yet figured out how to make money from the game. In 1998, however, the first site dedicated to online poker, Planet Poker, was launched, followed in short order by Paradise Poker, which went online in 1999, and then by PokerStars, Party Poker and UB in 2001.

However, the popularity of online poker really took off when poker tournaments such as The World Poker Tour and The World Series of Poker started to be televised on cable stations such as ESPN and The Travel Channel. These airings were made possible by the development of the “hole cam,” a camera that allowed the audience to see the various players’ hands without compromising the game.

An increasing number of competitors at these tournaments began qualifying through online sites, helping bring online poker to the attention of a greater number of people. In 2003 and 2004, in fact, the winners of the World Series of Poker were online players from the PokerStars site. Online poker sites also took advantage of televised tournaments to market their sites; Party Poker, for example, launched an intensive marketing campaign during the 2003 World Poker Tour with unprecedented success which helped it to become the premier online poker site. At around the same time, it also held its first Party Poker Million tournament, with $1 million in prize money for the winner; it was then the biggest prize ever to be offered in an online tournament. Incidentally, the first winner of the tournament was Kathy Liebert, who went on to become one of the most successful professional poker players in the world. At present, it is estimated that Party Poker has a 50% share of the total online poker market.

However, the growth of online poker in the US is hampered by its uncertain legal status. While online gambling in America is not specifically illegal, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 made it illegal for US banks to receive payments from, or send funds to, online gaming sites. This led most sites to restrict access to US players, although they can still play using play money accounts. At present, various legislators have been challenging the UIGEA and introducing new bills that would establish a clear regulatory framework for online gaming in the US.

Outside the US, however, most countries have preferred to control Internet gambling through licensing and regulation, rather than banning it altogether, in order to protect their citizens. In the UK, for instance, the 2005 Gambling Act, which came into force in 2007, effectively legalized online gaming while placing it under the oversight of the Gambling Council. France in April 2010 passed a bill legalizing and regulating online poker, sports books and horse racing, ending the state monopoly on online gambling and opening the lucrative French market to privately-owned international sites.

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Category: Entertainment
Keywords: poker,online poker