Online Poker is still a good idea

Online poker refers to poker that is played online. It is partly responsible for the huge rise in poker players around the world. Christiansen Capital Advisors reported that online poker revenues increased from $82.7 million to $2.4 billion in 2005[1], while DrKW and Global Betting and Gaming Consultants estimated that online poker revenues reached $1.4 billion in 2004. [2] Grant Eve, a Certified Public Accountant from the US Accounting Firm Joseph Eve Certified Public Accountants testified before the United States Senate about Internet Gaming. He stated that online gambling accounts for one-fourth of all dollars wagered. Overview

Traditional venues (or "brick & mortar", B&M) for playing poker such as poker rooms and casinos can be intimidating to novice players. They are often located in different geographical locations. Brick and mortar casinos often resist the promotion of poker, as it is hard for them to make a profit. Although the rake or time cost of traditional casinos can be high, the opportunity costs associated with running a poker table are much lower. Brick and mortar casinos can often make more money by closing poker rooms and adding slot machines. According to the Gaming Accounting Firm Joseph Eve, poker is responsible for just 1% of all brick and mortar casino revenue. [3]

Screenshot of the open-source PokerTH table

Online venues are much more affordable than traditional venues due to their lower overhead costs. Online venues are much more cost-effective than brick and mortar casinos because they don't require as much space to add a table. Online poker rooms allow players to play at low stakes (as low a 1C//2C/), and offer freeroll tournaments, which attract beginners and/or less well-off clients.

Online venues are more susceptible to fraud than traditional ones, particularly collusion between players. They have the ability to detect collusion that isn't available in brick-and-mortar casinos. Online poker room security personnel can view the hand history of any player who has played on the site. This makes patterns of behavior much easier to spot than in a casino, where colluding players may simply fold their hands and no one knows the strength of their hold. Online poker rooms can also verify players' IP addresses to ensure that no two players from the same household, or open proxy servers, are allowed to play at the same table. Poker sites can also use digital device fingerprinting to identify and block new accounts created by players in an attempt to circumvent previous account bans, restrictions, and closures.

Histories

Online poker was available for free as IRC poker. It was first offered in the late 1990s. Planet Poker was the first online poker room to offer real-money games in 1998. On January 1, 1998, the first real-money poker game was played. In October 1999, Planet Poker's "face" was assumed by Mike Caro.

There are many features that online poker sites have to offer in order to attract new players. Satellite tournaments are a common feature that allow players to gain access to live poker tournaments. Chris Moneymaker was able to win his entry into the 2003 World Series of Poker through a tournament hosted by PokerStars. He won the main event, which caused shock and ignited the poker boom. Three times as many players were present in the 2004 World Series than 2003. Four players at the WSOP final tables won their entries through an online pokerroom. Greg Raymer, the 2004 winner of Moneymaker, also won an entry to PokerStars' online cardroom.

Sportingbet was the largest publicly traded online gambling company in the world (SBT.L) at the time. In October 2004, ParadisePoker.com was acquired by Sportingbet. This was the first and largest online poker room. This $340 million acquisition was the first time that an online poker room was owned and managed by a public company. Since then, many other card-room parent companies have gone public.

PartyGaming, which was the parent company to PartyPoker's largest online poker room, went public on London Stock Exchange in June 2005. It achieved a market value of more than $8 billion and became the first public offering. Ninety-two per cent of Party Gaming's revenue came from poker operations at the time of the IPO.

PartyGaming purchased EmpirePoker.com, Empire Online's online poker site, in the early part of 2006. PokerRoom.com was acquired by bwin, an Austria-based online gambling company. PokerStars, another poker room, has rescheduled initial public offerings. [4]

There are currently less than 40 poker networks and cardrooms that have detectable traffic as of March 2008. However, there are more than 600 independent gateways or'skins" into the network sites. [5] The majority of online poker traffic is concentrated on a handful of major networks as of January 2009. These include PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. Online Poker is Still a Good Idea