Online Poker History, Online Poker Rooms
In the early days of poker during the 19th century, the game was often played in smoke-filled back rooms and bars and even riverboats. Settling disputes in a poker game could be a very dangerous business as players would often resort to physical violence as a last resort. With the setting up of regulated poker rooms and indeed casinos, poker became much more socially acceptable and less associated with unsavoury characters and seedy back rooms.
Today, poker is probably played by up to one in five people in the USA and remains a very popular pastime in that country. In the rest of the world however, poker was not until recently nearly as popular - many countries have their own card games of choice. However, the advent of the Internet has changed all of that, especially with the introduction in recent years of an enormous number of online poker rooms making it possible for people to play poker online from any country in the world! It really is very easy to learn how to play poker online.
The first company to set up a poker room online was PlanetPoker which set up in 1998 and this was followed soon after by ParadisePoker. However the really big players: PartyPoker and PokerStars came into the action in around 2003 when the former launched a multi-million dollar marketing campaign which quickly made it the biggest player in the online poker market.
In the year 2004, mainly due to televised poker events and of course the success of PartyPoker, the game of poker and particularly Texas Poker really became huge on the Internet with new poker rooms opening up almost every day.
Today, the annual income from people playing online poker will run into billions of dollars although of course the people who really make the money of the site operators and the companies who create the software for the online poker rooms.
Most of the players in this online poker world have watched poker on television but have probably never learned the game properly nor read a book on the subject. This of course gives you a golden opportunity if you're prepared to learn the subtleties of the game and work at it! Most of the online poker rooms would admit that 90% of the people who play in them are losers and it's only around 10% of the online players will make a decent living at it. Probably the most important thing however is that you enjoy playing poker and that you are realistic about your chances of winning especially when you first start playing.
