The world of online poker

The pot has reached $1000. Earp is beginning to sweat. Things are getting tense around the table. Hawke raises. Earp gulps and raises again. Dick throws in his hand. It’s too rich for his blood.

A bunch of card sharps sitting around a table in a casino? Not even close. “Dick” is a mechanic in Iowa, “Hawke” is a corporate lawyer in New York and “Earp” is a mother of two in Sydney, Australia.

They’ve never met but they’re just some of the millions of people worldwide who meet up in virtual reality gaming rooms every day to play online poker – now a US$5 billion industry.

The 21st century has seen an unprecedented increase in poker as both a spectator sport and a career.

Once the preserve of riverboat gamblers and boys’ nights, poker was seen as a backroom activity, played in a fug of cigar smoke and accompanied only by the chinking sound of chips being moved from one player to the next.

The introduction of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 1970 saw things begin to change. By 1973, the tournament was being televised, taking poker out of the back room and into the public eye.

But it was the advent of online gambling that really shook things up, dramatically increasing participation rates and turning the game into a more mainstream past time.

This was in a large part thanks to the “Moneymaker Effect”: the sudden interest in poker following amateur Chris Moneymaker’s famous 2003 WSOP victory after qualifying via an online poker site (yes Moneymaker is his real name).

The first online poker site that offered real money games was Planet Poker launched in 1998. It was an instant financial hit and ever improving technology saw a number of other sites spring up, attracted by the vast profits to be made.

Online gaming sites were cheaper to run than traditional gaming rooms and were far less intimidating for beginners.

They were also attractive to punters who lived in areas where gambling was either not available or illegal. Finally, they had the added advantage of being accessible 24 hours a day.

Within a short space of time, revenues were being counted in the billions of dollars and internet gambling companies were being floated on the London Stock Exchange.

Online gambling companies have been allowed to operate legally in a number of countries around the world including the UK. However that hasn’t been the case everywhere.

In 2006 the US government enacted legislation which essentially banned the transfer of funds from any American bank to online gambling sites.

This led to some (but not all) sites closing down their US operations. And now user levels are the same as they were before the ban, thanks to the use of offshore banking facilities.

And then there are the problems. Just like their real life brick and mortar counterparts, online casinos have faced their share of fraud accusations.

There have been allegations of non-random card dealing and other such tricks, but investigations have never revealed any evidence.

However, there have been a few instances of site employees using insider knowledge for their own benefit, including the exploitation of software glitches.

There is also occasional collusion between players, although that is no different to real life poker, and like casinos, all online gaming sites keep an eye out for it.

Concerns have been raised that the upsurge in popularity of online poker, and the easy accessibility of gambling sites have increased the number of people suffering from gambling addiction.

Indeed, statistics have shown that internet gambling has become very appealing to women, who would be less likely to frequent real life gambling establishments.

But despite these concerns and the best efforts of law-makers, it looks like online poker’s popularity is set to continue.

About half the 44 million people that regularly play some form of poker in North America and Western Europe play online for money. And this group of people is growing, getting younger, and more feminine.

It goes to show that poker’s traditional days of smoky casinos and backrooms are no longer the only way to be in to win.

By Jo Blick