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While poker has been played for nearly two centuries, online poker is a recent phenomenon. It's an Internet renegade, loved by some and disdained by others. Online poker has boomed in the past couple of years, and since then the face of the poker we all know forever changed.
Other online gambling sites were launched even before online poker. During the mid '90s online sportsbooks burgeoned. The first online casino was then developed and was operational during the year 1994. It was not until 1998 that the first online poker room was established. Planet Poker, which has since become a relatively small poker room, enjoyed the status as the sole online poker firm for a short period of time. It took them six months before they started reeling in customers; however, there was no explosion of online poker frenzy yet. The news was certainly stirring, and a year after the first online poker room was launched, few people from Wall Street began entering the fray and were beginning to reap the same benefits as well.
The golden age of online poker started at the beginning of the new millennium. During 2001 two dominant online poker firms entered the industry, Poker Stars and Party Poker. The news on poker mania spread like wildfire, all thanks to the televised poker in 2001. The online poker industry truly grew when Party Poker launched its television advertising campaign during 2003. Party Poker's advertising campaign during the World Poker Tour and its launch of the Party Poker Million were smart marketing strategies that quickly slung the poker network to the top.
By 2004 online poker really exploded. The increasing popularity of online poker and Chris Moneymaker's Cinderella story resulted in an even more play at the virtual tables. Because of this, the industry's revenues tripled and more were enticed to enter this prolific market. Full Tilt Poker and Noble Poker are among the online poker firms that started its operations during these golden times of the online poker industry.
The timeline of online poker's history also had its trying period around 2006. During this year, online poker seemed unstoppable until the US government stepped right in and made the operation more challenging through the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. All US banks were forbidden to fund or receive payments from gambling sites. Many big-time online poker firms were left with no choice but to restrict access to US players. Many online poker firms have moved their office across continents however despite the upfront jurisprudence of the US government; still US online poker players are a majority in the online poker arena.
By 2015, an analyst forecasted that the online poker industry will reach roughly around $512 billion, globally. Online poker is mainly driven by the continuous development of technology; however, it's quite difficult to tell what awaits the online poker industry 5 to 10 years from now, especially on a critical economic period. If vice can really survive any impending recession then many online gambling firms, in the next five years, are looking into a business that's bigger than their first.
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