Online PokerPoker as everyone knows it is almost 200 years old. The online version, however, is much more recent. The last few years experienced a real boom of the online poker which definitively marked this game.

Before an online poker room was first launched, there were other sites for online gambling. At the middle of the 90s the online sportsbook was very popular, as well as the online casinos. In 1994 the first online casino became operational and it was developed by a major software supplier specialized in online casinos, called Microgaming.

The first poker room in the virtual world was established in 1998. At that time Planet Poker was the only firm of online poker. This didn’t last long, though. Planet Poker was overtaken in the online space by numerous other poker rooms. Since then, the industry changed drastically, but the rake structure stayed pretty much the same.

In 1999 Paradise Poker entered the online space and it took the lead of the industry. Because there was all at the beginning, infamous practices found a good terrain to occur. Such was the case of Poker Spot. Dutch Boyd, the successful poker player, founded Poker Spot.

It was in May 2000 when it was launched. By September it already occupied the first rank among the online poker room which offered tournaments. This also left room for trouble. The deposits made by the players were unable to be collected by Dutch Boyd’s company from the firm which processed the credit card. Therefore, the system did not recognize the deposits made by the players, so the winners could not collect their money. This marked the beginning of Poker Spot’s end.

Since then, no other incident similar to Poker Spot occurred. E-cash emergence changed things a lot. The dominant service for transferring funds in the online poker industry is Neteller. It works not only for online poker firms, but also for users. Thus, users are allowed to deposit money through Neteller at an online poker room and there is no need for wire transfer or credit card. Withdrawals are also received quicker through Neteller. By using Neteller, fraud is avoided and this is why online poker rooms prefer it, modest fees being another reason.

In 2001 the online poker industry welcomed two other dominant firms: Poker Stars and Party Poker, the first becoming very popular for its tournaments.

The industry grew more and more based on the increasing popularity of online poker playing. Paradise still leaded the poker industry until 2003. After 2003 it was overtaken by Party Poker which started advertising its services on TV. Advertising during World Poker Tour was a very good move, along with the campaign of Party Poker Million. Soon the Party Poker network reached the top. Nowadays Party Poker is almost half of the online poker market.

Still, the best advertising the poker industry could get was not the million dollar marketing of Party Poker, but a Cinderella story of a man, called Chris Moneymaker, who bought in with 40 dollars and won the Poker World Series. This really put the online poker industry on the world’s map.

Poker Stars was the network Moneymaker used to sign in for the main event of the Poker World Series. At this major event, Moneymaker pitted heads against professional poker players, among the best in the world. He managed to win 2.5 million dollars at his first taking part into a live tournament.