|
Poker first opened its online doors in 1998. Planetpoker.com was the poker client first to dip their toe in the world of online poker, however back then there were not many star poker players that wanted to play online. Texas holdem and the internet were not seen to be hand in hand and many people did not trust putting their money into an online account using the computer. This was of course before the luxuries of the internet that are taken for granted now a days such as internet banking and heavy regulation.
After covering that barrier Planetpoker.com still had to tackle the age-old argument of the conspirators about poker being rigged and not done by fair random number generators. The biggest problem however was getting enough players to register to have a game going all the time, back in the 1990’s this was a large problem to address. Thankfully, the World Series of Poker started to gain some momentum, which gave the game a lot more media attention and interest.
This prompted more sites to start up and follow suit, Paradise poker was the first poker room to offer online poker tournaments. The giant that is Party poker also started its campaign to dominate the poker world in 1999 and quickly became the biggest client that offered Texas holdem on the internet. Their entrance to the online poker world was well timed, as Planet Poker experienced a major setback when a group of experts cracked the code that claimed to keep the deal random.
Before 2003, though high stakes Texas holdem on the internet was actually unheard of. This all changed when a unknown amateur poker player qualified through and online poker satellite for just 40 dollars and went on to win the main event for 2.5 million dollars. This unknown player is of course Chris Moneymaker and is applauded by many to have captured the nation’s imagination of online poker, which caused the poker world literally to explode in early 2004.
This explosion brought on the dawn of a new giant in the poker world; FulTiltPoker. This site quickly rose to fame, as it was the site Moneymaker had won his satellite from. Poker only enjoyed 2 years of stardom before its popularity caused the government to start banning it. On May the first, 2006, the first state in America banned Texas holdem on the internet and it raised a lot of skepticism about the game as well as encouraging other states to follow suit.
| 
