The History Of Online Poker - The Sensational Hit

by Spartan Poker Play Poker Online Games in India

Poker is truly a sensational game that has been through centuries of evolution from poker rooms that hosted elite club members, to free poker tournaments online today that are open to everyone - aristocracy or not. The journey from those candle-lit exclusive club rooms of the USA to their availability on smartphones in every home around the world - has definitely been a rocky one with some downs, and several ups along the way.

The game has also changed in how it is played, in the many types of bettings that happen and the scale at which it is organized too. From cozy poker rooms to massive global tournaments, there is no dearth for a poker playing opportunity for you, regardless of where you’re looking. Learning poker often took years, with a need to play several games, against several players of different levels of expertise - making mistakes and learning from them to slowly improving the game. Today, you can just search for poker tips online, and hundreds of results come up in less than a second.

In this article, we want to share with you - some insights into this wonderful game of poker - especially of the game that took the internet by storm, in the form of free poker tournaments online.

For the very first time, online poker was played in the late 1990s, introduced by the platform IRC poker, and the first ever free poker tournaments online room was created by a company called Planet Poker. This was also the first time ever that online poker was played for real cash prizes. Mike Caro was chosen as the face of Planet Poker - making him the first ever Poker celebrity in the year 1999.

Post this, online poker began gaining wide popularity amongst all poker circles around the world. Anyone with an internet connection could technically join a poker room, at any corner of the world and be part of this global phenomenon of online poker. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that online poker was hugely instrumental in the worldwide popularity the game achieved in such a short period of time of less than 20 years.

Every poker player must acknowledge that the free poker tournaments online today, are only possible because of the first few visionary creators who identified the need for a connected global poker platform, and took the initiative to make it happen!

Between 2001 and 2005, there was a great surge in the number of poker players online, as well as the number of platforms that allowed these players to win huge amounts of money. The industry had grown rapidly from USD 82.7 million in 2001 to USD 2.4 billion in 2005, and there was no looking back. People had caught onto the poker bandwagon, and would catch up with like-minded individuals through online chat-rooms.

They no longer needed to get into elite, exclusive clubs to learn poker. They could simply search for poker tips online and find all the information they ever needed to make their game better.

In October 2004, Sportingbet, the then largest publicly traded online gaming company across the world acquired ParadisePoker.com, one of the first and largest online poker rooms, in a USD 340 million deal. In another landmark event, in June 2005, PartyGaming, that owned PartyPoker, became the first poker company to achieve an IPO evaluation of over 8 billion, going public on the London Stock Exchange.

The game’s popularity in the internet gaming world kept thriving until 2011, which is considered the black-year in the poker world. That was because it was then that the US department of Justice accused several poker companies such as PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker, of scamming players with ponzi schemes, for which PokerStars had to pay fines, upwards of USD 1 billion.

The next few years saw the rise of free poker tournaments online, with improved and better regulations and transparency especially in locations like the USA, UK, the Carribean and even reaching the Indian subcontinent. Today, India's poker startups industry is worth over $120 million - with thousands of everyday players taking part in a variety of tournaments every hour, from the comfort of their homes, and at times that work for them.

Today, the world looks at poker much differently than in the past. It is identified and classified as a game of strategy and skill, rather than a game of luck, playing which would amount to gambling. While still strictly regulated, online poker today is more available and accessible to the common man.

Do you love to play a game of online poker? Tell us why, in the comments below.