Online poker has greatly democratized poker around the world. Thanks to this new way of playing online bet malaysia, many players took to the game and started the poker adventure on the web. Some believe that online poker started in 2003 with Chris Moneymaker’s victory in the WSOP Main Event, but it actually started in the late 1990s.
The first online poker site, Planet Poker
Planet Poker was the first official online poker site – which distributed its first hand on January 1, 1998. The year after Mike Caro, poker specialist and author of books on the subject, becomes the official face of the game room.
In 2003, Chris Moneymaker won a $ 400 satellite tournament to participate in the WSOP Main Event – which normally has a buy-in of $ 10,000 – and achieved a unique performance at the time, he won the tournament as well as 2.5 $ millions. This event gives the best publicity of poker in history, and by extension of online poker, where the whole world realizes that one can win millions without investing a large sum. The dream is born.
In 2004, SportingBet bought one of the forerunners of poker sites, ParadisePoker.com, for $ 340 million. Poker rooms are starting to gain a lot of value.
In 2008, around forty independent poker sites and poker networks existed. The following year, it is noted that the world traffic is occupied by a few companies, which imposed their room: Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, and the iPoker network.
In 2010, around 545 poker rooms swarmed on the web, of which only a dozen are independent. Pokerstars reigns supreme, and in 2012, 56% of the world’s online poker traffic came from this giant.
In 2013, Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware legalized internet poker. On April 30, 2013, Ultimate Poker was the first legal online poker site launched in Nevada and was enjoying more than acceptable success. Following the difficulties of Delaware (and Nevada to a lesser extent) of maintaining a stable market with few inhabitants, the governors of the two states decided to soon combine their market to increase their panel of players.
Special features of online poker
Unlike land-based casino poker, it is possible to play very small amounts of online poker. Several types of games are available: cash game and tournament (sit & go included).
The cash game is playable from the micro limits – $ 0.01 / $ 0.02 in blinds – to the high-stakes limits – $ 1,000 / $ 2,000. It is the same for tournaments where it is possible to participate from a few cents, up to several thousand euros. Sit & go are tournaments on a table, usually with 9 or 10 players, while tournaments bring together several tables and many more entries. The world attendance record for an online poker tournament is held by Pokerstars with a $ 1 tournament that brought together 225,000 people!
The advantage with online poker is that it is also possible to multi-table, that is to say, to play on several tables at the same time. The maximum number of playable tables depends on each site, but it is estimated that it is possible to play a maximum of forty tables, which is already a performance in itself. In 2012, Randy Lew played 40 tables at a time, playing 24,493 hands during that session.
Finally, the big advantage of online poker is the volume of hands played in an hour. Compared to live poker, the difference is phenomenal, especially if you multitable! This allows thousands of young people to acquire a strong experience in a short time. This results in a rise in the level of young poker players, compared to the older generation who learned live. Today, a lot of pro players have learned online.
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