The Online Poker Boom and its Fall

After Moneymaker's unprecedented victory, poker became huge and blew up over night, both in real life and online. Hundreds of thousands of people were hooked on the poker fad, and were shoveling money over to online poker sites to get a piece of the action. Your truly was one of these people, and I have been playing online poker for the past 5 years. For a list of my winnings, click here.



Where's the roof?
With online poker growing exponentially every day, and casinos being overrun by patrons, it seemed like poker was on the fast track to become the next NFL. With world series of poker attendance increase event by event, and with online rooms as much as 50,000 players online at any given moment, online poker was quickly becoming the most popular form of gambling in America. That is until the UIEGA Act was put into play.

What is UIEGA and what does it mean?
The act was placed into effect by the government in an attempt to put sanctions on online gambling, because this form of gambling is difficult to put taxes on. The act itself never mentions poker specifically but it is clear that the online poker boom was the cause of this act. As a result, several online poker rooms, most notably Party Poker, the biggest operator at the time, shut off all services to US players. For the websites that stayed open, namely Full Tilt Poker and Pokerstars, it meant that several of the cashing out and depositing options had to be shut down. As of today, a paper check and a lengthy bank transfer are the only ways to get money off of full tilt. To see how the UIEGA Act affected live poker, click here.

Poker hurting itself
However, it must also be noted that while the UIEGA Act is the reason for the start of the fall of online poker, the players themselves are the reason for its continue downswing, and largely the reason that the online poker world has the black eye that it does today. In 2006, the poker world was rocked by the Absolute Poker cheating scandal. The winner of their biggest weekly tournament won it because he was working with an admin in the system, meaning that he could see his opponents hole cards. This left the online poker world reeling, and it was just the first of many cheating scandals to come. In 2007, the winner of the biggest tournament in the online community, the main even of the World Championship of Online Poker, was disqualified for using multiple accounts, and his win of 1.2 million dollars was voided, ironic for a player named The V0id. The icing on the cake occurred earlier this year, when it was learned that professional poker pro Russ Hamilton was behind cheating in his multiple cash game wins. 60 minutes recently did a report on these scandals. You can find it here.



Where do we go from here
With the Bush administration on the way out, there is word that they will try to institute various sanctions that the Obama administration would not be able to overturn. This would put a huge damper on online poker, especially since Obama is an open poker fan. In the meantime, poker players all over the country will be on pins and needles waiting to here if what their future is, and whether the online pros will have to make their livings in the casinos alone.

How did poker get so popular

Above is a video that shows you how to paly No limit Texas Holdem. Its the game that has take the world by storm. But how did it get so popular?


1967- Joe Namath guarantees victory against the heavily favored Colts and comes through on it 1980- US Hockey defeats the powerful USSR in the semi finals of the hockey Olympics 2007- Boise State beats Oklahoma on a hook and latter play.

These are some of the great upsets in sports history. In 2003, an unknown account from Tennessee added his name to this historic list when he took the poker world by storm by defeating 838 of the best poker players in the world. In a game where experience is just as important if not more important then pure talent, a man who was playing his first live tournament won the biggest tournament in the world, proving the motto true that "anyone can win." That man is Chris Moneymaker.

The year that Moneymaker won the tournament had 839 players. From there the number of people went up and up.

List of Entries
2000- 512 entrants 1st place- $1.5 million

2001- 613 entrants 1st place- $1.5 million
2002- 631 entrants 1st place- $2 million
2003-839 entrants 1st place- 2.5 million
2004- 2576 entrants 1st place- $ 5 million
2005- 5619 entrants 1st place- $7.5 million
2006- 8773 entrants 1st place- $12 million
2007- 6358 entrants 1st place- $8.25 million
2008- 6844 entrants 1st place- $9.15 million

Moneymaker's Trend
Since Moneymaker's big win, the number of no name players skyrocketed, and ever since his win, an unknown amateur has won the big prize. In 2004, it was Greg Raymer, a patent attorney turned proffessional poker player after his big win. In 2005, it was Joe Hachem, a former chiropracter turned poker pro from Australia. In 2006, it was Jamie Gold, the most unlikely and arguably worst champion in recent memory, a former television director. In 2007, Jerry Yang, a former refugee from Thailand who won his entry into the torunament through a 225 dollar satellite, won the first prize. And in early November, 22 year old Peter Eastgate, a professional poker player from Denmark, became the youngest winner of the main event in world series history. To see how Moneymakers win affected online poker, click here.



Reason for Downfall in Entries

In 2006, poker's popularity was reaching an astronomical high with 8773 people forking up 10,000 dollars for an 87.73 million dollar prize pool. However, when the online poker world was hit by the UIEGA Act, as discussed in the online story, live poker was affected as well. Of the 8773 people in the main event, its safe to say that about 6000 of those people won a satellite, which is a smaller buy in tournament where the winner gets a seat. And most of these satellite winners came from online poker websites. In 2005, 1116 of the 5619 entries, about 20%, qualified from Pokerstars alone. So once several online sites shut their doors, and players became more weary, less players qualified for the main event, leading to a downgrade in entries.

Where do we go form here?
As far as live poker is concerned, the future is brighter then that of online poker. Regulations are not being enforced for live casinos, and players keep flocking in and giving their money away. As far as the World Series of Poker, its success and numbers are largely based on the online poker world, and its officials will be keeping an eye on these regulations. However, the bug has bit too many people for it to simply die as quickly as it rose. Poker will be around for a while.