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May 15th, 2008 |
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May 15th, 2008 |
The growth of online poker is crazy. However, for every passing day it moves away from being the latest craze. When Joe comes home from work, eats dinner, and logs on to his favorite poker site he is at that moment enjoying his hobby along with 1.8 million other players. Poker on the Internet is mainstream.
Different TV-shows every night, advertisements on billboards, talk around the water cooler. Poker and online poker in particular seems big for a simple reason, it is big! The Internet has not only changed the way we shop, gather information and date; the Internet has changed poker too. Poker is one dot-com industry that did not notice any bubbles. In 2001 online poker revenues were $82.7 million. This number paints the picture of when the industry first took off.
By 2005 online poker is much bigger; the revenue was $2.4 billion. Those numbers illustrate the earnings for the online poker rooms, in the same year more than $60 billion was gambled on poker sites. In 2010 it is predicted the earnings (rake minus costs) will be closer to 2005 net gambling numbers or a whopping $24 billion.
No one could foresee this incredible growth. Poker has been played roughly the same way for the last 200 years. It may be old news, but its reinvention is nothing less than extraordinary.
Two main factors have made poker as popular as it is today: televised poker tournaments and Internet. More particularly the keys are small cameras and the maturity of the World Wide Web.
Prior to the World Poker Tour (WPT) shows, televised poker was often described with “as fun as watching ice cubes melt”. The skeptics have a point: how fun is it to look at other guys staring at each other? Occasional big bets and a showdown or two could not overcome the lengthy nothings. However everyone understands the basic concept of poker: Show me the money.
In hindsight the big hit with televised poker is not strange at all. The transformation came with the WPT’s introduction of tiny cameras below the table so the audience could see a player’s hand in Texas Hold’em. Now the motivation behind the players’ actions became clear. Grunts and mimicry moved from being random twitches to reactions when facing decisions. Even the poker illiterate can read the face of a player who methodologically pushes chips into the pot while the spy camera shows his cards being deuce-rag: BLUFF!
Poker is very visual and there is a big difference compared with football, golf or any other sport on TV. Poker is the first televised sport where armchair quarterbacks can literally play on TV next week. Everyone has a shot and it starts on the Internet. With the advent of online poker, everyone had access to the real poker world. The breakthrough also came at a time when people had enough faith in the e-ventures to gamble online. With tournaments where regular guys become instant millionaires and everyday easy access to a mature venue – online poker is a trend that runs deep.